No team can understand itself without looking at its shadow side.

What are you not doing, not seeing or are too afraid of looking at? I am still not great in looking at these shadows. Is my team only happily stomping ahead? Or is it moving forward at the right pace, reflecting on the legacy it leaves behind? It is as important for a team as it is for the society. Society has people who don’t have enough money, decided they don’t want to live by the rules set by majority or are sick, or disabled, or … How the society deals with these social problems, helps to feed back at what it should change. You will find similar problems in a technology team. What kind of a shadow is your team casting? I am learning to assess this in four areas: tech health, morale, connectedness and meeting the needs of the world. Specifically focusing on what does not work, where the pain is.

This idea originally came to me from the books of Gabor Maté. I just simplified his thinking about mental health down to team health, using the shadow analogy.