Three Ways to Take Your Collaboration to the Next Level

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together” says the famous proverb, and rightly so, provided that we learn how to work efficiently together first.

In practice, working together — really together — is tough. All too often, teamwork is inefficient, full of micromanagement and hampered by resistance to each other’s ideas and views as well as by the lack of structure required to leverage the capacity of the collective.

There’s a big difference between working alongside members of a team with separate responsibilities that add up to produce a result, and truly working together — almost as if one mind — to collectively solve complex problems, make difficult decisions and propose new solutions.

Yet the exigencies of the modern world of work demand that as teams we build our capacity for true collaboration: to unlock new value and differentiate the service we offer, and to increase the efficiency of our work.

Taking collaboration to the next level

So where do we start? First, by recognising we have room to improve. There are many signs that your team is not practising effective collaboration. Here are three common ones:

• Meetings end because the room is booked by another group, not because a conclusion has been reached
• Meetings feels like a repeat of the previous one
• Attendees are not engaged, or don’t show up.

There are always workarounds — instant message tools, having fewer meetings — but these tend to evade the true issue: teamwork is a difficult but unavoidable part of our work. If we want to actually get better at working together then we need to learn from teams that get it right.

Characteristics of an effective team

Combining research with experience working with a large variety of teams, we’ve found that the most effective teams are those which successfully leverage their cognitive diversity, using constructive dialogue to achieve their common goal.

These are not out of reach of any team. What is required is:

1. Understanding the importance of cognitive diversity to benefit from the range ways of thinking amongst the team
2. Effective communication: engaging in constructive dialogue to tap into the cognitive diversity, whilst maintaining trust, respect and psychological safety
3. A robust process: using the concept of spaces to establish structure that leverages constructive dialogue to achieve better outcomes more efficiently.

These are not easy, but our observations — and a growing body of research — show that when applied they are incredibly powerful, especially when combined. Let’s take a look at each, and how you can take your collaboration to the next level by applying all three.

1. The importance of cognitive diversity

This is the first trait of an effective team. Cognitive diversity means having a range of ways of thinking and processing information within the team. When stakes are high, confronting different views allows the group to:

• Gain a fuller picture of reality
• Navigate individual biases
• Spark new learnings and ideas that would otherwise remain inaccessible

Here are a few signs that your team is cognitively diverse:

• There are multiple opinions and frequent disagreements on how to proceed
• Communication is hard and prone to misunderstandings
• Some team-members appear to drive the conversation forward whilst others remain mostly quiet
• Some team-members prefer to spend time reflecting and thinking out of the box, whilst others want to talk practically and find concrete solutions
• Some advocate for structure whilst others seem to thrive in chaos…

Chances are, you’re very familiar with most, if not all, of the tendencies above. This is the good news: it is highly likely that your team is already cognitively diverse.

The bad news is that unless this diversity is properly harnessed, group problem-solving or decision-making can become argumentative, combative, clumsy and ineffective.

At this stage, however, it’s enough to simply understand why cognitive diversity is important. Constructive Dialogue (2) and Spaces (3) will help us leverage rather than tripping up over it.

2. Effective communication: engaging in constructive dialogue

Constructive dialogue — as described by business coach Lawrence Miller — takes emotional intelligence to the next level. With it, conversations are no longer about “me/you” but about “we”. Like communicating with empathy, constructive dialogue is more of an art than a science, but we’ve put together some straightforward rules that we can use to get started.

Rule #1: enter the interaction with the right frame of mind

When entering into dialogue, our mindset will dictate the tone of the conversation and the route that it takes. The most productive interactions are those that remain solely focused on the common objective (e.g. the goal is not merely to obtain information x, but to obtain the information required to deliver x value to our client)— this is the foundation of constructive dialogue, as opposed to discussion or debate. Also referred to as consultation, constructive dialogue means entering a conversation in the spirit of service.

Consider the following objectives that Miller proposes we might have when interacting with someone:

Serving
Learning
Understanding
Sharing
Convincing
Winning

Notice that as we move from bottom to top of the list (i.e. elevating the conversation) we move from a mindset of “I’m right, they’re wrong” through “Here’s what I think” to “How can I use this interaction to learn and serve our common goal?”. We can also see the progression up the scale as debate → discussion → constructive dialogue.

Constructive dialogue is important no matter the nature of the relationship between conversation participants. A CEO has just as much to learn from front-line staff as they do from her. A good mentor learns as much from their interactions as a mentee does, if not more. And at Gemstone, we learn as much from training participants as they do from us.

