There are situations where we do too little thinking. If you’re a fan of the Wizard of Oz you’ll remember the cowardly lion and the transformation that happened when he received the Triple Cross Medal, making him a member of the Legion of Courage from the Great Oz. It was nothing more than a piece of ribbon and chunk of metal but it totally transformed the way he behaved.
In our last post we shared some of our thoughts about the collaborative mind-set. For this post we’ve been inspired by an insight that Kev Wyke from Leap Further shared with us during Episode 14 in our Collaborate Live series.
He was reflecting on an example of a particularly successful collaboration; he said this …..
What I found really useful about collaboration was how it helped me to feel brave and to take more risks that I may have done if it was just myself because I could test things out with my co-collaborator. I could say “I’m thinking about….. what do you think?” and I knew that I’d get some good feedback, some interest, I could look someone in the eye and they would say “that sounds great!” or not.
Kev’s thoughts have prompted us to look more deeply into why and how you can become bolder and braver through collaboration. You can watch Kev’s Collaborate Live episode in full here.
Our own story of working together as The Clear Thinking Partnership bares out Kev’s point. There have been times when we’ve each doubted an idea or a course of action, when we’ve questioned something we’ve done and whether it was the best option, and we’ve used each other to test our thinking, to spur each other on, to ask ‘what’s the worst that could happen’ and ‘what if we do nothing?’ We recognise from our own experiences that collaboration makes us brave.
But is there a method behind it, one that others can replicate?
Here are two examples of situations you might recognise that sit at the opposite ends of a continuum……
There are situations where we do too little thinking. Where we work in isolation, hypothesise about the best course of action, and then plough on, without testing, without sense checking, confident in our approach and unwavering in our belief.
We don’t question our rationale rigorously enough.
We act on a single perspective that has the potential to be laced with subjectivity, bias, blind spots, and more. This isolated and unchecked perspective can introduce unwanted risks, particularly in the corporate setting.
We act covertly, in isolation and without transparency. Leading to poor outcomes, wasted effort, duplication and confusion.
We ponder and ruminate a little too much and mentally we talk ourselves out of our brilliant idea or plan of action. We get stuck. We stop moving forward.
We fear failure or embarrassment so we play safe and stick with what we know. We hold back from innovating.
When thoughts and ideas are fresh, new and only partially formed they can be difficult to articulate. We hold back from sharing our idea with the wider world and seeking opinions from other people because we worry about their potential reaction and it’s far easier to say nothing.
In the Excess Baggage of Collaboration we described the brain as a social organ. It needs other brains to develop new patterns of thinking, to break out of the well-worn neural pathways. We naturally need other people to help us think through our rationale, to challenge our hypotheses, to build on our ideas, to give us encouragement, and sometimes to show us there’s an alternative we haven’t thought of yet…..so let’s not resist this natural process.
To avoid the traps of under thinking and over thinking, there’s a series of behaviours that can serve us well, and help us to collaborate more easily. This is the Bravery Roadmap.
This is the first step on the road map, and the trigger point for engaging others in collaboration. We all have vulnerabilities and the key is to find a way to share them so that other people can see how they can help. It’s right that we should allow our natural areas of strength to shine through but also to show the bits of ourselves that aren’t perfect, letting other people complement our strengths. Be honest, what’s your biggest vulnerability?
We shouldn’t make it our mission to prove that we’re better than the other people around us. It should be our mission to help others to shine, to help them be better, to do good work, to feel good about the unique contribution they offer. This means admitting when we don’t know what to do or think next, so that someone else can step in and help. How easy do you find it to put aside your ego?
By showing vulnerability and humility we can start along the Bravery Roadmap, however the next behaviour is a shared responsibility.
We need our ‘thinking partners’ to be curious on our behalf. To suspend judgement and ask the questions that we’re not asking or are too scared to ask or simply can’t see. That’s their role in the journey at this point. Who is your ‘thinking partner?’
This is the behaviour of a critical friend, someone who disputes what we believe so that we can test the truth. Someone who confront us with our own perceptions and invites us to check if we’re seeing things in a way that helps us to make progress. Who is your critical friend? When have you been a critical friend for someone else?
This roadmap works for us. But could it work for you too? Do you want to be braver? What would it do for you? Can you take that first step and pull over for a vulnerability pit stop?
Venturing onto the Bravery Roadmap is the first brave step. It means being willing to collaborate, leaving yourself open to the possibility that people are worthy of your trust, that their intention is good and they mean you no harm, that they have a level of competence that will complement yours and that if you admit areas of weakness their first instinct will be to offer support and not ridicule.
How much more could you, your team or your organisation create and deliver if you used collaboration as a catalyst for being braver?