How do you influence a team that seems stuck, unmotivated, and divided? Sometimes, the most powerful tools aren’t metrics or strategies—they’re dreams.
Let me share a story of how guided imagination turned a fractured team into a unified force of success.
The Story: Last month, I faced a challenge while mentoring a development group in a security company. This team, composed of excellent professionals, was struggling with motivation and team spirit. To complicate matters, they were divided across two locations due to varying security clearance levels. The lower-clearance team members were barred from entering high-security facilities, and those with high-clearance resisted working in the less secure office. The physical separation mirrored their emotional disconnection.
From the start, I believed that bringing them physically together would dramatically improve their dynamics. But the resistance to this idea was strong. Some team members outright rejected the notion, and tensions were high. I knew a conventional approach wouldn’t work.
During one retrospective, I decided to take a different route. I led them through a guided imagination session.
I began by asking everyone to close their eyes, take a deep breath, and imagine their ideal team. I guided them step by step, turning this into an introspective journey. They visualized what it would feel like to work in harmony, to support each other, and to achieve their goals as a united team. I anchored this vision deeply, asking them to internalize the experience.
When they opened their eyes, I asked them to describe what they saw and felt. To my surprise, these usually reserved individuals became remarkably expressive. They eagerly shared their visions and even drew representations of their imagined ideal team. The “working together” motif emerged as a dominant theme in every description.
The Turning Point: Fast forward one sprint. The team was preparing for a critical stabilization sprint ahead of a major product release. They faced daunting challenges, including complex and critical bugs. Before they began, I reminded them of their own ideal team representation. I tapped into the anchors we had set during the guided session, emphasizing the “working together” theme they had envisioned.
Then came the breakthrough: they proposed sitting together in a low-security-level open space, just for the duration of this sprint. What started as an unlikely idea became a two-week bug-hackathon. The result? Nothing short of remarkable.
The Outcome: At the retrospective following the sprint, the results were clear. The team had resolved complex bugs, delivered a successful release, and, most importantly, rediscovered the joy of working together. They broke through their own resistance and expressed a newfound willingness to continue collaborating closely.
The Lesson: This experience reinforced for me the transformative power of imagination. A single guided visualization shifted mindsets and redefined a team’s dynamics. It proved that when you anchor a dream in people’s minds, they can achieve incredible things.
Love your team, and remember: leave room for the Dream Fairy—perhaps with some Hanukkah donuts.
