In this Wisdom for Humanity monologue, Patrick Mosher reflects on a conversation with his consulting‑career daughter about the difficulty of fostering cohesion in fully virtual consulting teams after the pandemic eliminated in‑person rituals such as team dinners, kickoff events, and hallway encouragement. Mosher frames the problem through a scientific lens, drawing on his chemical‑engineering background. He defines cohesion using Webster’s and chemistry definitions, then uses the water molecule (H₂O) as an analogy: the molecule’s partial positive and negative charges create a balanced attraction that allows water to exhibit strong cohesion. He extrapolates this to teams, arguing that diversity provides the “positive and negative charges” that generate the attractive force needed for cohesion. Mosher advises leaders to discover each member’s passions, weave these diverse strengths into a unified tapestry, and reinforce the metaphor with tangible symbols like branded water bottles, encouraging teams to drink water together as a daily reminder of their shared, charged diversity. The talk blends personal anecdote, scientific explanation, and practical recommendations to address virtual team cohesion.
Chapters
Welcome to Wisdom for Humanity, where one way to acquire wisdom is through knowledge. On our holiday call with my oldest daughter, our conversations drifted to the challenges she faces in her consulting job. She works with people all over the country, in fact all over the world, and she's quite familiar with consulting lifestyle I had for over 30 years— travel. Imagine you and your team traveling every week to deliver strategic solutions to your clients. Clients' confidence was bolstered by seeing the team on site. Somehow, somewhere, they knew that personal sacrifices were being made on their behalf. Travel showed commitment. And that all changed with the pandemic. As much as my daughter loves staying at home, the pandemic creates a huge challenge for her and her team. Cohesion. How do you generate cohesion when you lead a virtual team? No team dinners, no project kickoff, no milestone celebration parties, no walking down the hall to give an encouraging word to a team member whom you know is struggling, no commiserating about awful flights and bad rental cars. People struggle alone in their home locations. Feeling isolated. When my daughter shared this challenge with me, I thought to myself, I'm a world expert on organization structures, decision-making, and teams. How will I respond to this challenge? Well, I love explaining terms like this from a scientific perspective. I call it A to B mechanics. So let's talk about cohesion. As leaders, we strive for cohesion. We take particular actions to build cohesion on our teams, our project, and our organizations. We even strive for it in our communities, our neighborhoods, our charitable organizations, even our families. Cohesion brings us together. Cohesion's the glue. It helps us stick together as we face challenges. It helps teams achieve their big goals. So what's inside this sticky unifying thing we call cohesion? Well, Webster's Dictionary gives us a scientific definition of cohesion as the molecular attraction by which particles of a body are unified throughout the mass. Attractions, particles, unification. That all sounds right. So people are unified throughout the team, project, organization, community, neighborhood and family. So all good so far, but here comes the science lesson. As you may know, I have my bachelor's degree in chemical engineering. We called ourselves engi-nerds, so excuse my nerdiness for just a second. Wikipedia tells us the chemistry definition of cohesion is the action of like molecules sticking together. So cohesion begins with like molecules. So first we need to see our sameness to stick together, but that's at a molecular level. So here's the secret. Are you ready? Water. The common physical example of cohesion provided across many texts is water. We see water's cohesion as it flows. Just close your eyes and see the sun as it sparkles off a beautiful stream. Ah, if only your team flowed with such beauty and grace. So to understand why water has such a powerful cohesion, we need to go to the atomic level of water. Water molecules are made up of 2 hydrogen atoms and 1 oxygen atom. The all-familiar H2O. So how does this molecule keep it all together? Well, it does it by balancing negative and positive charges, all in one tiny molecule. Each hydrogen atom has a negative charge, and the oxygen atom has two positive charges. So those positive and negative charges, they attract each other. They're opposite charges. So imagine that a key to cohesion is opposite charges. However, those opposite charges don't quite negate each other. That's the beauty of this whole thing. When the two hydrogens and the one oxygen bond, there's a bit of negative left over on hydrogens and a little positive left over on the oxygen. So with that leftover charge, they attract other molecules of like kind. They attract other oxygen molecule, or hydrogen molecule atoms and water molecules around it. They create a strong cohesion. And these tiny water molecules bond so strongly that you can walk on water here in Minnesota in the wintertime. Now that's, that's strong. So I'm geeking out right now, and I hope you are too. And I had to, when I was starting to look at H2O, I had to bust out out my molecule model set from organic chemistry in college. So I broke it out and I made a little 3D model. Look at that, a little 3D model of water. There's your oxygen and there's your two hydrogen molecules or, um, atoms. So I'm geeking out and I hope you are too. You see, cohesion requires the right combination of positive and negative charge. Diversity is required for cohesion. That precise amount of diversity creates charge, and that charge, or passion, aligns and attracts. So water molecules remain at a distance, but their charge is so powerful, their bond so cohesive, they can withstand tremendous force. So water contains that key code for cohesion, and what's it called? It's all about the charge. The challenge of team cohesion in a virtual world is first addressed by assembling teams that are charged by diversity. Diverse passions attract others charged in similar ways. And when facing the challenge of team cohesion in our virtual world, discover the passions that turn each team member on Then weave this beautiful tapestry of diverse passions into a unified team. Your team will generate cohesion so powerful, well, as powerful as 2 feet of ice on a Minnesota lake. The first clue to team cohesion then is discovered in a simple drop of water. In fact, take a drink right now of nourishing water. Encourage your team to do the same. I don't know, give them water bottles, print your team name on it, and remind your team every day they are diverse, they are charged, they are unified, they are cohesive.
