What can happen when a high-performing team discovers its own blind spots...
and learns to address them before they become hot spots?
and learns to address them before they become hot spots?
This account describes an initial pilot engagement with the HR leadership team of a major regional logistics company operating across Sub-Saharan Africa.
Details have been anonymised. The engagement is ongoing; client name withheld pending permission to publicise.
Details have been anonymised. The engagement is ongoing; client name withheld pending permission to publicise.
A high performing team... and a question
The Head of Human Resources was not looking for help with a problem. He was looking for something more unusual: an honest look at whether a team that was already functioning well was also functioning as well as it could.
The team — nine HR professionals managing a complex regional portfolio across Sub-Saharan Africa — rated 8 out of 10 on his own assessment of their coherence and performance. Engagement was high, as measured by objective assessments. Relationships were strong. The leader described his team as mature, direct, confident, and genuinely committed.
What prompted him to reach out was not dysfunction but awareness. Their team was subject to constant time and delivery pressure from multiple directions: global deadlines, cross-functional demands, a recently announced transformative shift in business priorities necessitating workforce restructure, and stakeholder expectations that the high-credibility HR function would participate in everything. He sensed, without yet being able to name it precisely, that something in the system might not be sustainable.
It was a forward-thinking question. Not 'what's broken?' but 'what might eventually break, and what would it take to see it before it does?'
What prompted him to reach out was not dysfunction but awareness. Their team was subject to constant time and delivery pressure from multiple directions: global deadlines, cross-functional demands, a recently announced transformative shift in business priorities necessitating workforce restructure, and stakeholder expectations that the high-credibility HR function would participate in everything. He sensed, without yet being able to name it precisely, that something in the system might not be sustainable.
It was a forward-thinking question. Not 'what's broken?' but 'what might eventually break, and what would it take to see it before it does?'
The question was not “what’s wrong?” but “what might we not yet be able to see about ourselves?”
That is a harder question to ask – and a more valuable one to answer.
What coherence actually means
The Coherence Practice is predicated on the insight that coherence – decentralised autonomy within relational structures, and the capacity of a living system to ‘see itself’ clearly and learn to remain integrous to itself, its components and its purpose, while continuously adapting to reality and leveraging internal differences for best outcomes – is a key determinant of team functioning in a world where change and uncertainty are the new constants.
In the framework underlying this practice, coherence is not the same as harmony, alignment, cohesiveness or high performance. It is something more comprehensive and more specific: the condition in which a team's formal structure, relational architecture, and collective field are operating in alignment with each other — and with the team's stated purpose.
The Architecture of Coherence identifies four distinct layers in any living team system:
In the framework underlying this practice, coherence is not the same as harmony, alignment, cohesiveness or high performance. It is something more comprehensive and more specific: the condition in which a team's formal structure, relational architecture, and collective field are operating in alignment with each other — and with the team's stated purpose.
The Architecture of Coherence identifies four distinct layers in any living team system:
Layer 4 — Expression Layer 2 (the visible landscape of coherence):
The formal, visible conditions: structures, processes, policies, metrics, and documented operating norms. Where most conventional OD work begins and ends.
Layer 3 — Expression Layer 1 (the team's invisible coherence template):
The lived, embodied patterns of the team. Observable behaviours, interactions, and experiential qualities that manifest from the deeper layers. Measurable through both qualitative and quantitative methods.
Layer 2 — Dynamic ‘Structural’ Truth:
The generative substrate that translates essence into collective motion. The Coherence Triad (Purpose, Rhythm, Trust) operates here — not as three separate factors but as the regulators that orchestrate all other dimensions into a functioning whole.
Layer 1 — Essence/Resonance Field:
The foundational field from which all collective action flows. The quality of aliveness, safety, and relational attunement that exists beneath and beyond any formal structure. This layer can only be sensed.
The formal, visible conditions: structures, processes, policies, metrics, and documented operating norms. Where most conventional OD work begins and ends.
Layer 3 — Expression Layer 1 (the team's invisible coherence template):
The lived, embodied patterns of the team. Observable behaviours, interactions, and experiential qualities that manifest from the deeper layers. Measurable through both qualitative and quantitative methods.
Layer 2 — Dynamic ‘Structural’ Truth:
The generative substrate that translates essence into collective motion. The Coherence Triad (Purpose, Rhythm, Trust) operates here — not as three separate factors but as the regulators that orchestrate all other dimensions into a functioning whole.
Layer 1 — Essence/Resonance Field:
The foundational field from which all collective action flows. The quality of aliveness, safety, and relational attunement that exists beneath and beyond any formal structure. This layer can only be sensed.
