“Don’t forget to have fun.” Have you heard this at the end of a kick-off meeting for a big writing project? Somehow this always sounded wrong to me. I blame it on my formative years in Germany and a career in science and engineering. We were never told to have fun. We were told to do the work and to endure. Fun was at best optional and more commonly seen as a frivolous distraction. “You aren’t here for your own amusement. You are here to work.” I still think that this attitude can be a useful reminder not to confuse work and life. Because those two are different and if you don’t make enough room for both, it is probably not going to work out as well for you as it could. But as I am getting older I am considering more seriously the role of play.

From the decades (yes, it has been decades) of supporting, leading, and observing teams, I remember best the teams that had a certain lightness to the way they acted with each other. They may not have gone out bowling together at the end of the day, but they were more than transactionally connected. They went beyond: I ask for A and you give me A. They certainly didn’t follow the pattern of: I ask for A. I don’t hear anything. I ask for A again. You ask what does A mean. I explain. I don’t hear anything. Again. I remind you. Again. The deadline passes. I talk to your boss. Eventually you give me a fragment of B and stop talking to me.

In contrast, most observers can pick up lightness in a team just by observing them for a bit. Lighter teams spend more time in the proposal room together. There are snacks and more than one person contributes to the feeding of the team. They may pick a silly mascot. “Death metal kitty” is still my favorite. There are side conversations that are not related to the work. And somehow in the middle of this unrelated frivolousness, little side conversations are sneaking in: “I know that you are asking for A, but could I give you a little more than that?” Or “If I give you A in a different form than the one you asked for, it will take up less space and will even help with B.” That’s the moment when a group of individuals transitions to acting as a team. And it is the power of the team that you need to win. 

That transition from a group to a team is like a phase transition in Physics. Sometimes it happens gradually the way an ice cube melts in your water glass. Sometimes it happens very suddenly like a super-cooled liquid solidifies in the blink of an eye. After the transition, team members feel the difference. They are still doing the work and are pulling as hard as always, but now the burden is shared and it doesn’t feel so heavy anymore. There are breaks too and it isn’t nose-to-the-grindstone 24/7. So how do you make that transition happen?

Whenever I have tried to make that transition happen, I failed. The harder I pushed, the more resistance I encountered. Today, my best advice to a team leader is to trust your team. To listen more than you talk and to talk way more than you ever thought necessary. If you are a team member. Take that role seriously and make sure you too listen. If you have a suggestion or idea, don’t give up on it if it doesn’t land the first time you bring it up. Keep looking for the right time and venue to bring it up again.

Today I may suggest to a team “to hold things less tightly.” To allow for the possibility that it isn’t going to be pure drudgery from beginning to end and that you may be working with some interesting people and learn something new in the process. Perhaps there will be room to play a little and to try out something new. Does that sound like fun?