Coherence – Not Just for Teams!

I’ve been writing about Coherence for a long time, without always using the word. A discussion this morning reminded me of the first time the concept was published – in a book on parenting I wrote about 22 years ago.  I was talking about marriage, but it might just as well have been about people who work together. This is what I said:

It is difficult to put into words that which philosophers and poets have always struggled with. Assessing your feelings and expectations can be done through nonverbal means, such as drawing and miming. For instance, one way to look at some different styles of marriage is to symbolize the couple as eggs.

Some couples are like hard-boiled eggs. They’re firm and well done, but they can’t get very close to each other. They may shatter each other’s shell, but even that just brings their outer beings (the white part) together. Their inner selves (the yolks) are isolated from each other. The hard-boiled-egg couples have what’s termed a ‘marriage of convenience.’ No risk; no intimacy.

Other couples are like soft-boiled eggs. One healthy confrontation and they’re a messy puddle, impossible to put back together for a bit more cooking. Very young couples, especially those who have been forced to marry because of untimely pregnancies, are often soft-boiled-egg couples. High-risk; intimacy only when the inner selves are shattered.

Then there are the scrambled eggs. They have even given up their uniqueness to create a single, homogenized entity. They may have a feeling of ‘us against the world,’ but it is a false feeling of security, since neither can function alone. If there are children, they, too, may be expected to become part of the omelet, submerging themselves in the family. Low-risk for the couple; high risk for their children; and a false sense of intimacy.

Successful couples are like fried eggs, sunny-side up. When they are cracked open against the side of the pan, they obligingly plop in, their outer selves attracted to each other, coming together to form a mutual environment for the two yolks. The yolks may move around in their white field, sometimes touching and sometimes moving apart, yet they always retain their individuality. They risk moving against each other with enough force to break one or both, but their mutual base tends to slow down any confrontation. Their intimacy has room for additional little eggs; children are no major threat, since there is space for them to develop as individuals too. Acceptable risk; high probability of intimacy; and personal growth for all.

Now I think I would be more blunt and just describe the hard-boiled as rigid and the soft-boiled and scrambled as diffuse.

This might explain why it bothers me when people confuse Coherence with cohering, especially when speaking about functional teams – the coherent human infrastructure that’s required for successful business.

Listen up!  It’s not about sticking together in one big glob of scrambled eggs.  It’s about being so fully mature and productive that you can bounce off people and not break, and that you can work with them without giving up who you are as a valuable, unique individual.  It’s about being part of the human infrastructure that actually accomplishes something!