Gothenburg: The spring is in the air and I go down to the neighborhood pub. There I meet Stig. We usually discuss the city’s huge tunnel project. At the time, I am at the end of a university course in economic history and Stig asks what I should do next. I might write something, I say. Stig points to an older man, considerably older than me. He is standing at the bar, in a thin quilted jacket. Not much hair left on his head. That is Vigo, says Stig. He needs someone to write.
Vigo and I end up in a conversation that lasts for several hundred hours over two years, mostly at a cafe nearby. We talk about driving forces that segregate and fragment the society. About conflicts in the family, school, social media, politics – and working life. We worry about the same things but, unlike me, Vigo has a distinct idea about why the world is moving towards polarization – and how this development can be reversed.
The idea is not exactly a quick one. Vigo has been honed it in twenty years with his wife Christina. They have developed it into a methodology, and tested it carefully during week-long boarding workshops with a total of 1200 participants.
Our conversations at the café lead to this book that I wrote for Vigo and Christina. That was not my intention from the beginning. My idea was just to help write a synopsis, but it didn’t take long before I got hooked on the project.
The book is not very long, 187 pages with some pictures. But it is broad and touches on almost all stages of life, from childhood to old age, so it is difficult to describe it briefly. Here I limit it mainly to relationships in working life.
It is well known that the psychological need for close relationships is in the genes. Just like for the wolf, for humans it was once associated with a life-threatening danger to be excluded from the community of the protective group. Most of us cannot escape from the need of fellowship and modern life is in many respects a series of group trips.
Let’s exemplify the trip with a small department that is formed at work. Maybe eight people. In the first phase, everyone is friendly and polite. In many cases, perhaps most, people stay there. They don’t take risks, they don’t expose themselves, they are wary of conflicts. No one is really satisfied, no one is really dissatisfied either. Such a group never achieves strong unity.
To create a more unified and effective group, a confrontation is required. Individuals need to show what they stand for. This can happen through conflicts. Perhaps the participants then bounce back, frightened, into the superficial and cautious phase again, where uncomfortable issues are swept under the rug. Perhaps the conflict leads to the group cracking and splitting into two competing camps – and one person being left out completely.
The same psychological forces are at work, regardless of age. An involuntary exclusion from the group can lead to a severe personal crisis, whether it concerns a child in first grade or a member of a corporation’s top management team.
The group as a whole can move towards strong unity however, provided that the participants achieve a way of relating to each other that everyone feels comfortable with. It is this order, the force that holds the strong group together, that is the core of the book. At least as I see it. It is also here Christina and Vigo believe that their methodology differs from other theories in group development.
Their central question is something like this: Does the unifying force consist of an informal order of rank that everyone accepts and respects. Or does the unifying force consist of equivalence and trust, a mutual feeling of wanting each other well, without ranking processes. Equality is contrasted with wanting to dominate (or be dominated). Both are possible.
So, which unifying force works most efficient and is most sustainable? The answer is not given. It depends on how the group members are as humans. It works the same way in a team at work as well as in the family at home, or with a life partner. Should we be equal, or accept that one is ”more important” than the other on an interpersonal level? (Different areas of responsibility is another matter.)
If you prefer a ranking group, meaning you want to know whether you are above or below the other, you may not have a suitable key to enter a group that is held together by trust. And vice versa, if you are a relationship-oriented person who seeks trusting community, but ends up in a ranking group.
Christina and Vigo Silfverlin’s methodology is based on our basic psychological needs, with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as a central element in the theory part. We explain how basic needs often control our behavior without us thinking about it, as if we were puppets.
It is not a question of identifying which behaviors are ”right” and ”wrong”, but of understanding which needs that drive them, and how forces in today’s society are changing these basic needs, and as a consequence, how we behave. The starting point is that most people do the best they can – based on where life has brought them.
The book presents Christina’s and Vigo’s evidence-based method for achieving strong unity based on equality and trust. A desire to wish each other well. The book explains why and how a trusting group is more effective and sustainable than one held together by an informal ranking. It shows a path from polarization to greater community for society at large.
Vigo, who is an engineer by training, has developed two trademarked models that illustrate the possible conditions people have when they enter into relationships, and the different phases that a group needs to go through to achieve strong unity. The models are simple and useful for anyone who wants to understand their relationships, whether in the family, at school or at work.
My contribution is the text, research and social considerations that are related to the theory. I have also written a family story that runs through the book and describes the theory through scenes from family and working life. My long-time friend, the graphic designer Anna Larsson, has made the cover.
I would like to add, that during my 20 years in different parts of the Volvo Group, I led four different departments. Only the last one achieved, as a whole, a strong unity built on trust. That was in Japan, with mainly Japanese co-workers. If I had had the knowledge that this book conveys, I would have acted differently, already in the first group. So, the book is useful.
It’s only available in Swedish currently, but an English edition is planned by the fundraising foundation ”GroupTopia” that Vigo and Christina have set up in order to spread knowledge and education of the methodology.
Per Henrik Sundström, January 24, 2026