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A further concept central to the practice is the Coherence Triad. Not a list of qualities to optimise, the Triad instead names the three core sources of coherence fracture that cut across all layers: Purpose (the shared directional 'why'), Rhythm (the pacing and synchrony of collective work), and Trust (the safety and structural confidence that makes honest engagement possible). |
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Coherence is not the same as high performance. A team can perform heroically while its coherence is quietly fracturing. The fracture only becomes visible when the heroism runs out
The Coherence Blueprint: what the instrument does
Before any facilitated session, each team member completes the Coherence Blueprint — a diagnostic instrument designed to surface the team's coherence profile across nine dimensions, grouped in four clusters.
The nine dimensions of the coherence blueprint, simplistically speaking:
- Foundational cluster (relational safety & confidence): Psychological Safety — shared belief in interpersonal safety for candour and risk-taking. Relational Trust — confidence in others' competence, reliability, integrity, and good faith.
[Structural Trust — a concept that extends rather than replaces Edmondson's psychological safety — refers to the degree to which the team's operating system itself makes it safe to name dysfunction. Psychological safety may be present, but fragile: it holds until pressure arrives; Structural Trust is what sustains it.]
- Directional cluster (purpose, understanding & clarity): Shared Goals & Purpose — collective understanding of what the team is trying to achieve and why. Shared Mental Models — compatible frameworks for how work produces outcomes, decisions are made, and problems are solved. Role Clarity & Integration — clear understanding of who does what, who decides what, and how accountability flows
- Operational cluster (rhythm, coordination & execution): Temporal Coordination & Rhythm — synchronised patterns of attention, energy, and action; the team's natural pulse. Behavioural Integration — actual coordination of actions, mutual adjustment, and collaborative execution in real time.
- Relational cluster (information flow & connection): Communication Quality — timely, accurate, transparent, reciprocal, and integrated information flow.
- Cross-layer dimension: Energetic Coherence — the quality of aliveness, vitality, synchronisation, and nervous system coherence that arises when teams are functioning coherently. Bidirectionally related to all other dimensions
For the pilot engagement described here, a condensed six-dimension version of the instrument was used — organised around the six most diagnostically accessible signal clusters — reflecting the pilot nature of the engagement.
The instrument is not a survey in the conventional sense. Its scores indicate how incoherence manifests, and where coherence signals are weaker or dispersed — signposts pointing toward deeper fractures. Its function is not to produce a verdict but to generate a structured conversation: a set of tensions and patterns the team can engage with together, rather than having conclusions delivered to them from outside.
The instrument is not a survey in the conventional sense. Its scores indicate how incoherence manifests, and where coherence signals are weaker or dispersed — signposts pointing toward deeper fractures. Its function is not to produce a verdict but to generate a structured conversation: a set of tensions and patterns the team can engage with together, rather than having conclusions delivered to them from outside.
The instrument does not tell a team what is wrong. It creates visibility: the conditions in which the team can see together what it cannot see separately — and then decide what to do about it
The Coherence Lab: how the work unfolds
The Coherence Lab is a facilitated session in which the team engages directly with its own coherence data. In format it is compact — in this case, 90 minutes, which overran to 110 — but in intention it is something closer to a structured inquiry than a workshop.
The session moved through seven stages: an opening settle-and-coregulate phase; presentation of coherence signal data from the pre-Lab survey; silent grouping of the team's self-reported tensions into patterns; sensemaking using the Coherence Triad; a 20-minute micropractice in purpose repair; action design around a specific micro-experiment to be carried forward; and a brief close.
The design philosophy is worth naming explicitly: the Lab's agenda is determined by the team's own input at each stage, not by the facilitator's predetermined diagnosis. The insights and outcomes belong to the team. The facilitator holds the container, tracks what the group cannot track about itself, and intervenes in service of the team's capacity to see — not to see for them.
In practice, the team engaged with striking openness. Discussion was candid and energetic. Every member participated. Tensions that had not previously been named were made visible and given language. The session overran because the conversation had genuine substance — a limitation of the time design, and a signal of unmet appetite for this kind of structured reflection.
The session moved through seven stages: an opening settle-and-coregulate phase; presentation of coherence signal data from the pre-Lab survey; silent grouping of the team's self-reported tensions into patterns; sensemaking using the Coherence Triad; a 20-minute micropractice in purpose repair; action design around a specific micro-experiment to be carried forward; and a brief close.
The design philosophy is worth naming explicitly: the Lab's agenda is determined by the team's own input at each stage, not by the facilitator's predetermined diagnosis. The insights and outcomes belong to the team. The facilitator holds the container, tracks what the group cannot track about itself, and intervenes in service of the team's capacity to see — not to see for them.
In practice, the team engaged with striking openness. Discussion was candid and energetic. Every member participated. Tensions that had not previously been named were made visible and given language. The session overran because the conversation had genuine substance — a limitation of the time design, and a signal of unmet appetite for this kind of structured reflection.
