I don’t like working alone. I know I am fully capable of achieving everything on my own, as adaptability defines us as a species. I also know that my knowledge and intelligence are limited, this is why I seek for others to join forces with, so that together we can achieve much more. Making myself redundant is what I generally strive for, that means I need to prepare others to take over whatever I am doing.

My upbringing was different, of course, it was influenced by the culture and the environment I lived in. This shaped the way I was thinking and my attitude to life in general. I grew up hearing quite often sayings like “if you want something to be done well, you must do it yourself!” or “One's fortune is created by one's hand” and the like. Even though these sayings may have its merits, they do not foster too much of a sense of togetherness. Quite the contrary.

In his book, Stephen Covey, describes that a person has 3 stages of personal development in life. The first stage is Dependence, where you need someone else to care for you. The second stage is Independence, where you can make it on your own. And the final stage is Interdependence where you understand that you and me together can achieve much more.

The first time I learned about interdependence, I had a hard time understanding the word. It took me some time to assimilate and figure out what this term really means. It was difficult as I had never seen it in real life, I had no baseline for comparison. It was a time of struggle for me, renouncing all that I have learned and seen ever since I was a kid until my early adulthood.

I was about to discover that a lot of people struggle as well with their second stage of development, as I did. Over those years I’ve developed an individualistic and egocentric attitude and mindset, all resulting in a low self-esteem. I don’t need to tell you that this did not bring me too much happiness or growth. Do not mistake my words, I am not at all trying to say that you should not put yourself first and care for yourself, you definitely should do that. Still, your wellbeing should not negatively impact the wellbeing of others, at least you should aim at minimizing that.

At some point in my journey, I figured out that life is like a puzzle. You have in your pocket some of the puzzle pieces, and you will meet in your journey the people which possess the other puzzle pieces. This happens until all the puzzle pieces are collected together. Once you realize that, the real work is starting, and the adventure begins. Revealing the whole image of your puzzle, requires you to let everyone bring their own puzzle piece to the table. It requires co-creation and bridging, as you embark on a new role, the role of the architect of your own puzzle. This sounds poetic, I know, but if you think about it, it is also true.

When it comes to organizations and how they tick, there is no difference. An organization is organic, an organism, it grows, it develops naturally, but only if you let it be. The organization gathers people in one place, which hold one or more puzzle pieces. As a leader you must bring all those pieces to the table. Once you’ve done that, you need to let people put them together. Your job is to encourage them and foster an environment of interdependence. The easiest way to do that, is to simply step out of their way and let them play the game.

In most organizations I worked for, I always found frictions between different units (name it, teams, departments …). It is easier to segregate an organization like that, as this gives everybody a sense of belongingness and control. What I failed for a long time to achieve, is to transfer one important message, that all people engaged in the organization are the product their organization delivers.

I saw quite often that only the people working on the frontline teams are considered to be the product. Generally this translated either to the engineering, marketing or sales teams. This couldn’t be more wrong. In order for an organization to achieve success, you can not rely only on seeing just parts of the whole. The product, same as a puzzle, needs all the pieces so that the picture can come to life. If one of the puzzle pieces is missing, you don’t have the picture, do you? Even though you may have an understanding of how the picture looks, you will always miss something.

In the industry there are the conversations around cross functional teams and autonomy. All nice, clear, crisp and easy. My experience showed me something completely different. Cross functional teams were in most cases understood to be cross functional team members. Pretty much describing a team of generalists, which in most cases failed keeping up with innovating, as one needs specialization and time for innovation to happen. For a team to be cross functional you need to ensure that all the disciplines needed for success are represented. That doesn’t mean that people should not overlap in duties and responsibilities, they should ensure redundancy, of course. Still, when you talk about success, you need to put quality in, and for that you need people to deepen their knowledge on a given discipline. I fell for this kind of thinking as well, when I started my agile coaching journey, cross functional team members were my corollary, I failed miserably, as this was an ideal way of thinking. Today I know better.

The second conversation is about autonomy, this is such a misunderstood concept. In most cases what people understood, was that they should not be “dependent” on others, in order to be able to deliver end to end. Actually what autonomy means is interdependence, together with others you achieve greatness. You can not isolate yourself in an organization, as you can not isolate yourself in life. For that to happen, you would need all the disciplines and functions available in the team. Whereas in organizations there are functions which can not replicate as fast, or makes sense to have them replicated. So, as a leader, you need to bridge, you need to understand what together means in your situation. Which are the other people or teams that you need to work with to get your shit done. This is a switch in the way we understand what working with others means. Some may say that what I’ve described is actually being dependent on others, and hence breaks the autonomy of a team. This is not false at all, but this approach creates a contract between the parties involved, a handover, and all this will result in friction. If you can change your perspective and see this as a chance to co-create, to work together, you will have no contract, as it doesn’t matter any longer who does what. There will be no handover, as everyone will be involved, so friction will be less.

I will share an example of a situation where one manager did not manage to bridge teams. One day a manager told the team I was part of that we as a team deliver services for the other teams. Which of course one could see it like that. What this manager failed to understand, though, was that if the team provides services, they also can reserve the right to decline servicing some of their “customers”. Providing a service comes as a result of creating a contract, and the people which are providing the service have a choice in that case. This way of thinking dehumanizes quite a bit, as people in that team did not feel appreciated at all.

As a leader you need to make sure that you represent and advocate the whole. That you bridge, foster collaboration and co-creation, if not, you risk optimizing locally and segregating even more. This will only lead to an even greater unbalance in the organization. In return this will create an even greater distance between the different units your organization has, which will increase friction. Your responsibility as a leader is to show everyone that only together greatness can be achieved. It doesn’t mean that you won’t be successful if you don’t do all this, if that was the case, many companies would have not survived by now. No, you will be, but there will be a cost, in time, energy and quality.

Personally, I always remind myself that in order for any of us to come to being, we need others to be. Nowadays we move towards centering on one self, rather than coming more together, as we should, this is quite against our nature. In order to ensure one’s well being, others need to take care of that. These people will need to invest their time, effort and energy for us. So think about it!

Leadership is hard as is, and building bridges is even harder because you need to break old habits and patterns. You need to heal your past trauma, and you need to work a lot on your self-esteem, to be capable of such things, but this is not impossible.

Everyone can call themselves a leader, but not everyone can lead.