This week I have described some exercises to help a team recognise some of the different and opposite forces that are at work within the team. 

Once team members have this insight they can then take appropriate action to harness the creative force of difference.  That is, they can pay attention to views that they would be normally be inclined to dismiss, and then seek "transcendent" solutions that take all the different views into account.

Finding these transcendent solutions makes significant demands of a team: they have to be creative, prepared to engage in that old cliche of 'thinking outside the box'.  In fact, the presence of difference within a team is often what pushes the team's thinking outside the box, because they may not be able to accommodate opposite views using ideas that are limited to their existing sphere of experience.  Team members also have to be patient in their search for quality solutions to problems.

Oppositeness and difference are such potent and valuable forces that I will return to them many times in the coming weeks and months as I discuss both theoretical approaches and practical exercises for improving team performance.