
Trial by Fire: Extreme rituals forge intense social bonds - Thevet
http://aeon.co/magazine/society/how-extreme-rituals-bond-us-for-life/
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ryanmarsh
I use this knowledge to build hyper effective software teams.

In the military I learned just how much the cohesion of a group contributes to
its success. Two major factors of unit cohesion that I observed were pride in
the mission, and emotional bonds within the group. The two combined are almost
unstoppable. This is a little uncanny as I stopped from booking a flight to my
10 year deployment reunion just to share this thought with you.

Also, I was in Baghdad during an Ashura. It was a vivid sight to behold. The
whole neighborhood was definitely alive with a kind of electricity.

~~~
jasode
If it worked for your particular team, that's fine but I want to present a
different perspective on this: the developers I know despise that type of
teambulding activity. As a group, developers often lean more towards the
introverted rather than the extroverted and spending _more time_ with
coworkers outside of work is not something they hunger for. Therefore, going
to the manager's home for a backyard grillout to foster "social cohesion"
would be perceived as weird theatrical manipulation. Others have come to the
same conclusion[1]

For these types of no-nonsense developers, the kinds of activities that
_really_ build teams is simply the day-to-day work interactions. E.g. when
John checks in his source code or it's released into production servers, the
colleagues know it's high quality and their smartphones won't have a zillion
text messages about broken builds or devops alerts on Saturday night.

All the team outings at the bowling alley, paintball battles, etc of "social
cohesion" means nothing when a team member isn't pulling their weight and
causing everyone else to stress out.

[1][http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/9063...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/9063890/Team-
building-doesnt-improve-work.html)

~~~
debt
I don't think a "backyard grillout" builds social cohesion quite like a _war
in Iraq_ does. Put another way, I'm pretty sure the activity is what matters
most for building social cohesion.

It's not just about pulling your weight as much as it's also about helping
your coworkers pull their weight as well.

To put it more simply, _less competition and more cooperation builds social
cohesion._

~~~
jasode
>I don't think a "backyard grillout" builds social cohesion quite like a war
in Iraq does.

I used the "backyard grillout" example because the poster I responded to
mentioned it as a tool for unit cohesion in a later comment:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8342642](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8342642)

~~~
RangerScience
...to be fair, it was backyard grillout _and axe throwing lesson_. Remember
the last time someone got you to do something you didn't think you could do?
Or vice versa? Serious bonding moment, there.

~~~
ryanmarsh
Exactly. Nailed it. See my other comments.

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nine_k
I wonder how much is this causation vs selection.

If someone is willing to pass an extreme rite of passage (like trial by fire)
to be accepted, isn't (s)he already primed to form a stronger social bond,
compared to someone who would only be willing to pass through a simple, non-
straining ritual (like hand-shaking)? I suspect that most of the "hand-
shaking" crowd would simply shun an extreme ritual, instead of being
transformed by it.

~~~
Havoc
>If someone is willing to pass an extreme rite of passage

From experience I can tell you that these things tend to sneak up on you. You
don't sign up for one unit of "extreme rite of passage"...it just kinda
happens.

Just roll with the punches - absorb, learn, adapt...you'll emerge 10x
stronger. I certainly did.

~~~
RangerScience
You can aim for them, definitely. Mostly by aiming higher than you can reach.

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mrrrgn
I've played sports my entire life (father was a basketball coach), and in that
world these sorts of "rites of passage" are common place. I've also seen a bit
of this at software companies -- for instance at Facebook I got the feeling
that a lot of engineers felt simpatico as a result of the shared "suffering"
that went into the tedious interview process.

My experiences led me to believe that, while this can be effective, it only
works on certain classes of people. That is, I think a person needs a certain
amount of naïveté to be drawn in by schemes like this. They need to already be
willing to buy into some litany of conquest and glory. To be young and/or
dumb.

Perhaps it is an innate human tendency to form stronger bonds under these
conditions; but it's certainly not expressed equally throughout all phases of
life, circumstances, and the population at large. I'd be very wary of
attempting to exploit it by constructing rituals for a software team.

~~~
RangerScience
I think you're reacting to the fake-ness in catered/fabricated bonding
experiences. There's no way classic corporate training will match, say,
skydiving, or a survivalist weekend. There's a reason Burning Man is
considered a year's worth of relationship.

I want to say that the dividing line is whether or not the experience is as
likely to break bonds as it is to create them. I don't expect to burn a bridge
at a company retreat... but I would expect to burn some doing Survivor with my
team.

Basically, yeah, I agree with you that it takes naivete to be drawn into
/schemes/... but you can have these experiences without them being
machinations. Or, at least, machinations of the sort that "when friends use
you, it makes you stronger."

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Havoc
I don't know about "extreme rituals" but I did recently experience the power
of bonds forged in the (metaphorical) trenches. i.e. Among those in the
trenches a "Us vs Them" mentality takes hold. Us being the ones in the
trenches and "Them" being everyone else. So when a peer is in trouble then
people will do whatever it takes to help (since he/she is one of "us") but
when a general shows up the nobody is willing to go beyond the bare minimum
(since the general was not in the trenches and is not "one of us"). Might not
be ideal in terms of the overall picture but in terms of group dynamics I've
never seen anything even vaguely as powerfully as that "Us vs Them" loyalty.

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Loughla
I honestly thought this was old news, with the military and what-not.

Ignoring the physical fitness, isn't this the basic idea behind boot camps for
military service?

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ryanmarsh
Partly, but boot camp mostly serves as cultural indoctrination. I will add
that the camaraderie most people miss when they leave the service is from
losing the daily interaction with people whom relationships were formed
through adversity, even just the humdrum daily adversity of military life.
This is why all of my friends, even if we didn't serve together, are ex-
military. They just "get it".

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com2kid
I wonder what sort of implications this has for interview techniques. Could
the grueling day (or multi-day!) long interviews that tech companies are
famous for actually be a way to make those who pass value their job more?

~~~
HarryHirsch
You can bet that a lengthy interviewing process is a sales ploy, as are those
emails from HR saying "XY was very impressed by your interview performance".
Do you really think that HR has different canned emails for candidates, with
"very impressed" for some and just "impressed" for others?

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theatgrex
use this one weird trick to forge a bond among your peers and vanquish your
enemies

