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9,1 In The Same Boat 9,2 The Winner Team 9,3 The 5 Group KPIs
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Lesson 9,2 · Relations / Team Roles · Focus — The Winner Team

The Winner Team

A group is like a library. Everyone has their stories, everyone has their ambitions — and the journey toward a winning team is a walk in five steps, the same five steps the old pilgrims climbed on Sinai.

A group is like a library
Everyone has their stories. Everyone has their ambitions. Everyone is at their best when they show joy in a colleague’s success.

The Winner Team curve — the five phases a group climbs, from enthusiasm and crisis through chaos, clarity and acceptance to realism and a new self-image
The Winner Team curve. Five phases, and every one of them has to be walked.

Five steps to gold

  • Step 1 — clear goals, to achieve what we truly want.
  • Step 2 — good communication, in blue, red, and yellow language.
  • Step 3 — strong involvement in each other’s work and tasks.

“SGL is so original and different from other courses that it adds new skills, and shakes many managers out of solidified attitudes and ways of thinking.”

Ivar Ramberg · U&P Hydro

Read from the bottom up: find your own team in the Team Growth Matrix.

In the same boat

The world, and the way we live together, is changing fast. Yet the human being who lives in and depends on the world around us has stayed the same, from the beginning of time until today. That is a paradox — but also an opportunity, because it lets us learn from historical experience, insight, and wisdom about what it means to be human, born of a woman. Self-help and self-understanding become, in that light, a timeless project.

Deep inside, we are as we have always been. We have real, basic needs: to be wanted, loved, and chosen; to be accepted and valued. That is why old stories keep becoming modern videos, and ancient myths keep becoming contemporary art — on the surface they look very different, but deep inside they tell the same narrative. SGL, as a leadership tool, works to make the unconscious conscious and the conscious visible, so you can guide your own life toward what you actually want. In practice, that means getting to know your strengths, and acknowledging your shadow sides as you act out different roles on the chessboard.

The path to a realistic understanding of oneself is long — like a confession before absolution in many church traditions. It is a process. What is interesting is that the process is the same today as it has always been. In SGL, the five steps of confession are deliberately compared with the five phases of a group process moving toward new goals. So let us begin, as it is told in the book In the Same Boat — about group growth and personal development, held at the National Library of Norway.

A path to “catharsis”

From St Catherine’s Monastery to Sinai

On every continent, in many countries, there are mountain peaks people feel drawn to climb — some carrying a special power and attraction that makes them both famous and sacred. The most well known of them all is Mount Sinai in Egypt. There, Moses received the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments, written in a language only he could interpret, more than 1,200 years before our era — an event that has shaped Western culture ever since.

At the foot of the mountain lies St Catherine’s Monastery, dating back to around 550 CE. From there, a demanding pilgrimage path leads to the summit — following the five phases of repentance, level by level, in close dialogue with nature, toward the peak and the sunrise, after several hours of walking through the night.

I have walked this path myself, and I was astonished. This was pastoral care, psychology, self-development, and self-leadership in their most naked, authentic, and powerful form. The experience confirmed everything I had learned as a pastoral counsellor and Gestalt therapist — and it made SGL the leadership tool it is, for anyone who genuinely wants to achieve something. At its core, it is all about a journey: a walk and a process, in five steps.

A figure standing on a bare mountain summit at night under a green aurora, the ridges below still just visible against the sky
The top, reached in the dark. The walk up is the part this lesson is about.

The process

Any change on the outside always demands a corresponding change on the inside. It may lead to improvement, or it may make things worse — but the outer and the inner stay synchronised. That is why concepts like development, change, renewal, growth, and improvement (contritio) point to processes far more complex than they first appear.

In the bigger picture, nature follows its own laws (confessio), regardless of circumstance or intention. No psychologist, therapist, pastoral counsellor, or coach can guide a person or a team through a demanding phase of development using quick fixes or simple exercises that promise instant success.

The journey toward a winning team always requires growth (absolutio) — in the coach, and in the participants. Skills have to develop; emotions have to mature. That is true for each individual, and for the team as a whole. Below, the process is walked as you might recognise it in yourself, as an individual. In Secret 9,3, the very same process is examined from a group’s point of view.

