Team Rituals and Symbols

I’m studying The Power of Team Culture on Coursera. These are my revision notes for week 4.

Burning the American Flag

• How do teams tap into emotions? Symbols and rituals!
• For example at U Penn: Carolyn Marvin (associate professor at U) burned a flag
  • This was a previously illegal activity
  • Intended to allow the students to fully appreciate the meaning of free speech.
  • Background:
    • Pledge of allegiance recited every morning in American schools: “I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America…”
    • Burning the flag seems to go against the pledge
  • Student tried to take the flag away from Marvin, because the student felt it was was unconscionable.
  • One student: “I was infuriated”
  • Calls for lecturerer to be fired
  • Penn State Congress voted to condemn the lecturer nearly unanimously
• It flag is a symbol and emblem of American culture, of “We the people”
• It has the ability of the flag to stir powerful feelings

Team Mascots

• 6 marines raising the American flag at Iwo Jima – very serious stuff!
• Mascots: emblems of a team, for the team. A light side to things
• Lighter side: team mascots
• Examples:
  • e.g. Panther mascot (American football team)
  • e.g. Knight
• Army versus Navy football
  • Army: mule mascot
  • Navy: goat mascot
  • In 1991, navy personnel stole the Army’s mule mascot
  • Helicopters and federal marshals were called
  • Army commander claimed control, and sent the marshalls away

The Concept of the Symbol

• Symbol: a something that stands for something else (something can be an object, a behaviour, a word, an idea, etc)
• We access object or meaning through symbols (we don’t have direct access to objects or meaning)
• Symbols are not just about understanding the world, they are also about getting people to respond to them in particular ways.
  • e.g. the radiation symbol makes you take precautions
• Two types of symbols:
  • Referential symbol: stands for something known to consciousness (e.g. “cat”)
  • Condensation symbol: evokes affect or feeling, without any necessary awareness or consciousness of why. A mascot may get us excited, but we don’t necessarily know why or how. These are particularly important to team culture

Transference of Affective Quality

• Symbols have dual aspects
  • they represent the group
  • the also call up feelings about it
• Dominant symbols do those two things at once
• Transference of affective quality: the summoning of emotions in order to transfer those emotions on to an idea of the group
• Transference occurs during the deployment of the symbols
• Example of a dominant symbol:
  • Ndembu hornpod tree
  • Exudes a milky sap when the bark is cut
  • This can be associated with breastfeeding
  • Which can call up positive feelings of connectedness
  • Symbols is deployed when girls are married, and moving away from their parents
• All domininant symbols have 2 poles:
  • Sensory pole (feelings, emotions)
  • Ideological pole (norms, values, etc)
• American flag is another example of a dominant symbol

The Motivational Video

• Rituals are just very complex symbols
• Harley Davidson motivational video
• For a certain segment of americans, it called up very positive feelings (though not all americans)
• People from other cultural backgrounds, it actually produced a negative response
  • e.g. Japanese woman who feared that the people in the video might be racist.
• Video was made during a period of major internal strife. It was made to call up positive feelings for the company

People as Symbols

• Can people become condensation symbols?
• Historical figure: e.g. George Washington
• Washington: dominant symbol?
  • Often called the father of the country
  • Regarded as a strong, guiding presence during uncertain and scary times
  • He guided the fledgeling republic during the early days
  • He took on assocations, especially over time
• Other examples of dominant symbols:
  • Mahatma Ghandi in India
  • Mao Tse Tung in China
  • Steve Jobs in Apple
• Power of culture radiating from a visionary individual
• Even a team leader can be a condensation symbol for a team

The Pragmatics of Motivational Speech

• Meaning of words:
  • overt (semantic) meaning
  • covert (pragmatic) meaning
• e.g. Enron code of ethics
  • overt: honesty
  • covert: criminal fraud
• Words can function as condensation symbols
• Aragorn’s speech to his men (“but it is not this day”)
  • Like poetry
  • Two parts (parallel) plus a coda
  • Rising intonation
  • Transformation into coda
  • All help in calling up emotions
• Knute Rockne’s speech
  • We’re going to run inside ’em, and outside ’em, …

Symbolic Meaning of Stories

• Stories that are told within teams are often examples of condensation symbols
• Story from a company:
  • Company had annual holiday party
  • New employee at party
  • Waiter walked past carrying plate of sushi, and he picked a piece off
  • Security took employee arrived and took him outside, and explained that the sushi was only available for the CEO
  • Story would put an edge of fear to new starters
• Better be careful: what are the do’s and don’t of this company?
• Story acts as a dominant symbol in this respect

Instrumental Symbols: The Gavel

• Not all symbols are dominant
• Instrumental symbols are ones used to accomplish a specific goal.
• Rapping the gavel has the purpose of indicating that a bid is closed
• Or that proceedings are opened or concluded
• The gavel is instrumental: it is doing something specific
• However, there is more…
• The gavel has become a symbol for authority in various contexts
• Example of story of Greg using a gavel to control a meeting better
• Effective instrumental symbol as part of the ritual part of the faculty meeting

Individual and Collective Rituals

• Rafael Nadal’s superstitious rituals
  • 2 water bottles
  • This is symbolic rituals for Nadal
• Businesses as teams develop various invented rituals
• These don’t always seem like rituals
• Walmart cheer.
  • Call and response pattern
  • Owner got idea from Korean manufacturer
• Nadal’s and Walmart’s rituals are both condensation symbols

Types of Rituals in Business

• Every business has its rituals
• Many of these rituals are just seen as “doing business”
• American “right to fire” versus Japanese “teamwork”
• Redundancies (firings) – it’s amazing how fast news of a round of redundancies spreads
• Firing is designed to help motivate the (remaining) team to achieve their goals (fear as a motivator)

Initiation, Enhancement, and Group Worship

• Initiation rite (on-boarding)
  • introduce new employees to the team culture that they will need to acquire to function as part of the team
  • act as a condensation symbol to get the initiates to feel that they have crossed a threshold, become a new person and a team member
• Awards ceremony
  • individuals or teams get recognised for their achievements
  • has effect on other members of the group
• Annual holiday party
  • the group worships itself
  • related to totemic rites
  • collective effervescence
  • good feelings get called up, and transferred to the group