My Journey into Connection: Discovering the Power of Groups

From lonely hyper-independence to the energy of co-creation

I’ve had a slow epiphany over the past couple of decades. That’s likely an oxymoron but that’s what my experience has felt like, due to the extremes of where I started versus where I have ended up. The crux of it is this: I’ve realized over years of working in organization development, practicing my art, and doing lots of healing and self-work that the most powerful tool we have in our lives is (small) groups.

My Journey

Like many in my generation (for reference, I was born in ‘84), I was both a smart, high-achieving kid and an anxious wreck of a kid. I didn’t have much trouble getting good grades, which for some reason felt like the most important thing. I put minimal effort into school but was often the teacher’s pet. I also struggled nearly every day with feelings of terror and panic (which I didn’t know what they were until I was in my early 20s). The panic ebbed and flowed, and I found that it lessened when I was really busy, so I kept busy. Once I got to high school, I played violin and guitar, played in school symphonies and talent shows, joined the swim team, and had after-school jobs as a library aide and a writer for a (very weird) internet start-up. I continued to get straight As and worked my ass off in AP classes.

Socially, I had friends and had a good reputation at school because I was nice and because I did a lot of visible things. I was somewhat known for being connected in some way to various cliques at the school (my high school was huge and diverse), but not a solid member of any one of them. But I didn’t have too many close friends because I didn’t know how to connect with people. I was awkward and scared, and hid it with smiles and pleasantness. Which, you know, works pretty well for not rocking any boats, and also for keeping people at a safe distance.

Undergraduate was very much the same — I pursued a double major, was concertmaster of the school symphony, and always had jobs amidst my insane credit load of courses. By this time I was more excited about school because I was learning practical things, but I was also crippled when I got anything less than an A. And yes, my parents wanted me to do well and praised me when I did, but they never got on my case for any grade. Frankly, I don’t even know if they knew what my grades were in college, so the pressure was mostly self-inflicted. Again, I had friends but mostly focused my energy on my… I suppose you could say serially-monogamous set of partners throughout the 4 years. But even those were based primarily on me being as accomodating and easygoing as I could — not based on true connection.

My anxiety remained and ebbed and flowed in and out of my life as anxiety tends to do. But it was most extreme when I was in groups — when I had to do a group project, go to a party, or just generally be social and potentially face any kind of discord with other people. I despised group projects. I would recoil in my chair every time one was assigned. So I settled into a comfortable people-pleaser role within most of them, assuming we were still positioned to get a good grade.

This finally started changing after I finished my degrees when two things happened: I developed professional relationships that were unlike any relationship I had ever had, and I had my first positive experience working on a team. Right out of college, I had a boss who pushed me in the most compassionate ways and challenged my isolation tendencies with understanding. Thanks to him, just years into my career I was managing a team of 12 and working on a variety of really exciting things — online advocacy, grassroots organizing, communications, and company culture. It didn’t take me long to realize that it was really important to me to create a good environment for them (many of whom, because of the cross-functional nature of the team, were older and more experienced than I was). These were folks who were doing incredible, values-oriented work in their careers and were not afraid to express what they wanted and needed. I started out being accommodating and shy as a manager. But after a bit of time, I realized that these people were important to me personally. In some ways that was scary and felt “wrong” — I had definitely been told by a leader at that same company that it was best to keep your team at a distance. The “it’s not personal, it’s business” kind of mentality was still pretty common. But it felt true to me — there was no world in which I could see these people as just cogs in some capitalistic machine, especially because we were in the business of trying to make the world a better place.

What followed quickly was the realization that in order for them to feel their best in their work, they had to open up to me and to each other. And that meant (you can probably see what’s coming) that I had to open up to them, too. I learned through experience that it’s important for teams to be friendly with each other, to learn to push each other, and to gather at regular intervals to talk about how to be a better team. No one taught me this, it just revealed itself very clearly, and was later validated as backed by research.