Coherence cannot be installed. It can only be cultivated – by a team that has developed the capacity to see itself honestly and act on what it sees
What emerged - and what it suggests
The pre-Lab survey confirmed what the leader had sensed: all scores sat in the top half of the range, with generally strong relational and energetic coherence. The most notable variation appeared in behavioural alignment, where individual, ‘lived’ experiences diverged noticeably.
The team's self-reported top tensions clustered overwhelmingly around a single theme: workload and conflicting priorities (12 of the available ‘importance’ votes, versus 6 for the next theme). This was not a complaint about relationships or trust — it was a systemic observation about the mismatch between demand and capacity, compounded by reactive prioritisation and insufficient shared clarity about what the team was fundamentally there to do.
But the insight that surprised everyone emerged when the team applied the Coherence Triad to their top-voted tension theme: the diagnosis was unambiguous: 7 votes for PURPOSE fracture (misalignment in how we matter and why), 3 for RHYTHM fracture (overwhelm in how we move), 0 for TRUST fracture. Despite the apparent surface manifestation of behavioural and pace misalignment, the primary fracture was purposive — not relational.
The team's conclusion, reached through their own sensemaking rather than the facilitator's interpretation, was a need for greater strategic and prioritisation clarity, expressed as a precise team purpose, and small actions toward improved capacity evaluation when prioritising, planning and committing.
Two observations from the facilitator's perspective deserve mention, because they were not raised in the Lab itself. The first is systemic: over a period of 9 years in which the team had repaired and enhanced its once broken credibility within the organisation, that very credibility had generated ever-increasing stakeholder demand for their participation in organisational life — a classic 'limits to success' archetype in which accumulated competence drives the system toward its own capacity ceiling. Without active boundary management, explicit capacity governance or evolution of its stated purpose, its trajectory was pointing toward Zone 4 on the Performance / Coherence Grid: a state of heroic performance, fragile coherence, and burnout risk.
The second is structural: the team's existing prioritisation and planning processes rely strongly yet — because of high psychological and relational safety — imperceptibly on the team leader as the central point of reference and direction. This is not a relational failure: the leader is strong, effective and trusted. But as a structural design, this habitual pattern inhibited autonomous, distributed decision-making. The absence of a clear successor is one indicator of this pattern. This warrants attention as the team grows in scope and centrality.
The team's self-reported top tensions clustered overwhelmingly around a single theme: workload and conflicting priorities (12 of the available ‘importance’ votes, versus 6 for the next theme). This was not a complaint about relationships or trust — it was a systemic observation about the mismatch between demand and capacity, compounded by reactive prioritisation and insufficient shared clarity about what the team was fundamentally there to do.
But the insight that surprised everyone emerged when the team applied the Coherence Triad to their top-voted tension theme: the diagnosis was unambiguous: 7 votes for PURPOSE fracture (misalignment in how we matter and why), 3 for RHYTHM fracture (overwhelm in how we move), 0 for TRUST fracture. Despite the apparent surface manifestation of behavioural and pace misalignment, the primary fracture was purposive — not relational.
The team's conclusion, reached through their own sensemaking rather than the facilitator's interpretation, was a need for greater strategic and prioritisation clarity, expressed as a precise team purpose, and small actions toward improved capacity evaluation when prioritising, planning and committing.
Two observations from the facilitator's perspective deserve mention, because they were not raised in the Lab itself. The first is systemic: over a period of 9 years in which the team had repaired and enhanced its once broken credibility within the organisation, that very credibility had generated ever-increasing stakeholder demand for their participation in organisational life — a classic 'limits to success' archetype in which accumulated competence drives the system toward its own capacity ceiling. Without active boundary management, explicit capacity governance or evolution of its stated purpose, its trajectory was pointing toward Zone 4 on the Performance / Coherence Grid: a state of heroic performance, fragile coherence, and burnout risk.
The second is structural: the team's existing prioritisation and planning processes rely strongly yet — because of high psychological and relational safety — imperceptibly on the team leader as the central point of reference and direction. This is not a relational failure: the leader is strong, effective and trusted. But as a structural design, this habitual pattern inhibited autonomous, distributed decision-making. The absence of a clear successor is one indicator of this pattern. This warrants attention as the team grows in scope and centrality.
Where to next?
The Lab revealed a desire for deeper insight into the concepts surrounding team coherence, and a need for greater team self-reflection. The critical objective was met: to prove the process, and the value of insights raised by both the pre-Lab survey and the Lab itself was decidedly clear. While time limits prevented the team from deeper exploration of simple but effective micro-practices that could be implemented to support continual coherence improvements, the team is digesting its new awareness; preparing to craft what’s needed to repair the fractures, is their next step.