Five Ways You Can Improve Group Flow

How to improve cross-functional collaboration by strengthening your emotional intelligence

by Jason Haller

How does a team that is losing a game pull off a fourth-quarter comeback? How does a Jazz ensemble show up without notes on a page and play beautiful music? How does a kitchen at a restaurant in Manhattan deliver Michelin star quality meals to over 150 mouths each evening?

Creativity, innovation, problem-solving, motivation, and a positive mindset are all driven by group flow. Feeding off each other’s unique experiences and perspectives and building momentum until the whole is greater than the sum of its parts is what group flow is all about. Creating environments where all the members of the group have a shared goal, complementary skill sets, respect, humility, and openness for each other’s ideas is crucial for this type of momentum to occur.

Group flow is also a great tool for building a sense of belonging and purpose, both of which are key players in the fight against burnout, attrition, and overall quality of life.

Think of a flock of birds all moving in unison. They’re navigating, assessing risk, and communicating instantaneously without any formal structure or hierarchy. It’s difficult to believe there isn’t one mind controlling the group’s movement. That’s group flow. We know, however, that it isn’t one mind controlling the group, but rather all the minds simultaneously contributing to the group’s collective knowledge and awareness.

One of the group flow triggers that perfectly captures this concept is “blending of egos.” This is a kind of collective humility that allows a free flow of ideas regardless of rank or title. This leads to a greater pool of participation and more brain power that can contribute to the whole. More participation invites more sharing of unique ideas, risks, and opportunities that may otherwise have been unaccounted for.

This free exchange of ideas as a group generates unpredictable but powerful new concepts and is what makes group flow one of the most potent tools for creating change, driving innovation, and solving complex problems.

“Everything you do inside the gym makes everything you do outside the gym better” - Gunnar Peterson

If we think about escape rooms, we can find many of the group flow triggers in action. Everyone is starting on an equal playing field; whatever hierarchy that existed before the activity is typically melted away once the game starts. There is a crystal clear goal that is challenging and provides a shared purpose for the group. With everyone on the same page, and while egos are blended, participation and pattern recognition can happen without fear of social repercussions. All input is welcome because no one has the answers yet. This makes escape rooms a fun and exhilarating experience for most people and is an incredible way to bond as a team or foster creative thinking.

Now that we have a general idea of what group flow is, what can we do to create an environment where it is likely to emerge? For starters, there needs to be dedicated time. The goal isn’t to create year-round group flow in the office; that’s unlikely to occur and will create a sense of failure when it doesn’t happen. Dedicated time could be a collaborative workshop over the course of one to three days. Strategic collaborative sessions that are free from the responsibilities of the day-to-day minutia and that have a purposeful goal to achieve are great opportunities to facilitate group flow. This can and should be fun. After all, how often do we get to step outside of our daily routine to really focus on where our business is going and how to make it more successful?

“Decades of scientific research have revealed that great creativity almost always springs from collaboration, conversation, and social networks—challenging our mythical image of the isolated genius. And research shows that when a group is in flow, it’s more likely to resolve problems with surprising and creative solutions.” – Keith Sawyer

The feedback we’ve received after facilitating these types of workshops is overwhelmingly positive. Customers site experiencing faster decision-making, feeling more like a team, being “blown away” by the level of engagement and participation, believing that change is possible now that they know they’re in this together, having more trust in each other, feeling more positive now that they see the bigger picture, and feeling incredibly productive. This is what work feels like, under the right conditions, but this same group under their previous conditions was not having this positive and productive experience at all. In fact, one facet of their flow was empathy toward one another on their current overwhelming workload and constant feelings of being in reactive mode. After the session, they felt invigorated and ready to tackle the very complex initiative ahead of them.

To maximize the potential for creative problem-solving, these collaborative sessions should have a cross-functional group filled with diverse perspectives, whether it be educational background, culture, experience level, or role at the company. Their knowledge base and skill sets should be complementary or of a similar level, but with room for a couple of wildcards who think outside of the box and challenge the group with an untainted point of view. The nuance to be mindful of is that diversity of thought makes group flow a much more potent tool, but the diversity of goals and purpose completely undermines the effectiveness of the team. Establishing a shared purpose and goal for the group is crucial for group flow, innovation, and building a sense of community.

“You cannot put a price on the value we found in unifying employees from different functions and making them aware of the upstream and downstream impacts their roles have on one another.” -Ahmad Ouri, CEO

Once you have some dedicated time, a problem to solve, and a group to solve it with, what else can help facilitate group flow?

Close listening. When ideas are getting tossed around in a group setting, it is imperative to understand them first before responding. Innovation and creative momentum are blocked when one or more people in the group have preconceived notions of how things should be done. When there is a shared goal, and an appropriate blending of egos, close listening is the next step to setting the stage for more group flow. This sounds easy enough, but all too often we are anticipating, rather than listening to understand. In a setting designed for group flow, concepts are changing, minds are open, and innovation is brewing.

Recently, in one of these sessions, an executive asked for feedback after the first day; we shared with him that he could try to ask more questions and do less contributing or answering. This was not meant as a slight, but in order to really ramp up group participation and ideation, there needed to be more space for others to jump in, so that this executive could listen, learn, and “seek first to understand” his group better before unique and helpful solutions emerged.

