In the first half of the year, I have spent more time on helping leaders communicate internally and teams to work better together than on external communication.

This is a first after 17 years of consulting.

The challenges identified by those involved have focussed on three core themes (as grouped by me):

Resilience: a perceived lack of grit, determination and capability to take ownership and see things through when times get tough
Deficit of creativity: an unwillingness to try out new things, share ideas and make innovation an ongoing behaviour instead of an output
Short-termism: when analysing problems or seeking out solutions

These challenges have been seen in global businesses, in seemingly high-performing teams and in fast-growing scale-up firms.

To suggest that there is one solution would be simplification in the extreme. But each organisation or team I have spent time with will benefit from investing time in finding and nurturing those in their teams with strong prosocial skills.

The renowned behavioural psychologist Adam Grant has described prosocial skills as “the glue that transforms groups into teams”.

What this means is getting the best out of others, the group, as well as themselves rather than any one individual. In practice this includes seeing the world through the eyes of others, deep connection leading to effective communication and collaboration so that the sharing ideas means that they all learn together.

Teams with prosocial skills have a greater level of collective intelligence, they can bring out the best in one another and will have leaders who aim to make the entire room smarter, instead of trying to be the smartest in the room.

These teams are also happier and more resilient.

This doesn’t mean that at every moment they are smiling, joking and relaxed. At times there may be real tension. There will also be contentment because the prosocial heroes are gluing the team together, making sure that the team can critique each other helping them to collaborate even better in the future.

If you are navigating four generations in the workplace, the uncertainty of an AI dominated world and a vast range of other internal and external factors that undermine the effectiveness of your team, then I recommend you seek out new ways of working that will promote prosocial skills and those who lead with them.