In my previous article “Effective R&D teams. How?” I analysed the responses to a survey I launched. The responses came from 21 teams in eight countries. 76% of the respondents said they were in a leadership position. In that framework, I reported the answers to two questions related to their teams:

• What are the top 3 urgent issues (problems/challenges) you see in your team to raise it to its next level?
• What are the 3 desires you dream for the evolution of your team?
  

In the same survey I also asked two more questions, this time referring to the personal sphere:

• What are the top 3 urgent issues (problems/challenges) you personally experience in your team/work?
• What are the top 3 wishes you dream for your personal growth in your team/work?

Below are the statistics depicted by the survey:

More than 1 in 4 respondents stated that conflicts – among them unconstructive competition and lack of a positive feedback culture – are the most urgent problem they personally experience at work or in the team.

On the other hand, almost 1 in 2 stated that personal development – in the sense of career development, undertaking new projects, listening to personal aspirations – is the main dream for their personal growth.

Now, suppose you have some small red dots.
Stick these red dots on the items in the list “top urgent personal issues” emerging from the survey, which match your personal experience at work, i.e., which you also face in your daily work.

They could be one, two or more.

The list is reported below:

Clear planning & clear goals

Communication

Conflicts

Continuous and targeted learning

Free time

Motivation

Professional development

Role definition

Support from higher levels

Technology and infrastracture

Time management

Workload & Wellbeing

Now reflect on one more thing.
How much of your weekly attention do you devote to the issues you have marked with a red dot? Give a value (0 to 100, where 100 means full attention).

Observe your result.
What do you notice?
What stands out from the results?

Now, suppose you have some green dots.
Do a similar exercise with the “top personal dreams”. Stick green dots on the dreams that also belong to you, which you share as fundamental to your personal growth at work.

Clear planning & clear goals

Conflict management

Continuous and targeted learning

Creativity

Economic growth

Free time

Funding

Motivation

Professional development

Role definition

Support from higher levels

Teamwork

Time management

And then give a value (0-100) to the attention you weekly devote to those dreams, to get closer to them and make them happen.

Again, what do you observe?

Do you have more red or green dots sticked? If you count the total value of your attention devoted to red dots and do the same for green dots, what emerges? How high is the value of weekly attention from 0 to 100 in both cases?

Good. Thanks for following me this far.

Energy follows attention:
Wherever you put your attention, that is where the energy of the system will go

Says Otto Scharmer in his “Leading from the emerging future” ¹.

“Energy follows attention” means that we need to shift our attention from what we are trying to avoid to what we want to bring into reality, both at team and personal level.

Suppose you are embroiled in a complicated relationship with one of your colleagues. You experience a lack of clarity and transparency with her/him on a daily basis and this leads to constant tension. Automatically you allocate part of your attention and energy to this difficult relationship. It has become a habitual depressing cycle.
Instead, shift your attention to what you want to bring into reality, to what you desire and want to achieve.
It could be that you wish in that situation active listening. Or a transparent and honest feedback culture with this colleague of yours. Or you would like to put in place a specific resource to open communication with him.

All told, shift your attention to what you want to bring into reality, instead.

That means, follow your desires, follow your dreams.

Give space to your creativity and excellence. You could listen to your personal aspirations (or make them heard), inspire new projects, seize new learning opportunities, shape more meaningful work.

The sad reality (also based on my personal experience as team leader) is that – instead – we are largely dominated by the tasks we are assigned on a weekly basis. Project management, research experiments, meetings, urgencies, internal communication, external collaborations and so on and so forth. There are simply too many things to control. This is the reality. Sad.

We enter the hamster-wheel modus – as one of the survey participants noted. Thus, our attention – little by little – goes to the red dots and our energy “follows”.

And what happens?
Often one of the following three alternatives prevails:

• Running after deadlines and automatisms, there is no time left to become aware of where our attention is focused. Our attention remains stagnant on the red dots – problems and issues.

• Discomfort remains confined to individual or a few team members and fails to emerge and be addressed in the team as a whole.

• Discomfort emerges and “symptomatic solutions” are applied as quick fixes.² The problem-solving process runs on a superficial course.

All in all, the same old story goes on.
We lose energy, we lose efficiency, we lose the excellence of which we are capable, both as individuals and as a team.

“We produce results that nobody wants”¹, because we remain disconnected and on the surface, applying simple quick fixes at best, which get back to the problem.

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What – instead – I am convinced of in order to increase personal and team effectiveness and foster creative change is the application of learning methodologies not relying on learning from the past and on a shallow level, but relying on learning from the ambitions, dreams and creativity that one and the team has.

That is:

“Learn from a future that wants to emerge”

It is not a simple plug-in of an application – a 3h training, a 2-days workshop, an additional team meeting – but it is a matter of enacting a vertical development, a deeper process that asks us to observe profoundly and embody change, shifting the attention from red dots to green dots.
Namely:

shifting the attention to the excellence that the individual and the team are able to bring to reality.

And here Theory U proposed by Otto Scharmer (Senior Lecturer at MIT and co-founder of the Presencing Institute) offers a disruptive process for such a learning methodology.

Sensing. Slow down, stop and listen to others and to what life is calling you to. Suspend the habitual ways of seeing and redirect your attention (your energy) to sense what is happening from within a situation, in yourself and around you.

Presencing. Go down to the bottom of the U. Strive to achieve a state of clarity and of connection with the situation, the team members and what is emerging. “Presencing is seeing from the deepest source and becoming a vehicle for that source”. ³

Realizing. Moving up the U implies bringing something new into reality, where this “something new” originates from a deeper source than the rational mind. It is about establishing a connection, a deep connection in oneself and within the team.

Here is an example.

Think about an internal conflict within your team (the top urgent issues in the survey). Meet the persons concerned or the whole team. Put the conflict on the table and ask everyone to slow down and stop the habitual ways of judging. Ask everyone to simply observe the situation. Give space to positive signs. Generate clarity through curiosity questions. Escape the voice of judgement.

Now let everyone connect to the conflict situation and what was heard. Let there be stillness. No pressure. No rush. Often it is just a matter of stopping, reflecting and connecting.
Let the team reflect on these two questions:
What does everyone and the team need to let go of?
What is there to learn in this situation?

Now move up. Create a generative dialogue and reflect together while observing the newly gained insights. Hold the space to act in a natural flow and in accordance with what everyone perceived about the process and the conflict situation.
Base the generative dialogue on these couple of questions:
What does it want to emerge?
What new positive perspectives are offered now?
Which small steps forward can we endorse?
Build on each other´s ideas and enact small new steps towards team progress.

You can think of applying the same process to an exciting ambition that your team wants to undertake.

It is about shifting the focus from what we want to avoid to the excellence we want to bring out – from red dots to green dots – creating a deep vertical connection with the situation and the people involved in the process.

Systems change – as well as raising the team to its next level – has to do not just with horizontal development, but with vertical development. The resources are already within us and they are the best. It is about learning how to sense and actualize these resources as emerging future possibilities, rather than reacting to (and perpetuating) past patterns.

Sensing. Presencing. Realizing. 3 moves to express your team excellence.

1. O. Scharmer. Leading from the emerging future
2. P. Senge, The Fifth Discipline,
3. Peter M. Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski and Betty Sue Flowers, Presence