Body language

This was an HR team. A group of experienced professionals working hard but struggling, somehow. They felt together but separate. They invited me to meet with them, to help them create and sustain a greater sense of teamwork. We rented a room off-site and I marked a large outline of a person on the ground using white tape. It looked like one of those outlines police use to mark the position of a body(!).

The team arrived and, being from a Christian organisation, I opened by referring to the image of a body in the Bible, a metaphor that aims to convey the importance of diversity, contribution, care and interdependence. I then invited the team to stand on the ‘body’ on the ground in a place that best represented for them how they saw themselves and how they felt within the team and in the wider organisation.

One person stood on the head. Others stood on the arms, hands, legs and feet. After a moment, I asked them to look around and to say what they noticed, how it felt to stand where they were standing, what they noticed about others and what they noticed about the team as a whole. Everyone commented on how they found themselves standing instinctively on ‘doing’ parts of the body - hands, feet etc.

After a few minutes, the team leader, a deeply intuitive woman, looked up and spoke: ‘We’re all looking outwards. There’s no-one at the heart.’ It was as if something of profound significance had emerged in the room, in that physical space. ‘We are so busy supporting others outside of the team that we haven’t paid attention to what we need.’ ‘Let’s explore what a team with a heart would look and feel like - then let’s be and do it.’

I could feel a real shift in energy and insight. It was as if something had been released and a heavy burden had been lifted. Fresh awareness, hope and ideas poured into the room. Physical experimentation and movement had enabled something to take place that may not have happened, or at least with the same degree of experiential impact, through group conversation alone. Note to self: if in doubt, just do it.