A final note on rule #1: this can be really difficult, especially when interacting with people we know closely, or have had issues working together with in the past. But nonetheless it remains the most powerful way to improve conversations, relationships and outcomes, so it’s worth putting in the practice.

Rule #2: use vocabulary that promotes unity

Consider the difference between “here’s what I want you to understand” (lower on the scale) and “this is what I understand” (somewhere in the middle of the scale).

Now consider “how can we deepen our shared understanding?” (closer to the top of the scale). The latter is what we can call more elevated conversation, and is inclusive and unifying as opposed to exclusive and divisive.

The more our vocabulary matches our mindset, the more constructive our dialogue and the more effective our collaboration, whatever the group size.

Rule #3: always seek to elevate

A common response to the idea of constructive dialogue is “that’s all well and good, but my colleague is wrong”, or “what if I want to understand but they are just trying to convince me?”.

The answer is that we must focus only on ourselves: we cannot control the behaviour of others. Perhaps surprisingly, despite us only controlling 50% of the interaction (or less in groups), by moving up the scale ourselves, we can allow others to do the same.

Rule #1 is critical — trying to use constructive vocabulary without the mindset won’t get us far as we’re likely to come across as insincere and manipulative. But if we are in the right mindset and enter the conversation in a spirit of service others will naturally join us. Convincing doesn’t work when there’s nobody to convince. Winning doesn’t work if there’s nobody to lose.

To put it another way, when interacting, we meet other participants on the scale. If we’re misaligned (let’s say that we enter in a spirit of discussion whilst our conversation-partner is in a spirit of debate), two things can happen: she moves up the scale to meet us in discussion (positive scenario) or we move down to meet her in debate (negative scenario). Note that in this scenario, and in the majority of interactions we will have, whilst we only directly establish our own mindset and vocabulary, by setting the tone, we retain a major influence on the quality of the conversation.

One more example response: “but let’s say I’m in sales. Am I not trying to win the contract, or convince someone in a negotiation?” Again, the answer is no: instead you should still seek to enter the conversation in a spirit of service. You and your employer are there to serve your customer. Learning from your customer and better understanding their needs is a great outcome. Ultimately, a contract or negotiation ought to result in a win-win outcome, and this is significantly more likely using constructive dialogue.

To conclude, constructive dialogue promotes unity, and is an essential prerequisite for next-level collaboration, not to mention an invaluable interpersonal skill.

3. A robust process: using the concept of spaces

If we are to leverage cognitive diversity — a team characteristic that at first glance can present huge blockers to teamwork — then we need not only constructive dialogue but also a robust process of engagement.

Spaces provide a robust approach to structuring your team engagement. Defining spaces requires deliberate planning and effort both before and during interactions, but pulling it off brings great reward: combining constructive dialogue with an effective process will enable healthy clashes of views and ideas (and emergence of new ideas and understandings) whilst maintaining psychological safety (everyone feeling able to contribute without fear), all whilst maintaining focus on the common goal.

To define a space, you’ll need to consider a) the objectives, b) the rules, and c) the process you will follow. Most important is that everyone understands these before engaging. Spaces are flexible, and each situation calls for a different approach, but to give an example, here’s how one might use spaces for collaborative decision-making, with a specific space complete with objectives, rules and process at each step:

Wrapping it up

We covered three approaches to improve collaboration: mindset, communication and process. For each, we introduced concepts that can help us tap into the strengths of individuals and the collective:

• Awareness of the importance of cognitive diversity (benefits: more complete picture, greater range of insights and ideas, productive clashes resulting in approaches with more chance of success).
• Communication is built on constructive dialogue (benefits: focus remains on the common goal, unity is strengthened, psychological safety, better quality of exchange and improved outcomes).
• Process is guided by the concept of spaces (benefits: structure and discipline, alignment of expectations, improved navigation of cognitive biases, more efficient use of time, improved results).

We’d love to hear your stories of collaboration, successful or otherwise. Share your experiences in the comments!

Research and further reading

• The Two Traits of the Best Problem-Solving Teams, Harvard Business Review by Alison Reynolds and David Lewis
• Are You Solving the Right Problems?, Harvard Business Review by Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg
• Spiritual Enterprise by Lawrence Miller (in particular the chapters on consultation and group decision-making)
• Amy Edmondson’s concept of Psychological Safety
• Cognitive biases, originally conceived by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman
• Research on Intellectual Humility, including the work of Shane Snow
• Shane Snow’s concept of Productive Debates

At Gemstone we guide managers and teams to develop the skills needed to foster teamwork and successfully engage in collaboration. Our training includes comprehensive programmes and in-depth modules. If problem-solving is your focus right now, contact us for more information.

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