Could Religious Rituals Teach Your Team How To Get In Sync?
Team rituals are nothing new. The “ unity breakdown” that sports teams use, for example, has team members interlocking arms in a huddle while swaying and chanting in response to questions posed by their leader. As David DeSteno, professor of psychology at Northeastern University, notes, in his book How God Works: The Science Behind the Benefits of Religion, these types of synchronizing actions appear in many religions — from the chanting of Buddhists and Hindus to the kneeling of Christians and Muslims to the swaying of Jews during prayer. The benefits are to unite and connect us. So why don’t we have more of these practices in our offices as we try to create high-performing teams?
Synchrony Improves Teamwork
In a recent article in Wired, adapted from his book, DeSteno describes an experiment where strangers were paired up across a table wearing headphones and asked to tap a sensor each time they heard a tone. When the tone was given to the pair at the same time (so they would tap the sensor at the same time), they developed a degree of synchrony, the connection between individuals that is rooted in simultaneous actions (like walking together in step). The control pair received tones at different times, so they did not sync up with their partners. Those who developed synchrony reported “feeling more…
