Our mission is to help people flourish with others.

Why we created Plural

In every aspect of life – at work, at home, in our communities, and beyond – our ability to achieve what we aspire to depends on how effectively we interact with others and make commitments together. In fact, taking care of what matters requires people to work effectively with others. It is rarely a solo endeavor.

Yet, despite the obvious benefits and necessity of working with others, many people find it challenging. Even high-performing teams face difficulties: distrust can simmer under the surface, and moods like anxiety, frustration, and resignation can take hold. Effective communication – despite being widely emphasized – is often a stumbling block that can lead to misunderstandings, inefficiencies and even project failures. These challenges are magnified in diverse, geographically distributed teams, where cultural and professional differences shape how we perceive and interact with the world. Over time, these struggles can leave people feeling disconnected from their work and uncertain about their ability to collaborate effectively.

Here’s a surprising truth: while working with others is essential to nearly everything we do, it’s so fundamental that it’s often taken for granted. Although we might have been instructed to complete group projects at school, most of us were never taught the skill set required to work effectively with others. 

Plural exists to change that. We are committed to empower people with the skills, tools, and practices needed to work effectively with others.

  • In every organization, success depends on people working together, but this requires more than simply assembling a group of individuals and calling them a team.

    People across different backgrounds, professions, and roles must work together to address the interdependent concerns that shape an organization’s ability to deliver its products or services. This extends beyond internal teams to also include customers, partners and other stakeholders.

    The skill set required to work effectively with others is essential to anyone who needs to collaborate with others to accomplish their goals and take care of their concerns – whether they need to work with a handful of people or with a wide array of individuals and teams across multiple departments and organizations.

    Among others, Plural works with:

    • Teams whose members not only need to collaborate with each other to accomplish their goals, but also across departments, with customers, external partners, and other stakeholders.

    • New managers who must develop and refine skills that are distinct from delivering specific work tasks, such as delegating and having conversations about performance in a way that builds trust and fosters growth and collaboration.

    • Individual contributors who, while they may not be formally part of a team or manage one, nevertheless rely on others to get things done. Among others, customer success managers, field engineers, consultants, and specialists of all kinds who must be able to build trust, secure commitments, and navigate moods and the inevitable challenges that arise when multiple people work together.

    • Leaders and professionals across industries who recognize that their relational skills areas important as their technical expertise.

  • Drawing on decades of research and real-world experience, our team has identified four critical and interconnected skills and sensibilities essential for effective teamwork:

    • Listening for what matters. Attuning to people’s concerns and priorities, even when unspoken.

    • Coordinating and co-inventing. Collaborating effectively to address shared concerns and accomplish shared objectives.

    • Navigating moods. Leveraging moods skillfully to better care for what matters.

    • Building and restoring trust. Building trust or restoring it when necessary to foster stronger, more receptive and resilient relationships.

    Plural’s evolving platform – featuring interactive courses, Plural AI assistants and guides, and one-on-one coaching – is designed to help you develop and refine the Working Effectively with Others skill set. Whether you’re leading a team, contributing to one, or simply seeking to enhance your own ability to take care of what matters to you, we are ready to empower you every step of the way.

  • Plural is built on a foundation of over 30 years of pioneering work in language, coordination, and organizational learning. Our approach grows out of decades of consulting, teaching, and research, originally developed with Dr. Fernando Flores, a globally recognized leader in these fields and author of influential works, including Understanding Computers and Cognition (co-authored with Dr. Terry Winograd) and Conversations for Action and Other Collected Essays.

    Our work together began at Business Design Associates, a consulting firm led by Dr. Flores, whose clients – senior executives and their teams across Europe and the Americas – achieved breakthroughs in performance, reducing waste, increasing revenue, and cultivating cultures of trust where people coordinated effectively and co-invented new possibilities together. Our work was recognized by leading publications like The Wall Street Journal and Wired.

    Inspired by these results, Dr. Flores and Gloria Flores co-founded Pluralistic Networks to make the learning they were bringing to their corporate clients more widely accessible. We pioneered accelerated learning environments – combining online role-playing with innovative learning design – that enabled people to rapidly develop the same critical skills at a fraction of the cost of traditional consulting engagements. This work helped individuals and teams build the capacity to collaborate effectively in an increasingly connected, constantly changing world and influenced Gloria Flores’ book Learning to Learn and the Navigation of Moods.

    Plural carries this mission forward – and extends it. Founded by Gloria Flores, Plural is dedicated to equipping individuals and teams not only to develop critical skills and sensibilities for working effectively with others, but also to sustain and strengthen those capabilities over time. We combine learning experiences with emerging technologies to embed new practices into daily work – helping individuals and teams more readily engage in the conversations and actions needed to build trust, navigate moods, take care of shared concerns, and accomplish what they care to accomplish – together.

  • When you engage with Plural, you’ll discover new ways of thinking and working that not only help you to accomplish what matters, but that also lead to increased confidence, greater productivity and improved well-being – both professionally and personally.

    We invite you to step into Plural, and discover the possibilities that emerge when working effectively with others become a skill, a practice, a habit – not a struggle.

Contact us.