A recent article about the simple, everyday things that teams can do to develop their resilience really struck a chord.  It recommended the following approach ……

Develop strong relationships with your colleagues. People who have strong connections at work are more resistant to stress, and they’re happier in their role……the more real friendships you develop, the more resilient you’re going to be, because you have a strong support network to fall back on”

Duh….yes….obviously…..I’m perfectly aware of the need to develop strong bonds with the people that I work with, but I’d not fully considered a benefit that was staring me in the face: there’s a link between strong, lasting connections and greater resilience.

 

16 BehavioursSweet Sixteen – Our Collaborative Behaviours

While working with a newly ‘matrixed’ organisation, we were asked to pay some consideration to the key behaviours that would help individuals to thrive in this new operating structure.

It was a fascinating challenge and having considered the possibilities we identified a total of forty eight behaviours! Recognising that forty eight was a little overwhelming, we whittled them down by a process of interrogation, and reached a more manageable number.

Over time, these have evolved to become the sixteen collaborative behaviours that we regularly use with individuals and teams as a framework that helps them to explore how they can engage in positive collaborations and build stronger connections within the team and with the business at large.

You’re wondering, “Why 16?”

Well, we’re still experimenting and there’s no science behind it but in our experience sixteen is just enough and not too much.

Enough to interrogate without causing overwhelm.
Enough to provide scope and to give enough variety.
Enough to encourage a rich, dynamic conversation between all members of the team.

It’s become the basis for exploring collaborative thinking through collaborative practice.

 

diamond rankingRecently, I was working with an already successful team who were keen to be even better. As part of our time together, they were challenged to rank the 16 collaborative behaviour cards in a diamond shape representing the behaviours that they demonstrated as a team most consistently and most often at the top, through to the behaviours that were seldom present, or far more sporadically demonstrated at the bottom.

It sounds like a simple challenge, but in reality it’s not! Astonishingly with a choice of 16 behaviours and a forced rank from 1 to 16, there are a staggering 2,092,278,989,000 possible combinations. Now that’s a whole lot of scope for a series of great conversations that are never the same!

Pretty much every time we use this as an activity teams ask the same question ….. “Do we have to use a diamond, can’t we put them in a straight line because they are all important?”

The answer is always the same and it’s a resounding “No!” When you evaluate each behaviour, and force a choice, it removes blandness and ignites a lively debate.

And blandness is the enemy of insight.

Forcing a choice encourages people to place one positive behaviour right next to another and to make judgement, it makes them explain their thinking and put forward the evidence that supports their view. It allows them to consider things from other people’s perspectives, to have their assumptions and perceptions challenged and learn something new.

What happened in this recent team example?

The cards were quite literally ‘on the table.’ There’s something very different about a conversation when you can actually touch the content. Debate began immediately. Points of agreement surfaced quickly and people made early suggestions about the behaviours for the top and the bottom of the ranking.

Curiosity kicked in and the team asked questions of each other. They shared examples to explain their rationale. They supported some views and challenged others. People got really passionate about the behaviours. Other people dropped in and out of the conversation as it ebbed and flowed between the 16 options. Consensus was almost achieved and then someone would offer a totally different viewpoint and the debate would head off in a new direction.

Standing back I could reflect on how much discussion, debate, insight, energy and passion could be sparked by 16 words on 16 cards and a simple instruction to organise them according to a criteria. It’s fascinating to see a whole team engaged in the conversation. I’m inspired but never surprised by the richness of the conversation and the interesting twists and turns that it can take. This is resilience building in action. These honest conversations are the basis for shared understanding and stronger, deeper connections.

As a result of their experimentation with the 16 behaviours, the team realised that they had a strong Trust, Commitment and Empathy within the team, but that they also needed to spend some time understanding their true Purpose and to use this deliberation as a springboard for conversations with the wider business, linked to adding more value. They also recognised that they needed to dial up their Courage and to Challenge some of the decisions that they were currently accepting as a fait accompli.

As our work in this area continues

We’re starting to notice that when a team engages in a structured dialogue like this, about how they ‘do’ the behaviours, that it heightens their awareness, creates greater understanding and makes them more robust as a team. It’s a way for them to join the dots of their shared experience. It adds importance to areas of strength and allows underdeveloped areas to be examined more closely and opportunities for development come to the surface. It gives the whole team the opportunity to understand each other’s viewpoints just a little bit more, and to value and appreciate the diversity within the team.

What our experiments in collaboration are beginning to show us, is that in our attempts to simplify collaboration, to make it accessible and to shape it with 16 universal behaviours that people recognise and can relate to, we’re exposing just how complex the interactions between people in organisations can be. With 2,092,278,989,000 ways of combining the 16 behaviours it’s clear that there really is no simple hack, no magic bullet or Holy Grail.

Instead perhaps the solution can be found in dialogue, diversity and joining the dots of people’s experience to equip them with what they need, in the moment, to work brilliantly together.