Team Coherence Reflection
If a team is sensing emotional or relational drift, and they engage in shared reflection using a simple mapping structure, then patterns of coherence and tension tend to emerge, allowing more grounded and adaptive action to become possible.
Teams often sense that something is off, misaligned, or stuck, but struggle to name what it is without jumping to conclusions. Meetings can feel slightly off-rhythm, energy drifts, or efforts stall, yet there is no shared language for these subtle experiences. This pattern provides a way to make the invisible visible by inviting individual reflection and collective conversation using a shared visual artefact.
How to use this pattern
Team Coherence Reflection unfolds through the following moves:
Individual Reflection and Placement
Each team member reflects on the question: “Where do I feel I am in relation to our shared work?” They then place themselves on the Coherence Map using one of five zones:
Generative Tension
Chaotic Buzz
Draining Friction
Resigned Stuckness
Liminal Space
Collective Reflection and Discussion
The group steps back and observes the overall pattern. A facilitated discussion explores:
Where are we clustered or dispersed?
What does this distribution suggest about our current state?
What surprises us?
What’s it like to see ourselves mapped this way?
Identifying and Naming Tensions
From the conversation, the group begins to name specific tensions they see emerging. These should be expressed in plain, lived language that captures a felt contradiction, stretch, or strain. Good tension names often sound like:
"We're pulled between moving fast and including everyone"
"We keep revisiting this issue but nothing changes"
"Our values say one thing but our decisions show another"
These named tensions can then be written onto cards or sticky notes and placed into the Coherence Map zones where they feel most alive.
Affordances
Perceptible affordances include the named zones on the Coherence Map, which clearly suggest emotional or experiential placement.
Hidden affordances include the invitation to surface deeper tensions that might not be immediately visible in the team dynamic, which become apparent only through conversation.
False affordances might emerge if the map is treated as a maturity model or diagnostic tool, suggesting evaluation rather than exploration.
Stances
The Explorer: tunes into emotional energy and is curious about where dissonance or spark shows up in the map.
The Challenger: notices when something feels undiscussable and helps bring it to light, reframing discomfort as valuable signal.
The Learner: listens closely to shifts in tone and placement, helping the group extract insight from how the map evolves.
The Connector: spots links between individual placements and wider patterns, drawing relational threads across the zones.
The Skeptic: questions the map itself, probing whether people are placing themselves truthfully or performatively, and what that says about the environment.