Exploring Hive Principle #1 – Build Similarity, not Diversity

Wow, this is another revelation by Haidt that is swimming against the current within our culture! The actual statement is “Increase similarity, not diversity” which is a goal statement which I have changed to an action statement “Build…” Haidt elaborates “To make a human hive, you want to make everyone feel like family.” He describes a family as “having shared values and mutual interdependencies.“ Looking outside of families, this drive for similarity is striking when you observe any group of individuals that have created a club to separate themselves from a larger group. Visit a high school and you will be able to identify serveral groups that are self-identified as non-conformist by the uniform they have adopted– conforming to non-conforming appearance. The question for leaders is how to build similarity in a diverse workforce that you cannot (and should not) force thought, dress or appearance conformity. 

The great news is that our shared humanity is the foundation of our similarity. I was working in Canada in the mid 2000’s and had many discussions with my co-workers about the crazy American war mongering ethos. At the heart of these discussions was the belief that living south of the Canadian border changed a person into something unrecognizable in Canada. My reply to these types of statements was my observation of our vast similarities. Both Canadians and Americans wanted safety and security for themselves and their families. They both enjoyed good food and lively conversation. They both wanted to live long and prosper. These were vast similarities that would drown out the single difference, the stance on the Iraq war, that was the focus at the time. In many times I offered this observation, not once did any of my Canadian friends deny these basic truths. Back to the good news, as a leader you can use our basic humanity to drown out our differences. I still have friendships that I developed during my time in Canada and it was one of my early successes in building a human hive. This was just one of the many approaches that I employed to build that hive – it seemed intuitive, but good to know that it has some science behind it. 

So how do you focus on our shared humanity as part of our workplace? During a recent virtual training session we had a morning check-in where the participants displayed a favorite background picture with a short description. Three common themes emerged during the session. The first one was a love of sports, even when the participants were fans of different teams the similarity was that they were sports fans. The second theme was a love of family, with multiple participants showing a photo of their children they showed a humanity that most of us share. A third theme was a love of beach vacations with a third of the class showing a picture of a favorite vacation. My modest role in these sessions is to demonstrate the check-in themes during the first day of training avoiding any reference to work, training and avoiding any humble brags. During the check-ins I comment on the similarity between interests either between the students or between the students and the instructors. The photo check-in was the start of day 2 of the 4 day training that was followed by a favorite t-shirt and favorite hat check-in on day 3 and 4. What we witnessed was growing cross talk and engagement in the main session and group break outs. In our instructor retrospective we noted that this was one of the most active and engaged training groups. In summary, share your humanity (no need to act like a fool) and invite your team to share theirs. 

Shared humanity seems easy now, what would seem to be the easy part is really tricky – how do you bring in work? Managers have been sharing the work and plan with teams for a very long time without moving the hive switch. This is where we need to leave management behind and become leaders.  Avoid the actual work your team is engaged in and bring in “purpose.” One of the dimensions of Mazlow’s work was the need for individuals to have purpose in their life to become the best version of themselves. I will apply this to a human hive to say that a common purpose for the hive is a critical dimension to become the best version of the hive. As I was building my first agile team we had the good fortune of having a great Product Owner (PO). Dave was very active in all of our team events and could describe the impact our work (or lack of) was having on the users of the solution we were supporting. The engagement of the PO came with the conversion to agile methods which was impactful, but the alignment around the common purpose to make the system user friendly was a large part of our success. 

Is purpose the same as mission? I won’t try to tease out the distinction between these two concepts because many could argue that what I described above was a team mission. So, describing the mission of the team in a motivating manner will result in giving the team purpose. The goal is to provide the team with something they can share in common to connect with each other in a meaningful way. In What we know about Leadership Hogan and Keiser stated it this way “…good leaders are able to project a vision, to explain to the group the purpose, meaning, and significance of its key undertakings.” One other interesting point from What we know about Leadership Hogan and Keiser is the distinction between leadership competency and managerial competency. Leaders have to have this vision thing but a vision alone isn’t going to move the hive switch. Leaders must be competent managers to be credible leaders to their followers, however effective managers without leadership skills will not build high performing teams. 

Reflecting on your team leadership, what are you doing to foster a common bond within your team? If you are doing this, you likely have a high performing team and now you know why. If you don’t have a high performing team, maybe it is time to drown their differences in a sea of similarities!

Now let’s explore principle #2, move together and principle #3 Create Healthy competition among teams

Previous blog: Fool Proof principals for building high performance teams. 

Coming soon: How the IBM Coaching team activities align with the “Hive Switch” Principles