Keep moving forward. After close listening, we want to encourage the momentum of the group. That happens with additive contributions, rather than combative. Build on what came before, even if you disagree. There will be time to disagree, reassess, and give critical feedback later. Right now, in the session, go with the flow and be open to where the group takes you. In order to reach an unexpected outcome, you may have to take an unexpected path to get there. Without doing this correctly, you risk circling back to doing things the way you’ve always done them, as all the innovation and problem solving gets stymied by aggressive feedback or fear of sharing an outlandish idea.

This concept can be particularly challenging for some people, especially those who are still holding onto their egos in the session. If a thought or idea is presented, it has to be taken in the context of achieving the group goal. It is in no way to be taken as a personal attack. It should be assumed that all members of the group are acting on behalf of the primary goal at this point, and not acting to sabotage or intentionally offend other members. This is where it can be helpful to have a facilitator in these sessions to keep things on track and remind the group to stay focused on the main problem they are there to solve.

Familiarity. This one I can personally attest to as being very helpful for group flow. This is the idea of having a common language, a shared knowledge base or experience, and a communication style based on unspoken understanding. Having to slow down and go through a lengthy explanation kills momentum. Having the familiarity with your group to explain things shorthand or in novel ways that can be understood tacitly really ramps up the positivity and energy in the session. The excitement that someone else is on the same page as you – and can basically get to your next thought without you saying anything – can start a cascade of creativity and camaraderie.

This will be a challenge now more than ever with more and more work being done in virtual settings. And while there are ways to optimize the virtual experience, the value of meeting in person and creating shared experiences is irreplaceable as a way to build trust, communication, and familiarity with each other. Having a shared experience, even a negative one, can help bring a team closer together. Simply realizing that your colleagues feel the same way you do can create a greater sense of group empathy, bring a team together, and make it that much easier to share knowledge and solve problems down the road.

“Group flow is important for all of us, because so many of our personal and professional activities are spent in groups, and we all want these groups to be more effective and more fun—whether they’re a sports team, a business meeting, a non-profit board, a PTA, or a boy scout troop” – Keith Sawyer

For individual flow, limiting distractions and having uninterrupted flow blocks are paramount. But for group flow, when interacting with others in rich environments how could you avoid distractions? The main source of distraction you have managed is your own thoughts. Thoughts that pull you out of the present moment can distract you from close listening and absorbing what’s going on around you, thus preventing you from participating to your full potential.

During a situation where group flow is the goal, egos have to take a back seat. The group is one entity and is working together towards a shared cause. When that prerequisite is met, the freedom to be creative and build on each other’s ideas can be accessed. By contrast, if a group is filled with individuals who are all walking on eggshells because they don’t know each other, don’t feel properly aligned with the goal, are worried about offending or being judged by each other, or are actively looking for ways to judge each other, then group flow will be non-existent.

Group flow is personally my favorite type of flow. The collaboration, creativity, and unexpected ways of solving problems are exhilarating to be a part of. The trick is to get this to happen in the workplace and aim it at accomplishing high-level goals or solving difficult multi-faceted problems. Now that you know some of the prerequisites and a basic framework of how to set it up, I encourage you to give it a shot and see what happens.

Here are five tips and guidelines to help facilitate group flow in whatever setting you chose:

Dedicate time and space. This may require deprioritizing other work activities for a couple of days, but establishing time that is free from interruptions and obligations is critical for lowering the cognitive load of the group and paving the way for flow. One to three days is a typical time frame for these types of creative strategy workshops.
Assemble your group. As the leader or sponsor of a group event, assembling a team that is motivated to solve the problem is the first priority. To maximize the variables your team will be able to foresee and solve for, a group with diverse perspectives and backgrounds is an advantage. Also, a group comprised of people with similar skill levels and/or complementary skill sets helps minimize friction.
Define your purpose and goal clearly. It’s okay to take your time here to make sure you are actually solving the right problem. What’s wrong, what are the root causes, and what is the desired future state you’re trying to create. Making sure everyone feels aligned to this goal is imperative for driving group flow and getting people to commit to the process.
Establish trust in the process. There will be moments when you feel like the session is going in the wrong direction, don’t panic, group flow is not about staying on script. Think more about staying within a framework rather than sticking to a rigid schedule and checklist. Being able to take the time to explore rabbit holes can help illuminate unexpected risks or opportunities or drive creativity by ramping up pattern recognition. Assigning or hiring a facilitator can be a good way to offload the responsibility to someone with no ego or emotional connection to the problem at hand. This way, engaged participants spend less time worrying about leading and can help lower the cognitive load of the participants.
Create shared experiences. A three-day workshop can accomplish more quality decision-making and problem-solving than two months’ worth of zoom sessions if done properly. Getting the full team together and breaking down silos between departments can yield unexpected perspectives and common ground that leads to productive conversations and greater appreciation for everyone’s roles, transparency on each individual’s valuable contributions, and commitment to a positive path forward as a cohesive team.

If you are interested in learning more about how Five to Flow can improve the five core elements of your organization, contact us today. For more information on flow concepts and how they improve business health, visit the Collective Voices blog for more articles.