Subsequently, I took a year to do a term with Americorps as a Team Leader for an Environmental Education group, thinking it was a way to channel my passion for direct service and environmental issues. It ended up being primarily a way for me to grow more confident in my ability to be with others. I managed a team of about a dozen there as well, mostly helping them with the logistics of their service, and helping them connect with each other to grow their potential and careers. These folks had much different backgrounds than my previous team, and they taught me how to be vulnerable in whole new ways. There was also some conflict on this team, and I had to put my communication skills (and ability to sit with discomfort) to the test.

Throughout this time, I was also (uncomfortably) engaged in another completely different kind of group work: playing music. Once again, I preferred to create music alone, but recognized the limitations of that very early on. I played in multiple bands (including one where I was the primary songwriter and lead singer), string trios and quartets, and even community singing groups. This process was also a gradual unraveling of my self-consciousness, discomfort, and projected criticism to eventually feel more at home with the group than I did alone. More on this in a future article.

Even as I write this I think, “Wow, I sound like someone who is really into people.” However, I look back on these times and realize that while I was learning (slowly) to be with others, I was still incredibly self-conscious and anxious, very conflict-averse, and just wanted to go home and hang out with my cats every day. Being with people was exhausting. Some people would say that’s because I’m introverted. But I think it’s much more than that.

The way I view all of this now is through a lens of understanding that because of my achievement-oriented childhood, my anxiety, and societal messages in general, I became hyper-independent as an adaptation. Even as I began to understand how to be a good friend, colleague, and partner, I was not very good. It was always about how much I was achieving personally, how comfortable I was, and how much alone time I had at the end of the day.

This was not easy to unravel. Therapy played the most major part in the transformation but I also believe I made choices in my work life that pushed me and clarified my values, which slowly allowed me to feel safer and more able to be who I was, rather than just protect myself.

So. I’m not going to take the time to detail what that healing journey looked like because that’s not the point (but if you’re curious, reach out — I’m always happy to talk about it, or I can address it in a future article). Fast forward about a decade and I am now most satisfied and feel the most valuable when I am a part of a group. A small group — ideally just three or four others, but up to six others is still great. This applies to my work, personal, and musical lives.

The Potential

Once I understood this about myself, it became a more intense field of study in my work. Group dynamics is a core field in my profession, and it’s rich and diverse but sometimes misses the mark of what real people experience by being too academic or too focused on achievement and productivity. The core of what I now believe is that we are societally so focused on the individual that we (inadvertently or not) assume particular roles based on what we think is going to serve us best personally. In all of these previous situations, I was either leading the team and focused on serving the needs of the group (above my own), or I involuntarily took the role of people-pleaser and considered my job to be harmonizing the group in whatever way possible. Of course, this was more about my comfort than any real need the group had, but I didn’t recognize that at the time.

In the past decade, I’ve learned so much about teams that I now have a massive toolkit that helps me know how to be in groups, and I’ve had incredible experiences working on really hard things with a small group and finding the possibilities so much more powerful than they would have been on my own. But I also recognize that most of us are not taught this skill. Yes, we are encouraged in workplaces to collaborate. But that is alongside individual reward systems that reinforce heroism over teamwork. And society tells us we should have friends and communities, but it also tells us that we have to be our best selves and not rely on anyone else. It’s confusing, and the foundations of what it means to be with other people and create things together are just not covered.

There is so much more to say about the depth of understanding I've gained and the potential for further exploration into this nuanced topic. So, this will be a series. In the next installment, I'll delve deeper into why and how our society, our companies, and our communities have become so focused on the individual, and why this is an antipattern. Then I’ll dig into the research and theory behind group dynamics, uncovering insights that have shaped my approach to collaboration. Future articles will also feature examples of outlier groups that have done extraordinary things (and why we don’t have to strive for that), practical tips for navigating group settings, and discussions on the implications of embracing a more group-oriented mindset for individual satisfaction, healthier communities, and a more just world. I’m more energized by this topic than I have been by any one topic in a while, so I hope you’ll join me and help uncover all the potential in the groups we’re all a part of.

I’d love to hear your stories of group work, and/or any ideas or requests you have for topics to dig into in future installments! Thanks for being here.