what collective skills are needed to cope with fragmentation ?[Quelles Competences Collectives Pour Faire Face A La Fragmentation ?]

The aim of this research is twofold: firstly, in a crisis threatening the group with fragmentation, to identify the collective skills most likely to maintain cohesion. Secondly, the intention is to find out whether the team members' opinions on what makes cohesion are based on their beliefs or on team management. We have studied the situation of two associations similar in terms of mission - adult learning based on the principles of popular education – of organisation and about the situation they experienced between 2022 and 2024, after the Covid-19 crisis. The actors' representations of what makes a group cohesive are weakly correlated with the list of collective skills deemed useful facing fragmentation. These include the ability to implement a decision and to communicate. This result mirrors the expectations expressed about governance. These relate less to the management of collective skills than to the manager's ability to act and communicate in a visible and effective way. The manager deemed to promote team cohesion is therefore the one whose action make sense of the crisis. By this way, he contributes to develop the same collective skills in the staff. This mimetic effect shows that the manager's exemplary behaviour in a crisis has an impact both on the team cohesion and on the collective skills that the group will implement.