Whoever comes for good is welcome

Ideas
Written by Joana Marques

Welcoming new people into a team is a challenge for those who arrive and for those who already live there. What can we (and do we want to) do to be more up to the expectations of those who come and those who open the door?

Let us consider a team as a system with its own characteristics, ways of being and being, habits, beliefs, rules and routines that contribute to its (more or less) harmonious, stable and effective functioning. Well, in such a system, the arrival (or departure) of new people to the team: 1) challenges its stability; 2) creates resistance; 3) at the same time it is an excellent opportunity to, with enough expectation, openness, curiosity, willingness and candour, even fear, "reprogramme" the system, making it benefit from the multiple qualities and skills of all the people who are part of it. And if change (1) creates a need, and being a need, by definition, the lack of something that is necessary, in Way Beyond we say that, generally, when something is missing it is because a conversation (2) is missing.

This is the basis of our conversation model(2): 1) create rapport, 2) explore possibilities; 3) coordinate actions.

The same model, I would say, could be adopted for the integration of new people. To open the door is to open to the new, to the unknown, and therefore first of all to the creation and consolidation of the relationship. Through what? Through conversations, here understood as:

  • The "place of friends", where we take care of comfort, psychological security and the social dimension of work linked to the time and space from which we learn and find our place, knowing (us) and making ourselves known and, therefore, to the space we have to make mistakes, ask, answer, correct, do better;
  • The most "advanced technology" to search and find the best alignment of each one with individual, team and organisational values, mission and purpose;
  • The primordial vehicle to become part of it, to shorten distances and widen complicity, getting to know better who is who, what each one does and how they do it, what we do and how we do it together, what qualities and competences we have that will allow us to collaborate more and better.

Therefore, we must also have good leaders(3), those who challenge and support in the same measure, who take pleasure in getting to know their people and making themselves known, in challenging them, perhaps leaving them, here and there, on the tightrope necessary for learning, for growth, but being there to help put one foot in front of the other to walk the path and reach the goal. With the necessary space and time so that we can "walk our corner(4) in our own time, balancing trust, responsibility, doubts, conquests. So, naturally, in a permanent exercise of empathy and transparency and honesty ensured, among others, by the pleasure of talking and discovering the other and by the pride of seeing him discover and find his purpose"(5).

Written for Adagietto's LAB on 9 March 2022; published 22 March 2022.

Joana Marques
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