Unity

We're all familiar with Bruce Tuckman's revolutionary 1965 articulation of Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing [and now Adjourning!] phases of team development, but within the experience of teaming (and even collaborating), sometimes the primacy and very essence of authentic unity can get lost in the shuffle.

In the greatest of teams, we see genuine esprit de corps (which we think is an apt description, as it certainly evokes what we're talking about: spirit through unity and unity of spirit).

Perhaps by way of a rather unconventional example (but shared nonetheless because hundreds of millions of people have seen it), recall the movie scene in 1999's Braveheart when Mel Gibson's historical figure rallies an enormous yet ragtag group of volunteers by prancing to and fro on his trusty steed while shouting the words:

“I am William Wallace, and I see a whole army of my countrymen here in defiance of tyranny. You have come to fight as free men. And free man you are! What will you do with that freedom? Will you fight? Aye! Fight and you may die; run and you will live...at least a while. And dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives—but they will never take our FREEDOM!”

The hairs that rise on the back of one's neck indicate that unity is in the house.

To aspire toward teamwork without understanding, pursuing, and ultimately engendering spirited unity is to miss the benevolent ghost in the machine, for it is indeed possible to be a team without possessing unity, much like it's possible to drive to work each morning without consciously thinking about it.

Don't miss out on true potential by failing to cultivate unity.

When fully harnessed, we predict you'll agree with one prior participant who shared his perspective on unity as "the actual differentiator between teams I was on that felt memorably magical versus teams I was on that simply succeeded."

That's it exactly. We couldn't agree more.