Powerful team exercise to make any team mastering their collaboration
Let’s start by asking you, my dear reader, some easy questions:
Are you part of a team of people in the workplace?
Are you the manager of a team of people?
Are you part of an international team/company?
Do you feel that your words don’t always seem to be understood?
Do you feel somehow different in your team/company?
If the answer of any of the above questions is YES, I can provide a practical exercise to do with the team, so that you understand better yourself and your teammates.
But first, let me share a personal story about how I felt after moving to Spain.
I am Romanian, lived in Germany for about 4 years and in 2017 I moved to Barcelona, Spain.
In Barcelona I started working for the first time as a Product Owner and I was navigating kind of by myself in this new role.
At some point, after getting settled in the company and in the role, after having build trust with my colleagues, one day one of my teammates provided me the following feedback that took me by surprise:
Lidia, you have a strong personality! You are opinionated and brave!
When I received the feedback, besides that it took me by surprise, I didn’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing. When asking my colleague to give me more details, they couldn’t make me understand how to take it.
In the years after, in my next workplaces I got similar feedback from different people. Always made me feel uncomfortable, because I didn’t know if it was a good or bad thing.
Luckily, recently I read the book No Rules Rules by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer, which talks about the culture and the “no rules” they have implemented sequentially in Netflix, which they argue that are the key success of their company. When they finally had to go international and open offices all around the world, they realized that the “no rules” that they had put in place so meticulously, had to be adapted due to the cultural differences of each country.
This is when Erin Meyer, put in practice her Cultural Map study, where she saw that depending on the country that we are coming from, we have different ways of:
- communicating
- trusting
- evaluating
- leading
- scheduling
- persuading
- deciding
- disagreeing.
This was the key moment when I could understand that by being from Romania, I could be different and perceived different in some aspects.
So I took the test, which is offered for free by Harvard Business Review and I compared myself with the Spanish average in each of the above situations. I saw a clear difference, among all, between my way of leading, communicating and persuading, key aspects of any product person.
It was my AHA moment, when I could clearly see that I have more of an egalitarian leading style, low context communicating style and application-first persuading style.
That’s why people told me that I am opinionated, brave and with a strong personality. Because I disregard the position of the person when speaking to them, because I have a direct and simple way of communicating, with no hidden meaning and because I persuade my colleagues and stakeholders with practical examples and experiments first, not with the theory.
Does this makes me good or bad?
None of them, this makes me different!
When I finally understood this about myself, compared with the culture of the country that I am leaving in, I could share this with all my colleagues.
Using my own learning and experience, I am recommending to perform within any team “the team culture map” exercise, where each teammate takes the above mentioned test and puts the results in a common map, to see the cultural differences between all the members.
It would look something like this (we took into consideration the Spanish average and the German average in our map):
After having our culture map in place, we continued our exercise by taking the practical examples and advises that Erin Meyer shares in her book The Culture Map about how to deal with all cultural differences.
We finished our exercise by debating and sharing our own experiences in situations that made our collaboration difficult due to our cultural differences.
Let me share a practical example about persuading shared by Erin Meyer in her book:
The persuading scale measures preference for principles-first versus applications-first arguments (sometimes described as deductive versus inductive reasoning).
People from Germanic and southern European cultures usually find it more persuasive to lay out generally accepted principles before presenting an opinion or making a statement, whereas American and British cultures typically lead with opinions or factual observations, adding concepts later to explain as necessary.
Practical advises that the book suggests if speaking/presenting to principle-first cultures (like Spanish and German ones):
- Spend more time than you normally explaining the background, doing thesis → antithesis → synthesis before you move to your conclusion.
- Practical examples are appreciated, but the reasoning should be explained first.
- If your colleague is asking a lot of questions or is challenging your statement, it’s because this is normal for them.
Practical advises that the book suggests if listening to principle-first cultures (like Spanish and German ones):
- Don’t skip listening the why at the beginning.
- It’s always OK to ask questions or give conflicting arguments. This can help with building up the antithesis, which may be appreciated, if done well.
These practical advises, helped me and my colleagues find common ways to collaborate on a daily basis and understand how to deal with our seemingly high differences.
Is it simple? NO.
Are we going to make mistakes? YES.
By practicing and talking about these differences, we are one step further on having a strong culture.
By understanding our differences and celebrating them, we can leverage our individual personalities to flourish in a team/group setup. We are bringing our best, when we feel valued for our differences.
