Expanding Team Consciousness (and what that even means)
Consciousness is a weird concept. Our culture’s understandable fascination with measurable things has limited our ability to make sense of consciousness since it can’t be measured in a way that meet’s the rigor of modern science. Yet, we still have our lived experiences, like devouring chocolate or laughing at a joke, or falling in love. Lived experience and intuition are, therefore, simply not accounted for in decision-making processes. Our intuition and our experience of life wouldn’t exist without consciousness, and I think it’s time leaders start to acknowledge and use these all-powerful forces to their benefit.
Our need to analyze, measure, and prove stuff has led us to forget a lot of what it really means to be human, to be conscious. Einstein had this to say about it: "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." It was his ability to lead with intuition that separated Einstein from most of his all-rational peers.
Mathematicians, physicists, data scientists, and the like are celebrated for their diligence and attention to detail. And we should celebrate them; their work is incredible, and they are faithful servants. But, to Einstein’s point, we have celebrated them to the extent that we have limited our own capabilities. Steve Jobs is an example of someone who didn’t forget this gift - it was always Steve Jobs’ intuition that led his decision-making at Apple.
There’s a modern philosopher, Philip Goff, who has a view of consciousness that I like. He argues that physics comes from consciousness, not the other way around (this belied is called panpsychism). Goff explains that consciousness is at the root of human identity and that, fundamentally, we relate to each other as beings with feelings and experiences. He points out that our current scientific worldview can’t account for the reality of consciousness and is incompatible with the reality of consciousness.
Science and math (the foundations for most American businesses) intentionally exclude consciousness from their purview simply because it can’t be measured. How limiting is that? This means that most of everything we understand, mathematically or scientifically, has been conceived in a bubble (because it had to be). Because our businesses (and sports teams, military, etc.) have all been built on the shoulders of our necessarily limited scientific worldview, virtually all of the organizations we have built are incapable, at a structural level, of taking advantage of our greatest capacity as humans.
So, how can leaders of teams take advantage of human consciousness and use it to improve performance? There is a lot, and many organizations (Patagonia and Facebook, for example) are making strides in this department. For starters, leaders can foster the development of “team consciousness.” Team consciousness refers to the collective mental state of a team, where each member has a shared understanding of the goals, values, and vision of the team. It's the sense of "we-ness" that allows a group of individuals to function as a single entity and achieve a common goal. It's not merely about sharing information but instead developing a shared sense of meaning and purpose, which is critical to enable collaboration and trust among team members.
I first experienced the benefits of leveraging human/team consciousness to boost performance as a Navy SEAL. The senior special operations leader at the time, General Stanley McChrystal, made it a priority to cultivate a sense of what he called “shared consciousness” across the special operations organization. He emphasized the need to move away from traditional hierarchical structures and towards a networked approach that enables rapid decision-making, shared learning, and collective action. It worked; we were able to obviate the slow-moving military chain of command because the authority to decide and act had been scaled across and down - junior personnel clearly understood the mission and values. They were trusted to make their own decisions as a result. We likely couldn’t have defeated the decentralized al-Qaida otherwise because they simply moved too fast.
Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal's book "Stealing Fire" examines the science of high-performance teams and the critical role that altered states of consciousness, such as flow, play in fostering creativity, collaboration, and shared understanding. Flow states are moments when individuals are fully immersed in an activity and lose a sense of self, leading to increased creativity, collaboration, and shared understanding. On a combat operation, for example, I remember often entering into group flow states when it seemed that no one on the team made a mistake and everyone understood what everyone else was doing - also, everyone was having fun. It is sort of magical... But it can’t be measured, and so despite being critical to our success, it wasn’t part of our training curriculum. This happens in business - it’s weak or stupid or wasteful to invest in anything that can’t be measured. In my view, it’s weak not to, and that’s why there are so few genuine innovations and original ideas, and it’s also why most people are mostly boring.
By encouraging activities that induce flow states, such as mindfulness practices or adventure sports, teams can develop a shared sense of focus and purpose. An added benefit of mindfulness practices is that the individuals on the team begin to expand their own consciousness or awareness of their internal and external environment (something the SPECOPS world could be better at).
As a business advisor, I see all too often that leadership teams apply analysis to a deal or a project, and they put all of their efforts into executing the plan that the analysis helped to materialize. Often these efforts “work” just fine, but it pains me to know how much more value is left on the table because the leaders are either afraid of or ignorant to the idea of investing in something that can’t be measured “you can’t manage what you can’t measure” - that’s a BS statement. You can’t measure how tasty a piece of chocolate is or how compatible a potential spouse is, yet we still somehow manage to eat good chocolate and fall in love.
As countless business leaders and entrepreneurs have proven, if you use have a strong rational mind, your work can result in great wealth. But there is richness and beauty that comes from embracing the intuitive mind, and the result is something sacred. Leaders only need to ask, “is my team enjoying themselves? Do they seem connected to each other and energized?” if the answer is no (and it usually is), then you have some work to do around expanding your team consciousness.