Group growth and self-development — five coloured bands climbing from enthusiasm and crisis to realism and clarity, with the growth factors down the left and pseudo-development and defence as the two ways out on the right
Group growth and self-development, seen as one climbing curve.

Five phases

1

Enthusiasm / Crisis

Confirmation and identification

“As a leader and project manager, I want a lot. The group I am leading consists of many capable people, but I miss a shared passion. I feel empty, and long for change. I am looking for quick help and good advice.”

See yourself standing at the foot of a great mountain. Feel your longing, and your reasons for wanting to reach the summit. Try to understand that the driving force behind that longing may come from the gap between who you are and who you aspire to be. Are you willing to challenge yourself to get what you want? In the old pilgrimage traditions of Sinai, the path and the results were created as you walked.

2

Anxiety / Chaos / Contritio

Awareness of diversity and complexity

“I dare, and I want to. I begin the climb and come into contact with fear and curiosity. I realise I must change my thinking and behaviour to move forward. I feel critical and irritated. I am ambivalent about continuing.”

This critical phase is natural, and it demands an important decision — the release of negative emotions and reactions, which can include aggressive responses to guidance and leadership. Strong leaders keep going. Immature leaders quit the process. In the old Sinai tradition, this phase was described as being torn between remorse of the heart for the life we live, and fear of the consequences: contritio.

3

Lack of clarity / Confessio

Shown facts about the obvious

“The process is demanding. I am confronted with my self-image. I feel a need to clarify things to others. I must acknowledge and put words to my own ‘secrets.’ The masks fall.”

This phase is the turning point. Insight into your own motives and needs becomes conscious, the self-image adjusts, and a climate for new self-understanding opens up. In the old Sinai tradition, this stage required confession (confessio) — pilgrims passed through a narrow mountain crevice, the “eye of the needle,” into a deep valley holding a small oasis.

A small still lake in a high bowl of rock and grass, bare peaks standing around it and their reflection lying flat on the water
The deep valley with the small oasis in it — phase three, seen from outside.
4

Investigation / Love / Absolutio

Acceptance and hope

“I feel a strange sense of relief. I experience being accepted as I am. I am able to accept myself. I want to try new behaviour together with others.”

No experience is stronger than feeling wanted, valued, and accepted. Reaching it is your own mental process, but it has consequences for cohesion and interaction in the group you belong to — it becomes both a precondition and a foundation for everything that follows. In the old Sinai tradition, this phase was called absolutio: forgiveness for who you are, and for how you have been.

Several people sitting close together on the ground around a spread of food on open high ground, cups in hand and low hills behind them
Wanted, valued, accepted — phase four, and it does not look like much from outside.
5

Realism / Clarity / Sanctificatio

Reorganising, a new self-image

“Nothing feels impossible. Energy is released. I have changed my leadership values and my leadership behaviour. I now see my role as partner, father, and mother differently than before.”

This is the final stage — the reward for the mental and physical journey. You feel lighter, cleansed, reborn, renewed: as a leader and participant, player and coach, leadership developer and coach, specialist and entrepreneur, spouse and parent. In the old Sinai tradition, this was called sanctification (sanctificatio), close to what we today call personal development. But more about team values in Secret 9,3 — The 5 Group KPI’s.

Your turn

Homework 9,2 — An experiment

  • Think of a group you belong to — at work, or in your private life.
  • In your imagination, try to sense the current atmosphere in this group.
  • Then go to Secret 9,3 and compare your impression with the team processes described there, phase by phase.

Mark which of the five phases best describes it right now — this saves to your report, and nowhere else.

Where does your own group sit right now?

What do you notice? What do you think?

An open notebook and two sharpened pencils on a dark desk under the pool of light from a lamp, the page still blank
The exercise wants a pen and paper, not a keyboard.
SGL Secrets — For those who are in need, and those who want a lot!

Next lesson

Lesson 9,3: The 5 Group KPI’s

Continue to 9,3 →