Our Insights
The Art of Representation: Preparing teams to speak and act for each other
There are situations in the life of every team when their work and views need to be represented by sending a team member to an external meeting. This may be a hierarchical situation where the team leader is required, or a matter of specialism where a subject matter expert needs to represent their colleagues. Either way it's imperative that the team trusts that their representative will effectively demonstrate the work and professionalism of the team. Equally it's important that the representative themself is given the message that the team trusts them in the role. The meeting may well happen away from the team, behind closed doors, so there can be no in-the-moment reinforcement of this trust relationship. It's something that is best developed in the safety of an experiential setting - but what's the best tool to address the issues of psychological safety involved? At the simpler, shorter end of a range of possible interventions is Team Fusion . Importantly this rotates the representative role around the team so everybody experiences relying on that representative, and also being the one who is being relied upon, several times during the activity. There is a strong emphasis on making good decisions on behalf of the team, communicating these decisions and resultant actions, and basing these decisions on the learning derived from preceding colleagues. It's a very easy activity to administer, and the transfer of learning from activity, to debrief, to workplace implementation is direct and impactful. This makes it a great starting place for a facilitator taking early steps in using experiential tools, or line managers introducing something useful and engaging to team meetings. At the other end of the range is T-trade which is one of the most powerful tools I know for looking at how different parts of an organisation need to operate in a co-ordinated manner when they are under severe operational pressure. In these situations each function needs to trust the others to make and communicate decisions that might have short-term negative impacts across the organisation e.g. if sales unexpectedly open up a new market it will require manufacturing to change what they are doing, or conversely, a shortage of components may need sales to rapidly shift their targets. In each of these cases the result may be uncomfortable, but positive outcomes will only be achieved if there is a bond of trust and common purpose across the functions. In both of these activities the underlying requirement is for every individual to be working towards relationship building - within and beyond team boundaries. Trust will only flourish in the psychological safety of good relationships, and this is not something that can be achieved through familiarity alone. It's far better to allow teams to explore and hopefully extend the limitations of their mutual trust, especially when they are relying on the quality of represention they receive from colleagues.
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How to develop and maintain trust in teams
Teamwork is built on a bedrock of mutual trust, and can only be truly effective when each and every team member works within the climate that this trust engenders. This may be a simple statement, but the diversity of human nature and personality often mitigates against the establishment of the necessary trust. Regularly introducing an effective intervention to establish and maintain trust is something I'd always advocate, no matter how long a team has been together. That regularity needs a selection of tools around which to build the intervention, here are two that would be in my toolkit. Counter Intelligence is an activity that sets up a complicated working environment, complicated rather than complex. There are a lot of regulations involved, and individuals are required to represent these requirements, despite many of them appearing pointless and irrelevant in achieving the goal. It's this dynamic that makes it very easy for the team, or individuals, to dismiss or ignore information they have been given, and this may ultimately result in a failure to complete the task. Success depends on each team member being vocal in steering team process whilst trusting that each colleague will do the same. Without discipline this may result in chaos, but with a strong element of mutual trust the team operates in a discernably businesslike way. Trust is a key teamwork value, and Counter Intelligence inevitably leads to discussions about the need for teams to operate within a framework of shared values. If I want to address how we can create open and respectful working environments that can be built on the platform of demonstrating trust in the contribution of others, I might choose to use Reversal as a significant experiential tool. It's important to me that team members recognise that trusting the contribution of others isn't a recipe for unquestioning acceptance, so I need them to have the tools they need for goal-directed evaluation and respectful challenge. Reversal is a great activity to develop and coach these skills. The kind of questions that arise every time I use Reversal are: "What do I do if my contribution seems to contradict what a colleague has offered?" "How do I handle the situation where my contribution seems to suggest a change in direction for the team?" "How do we achieve a team process that allows for individual differences? These are big questions, and I would suggest that they are far better explored and resolved within the safety of an experiential activity rather than jeopardising team performance in the workplace.
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Practicing Before the Pressure: Building Negotiation Skills that Stick
The literature of Leadership Development has many advocates for an approach characterised as ‘learning on the job’. Strong voices that tell us that the best way for leaders to hone their skills is through the visceral, first-hand practice of leadership itself. I’ve got some sympathy for this viewpoint, there are some parts of leadership development that benefit from an ‘in at the deep-end approach’. Not least that it’s a great way of recognising the adaptability and resilience needed to do the job well, and it blows away the idea that you can learn leadership straight from a book. But I’d suggest that there are other parts of the leadership role that need to be developed through a structured process of learning, and high on this list is negotiation. The very last place I’d want my leaders to be learning negotiation is during a negotiation. Being effective in developing leadership negotiation skills gives us a real challenge as designers and practitioners, “how can any learning environment authentically build the factionalism, passion and jeopardy that are the essence of important negotiations?”The answer is that they can’t - no simulation or role play can build that level of intensity. It's a requirement that needs a different kind of solution. What we need is an approach that allows us to work towards a set of learning objectives that cover: Developing effective approaches to interest-based negotiation that go beyond win-lose mindsets. Anticipating the actions and intentions of the other parties in order to enable proactive negotiation. Observing and reflecting on the role that personality plays in negotiation. Rehearsing the skills needed to deliberately and productively raise and lower the tension during negotiations. Recognising the needs of all parties at key stages in a negotiation. An accessible and effective approach that will deliver these potential learning objectives is this: a. structure an experiential learning experience that encourages participants to care about the result and be so engaged that they go beyond role playing and demonstrate authentic patterns of behaviour b. then structure an honest and open performance review that allows every participant to put themselves into the shoes of the other side For requirement a. it’s clear that there is a need to choose an experience that best reflects the type of negotiation in which the participants are likely to be engaged i.e. reflecting their workplace role and responsibility. At RSVP Design we would probably select T-trade for senior leaders, Post-it or Minefield at management level and Hollow Square for those needing fairly basic negotiation skills. For requirement b. it is important to structure a post-activity debrief that allows each person or group who has been involved to ask questions of the other party. The facilitator can do this in an open manner by inviting questions such as “Is there anything you would like to ask the other group(s)?” Alternatively the facilitator can ask each person or group “What do you think that the other group was trying to achieve? What was their strategy?” then asking whether this was indeed the case. Either of these structures, used as part of a debrief, allows the participants to make informed connections between the intentions and behaviours of those who were across the negotiating table. The insights that we’re trying to achieve are about building understanding of positive intent during negotiation. It’s very rare that people in negotiations behave in a way that doesn’t have a positive intent, and trying to understand what this is is an extremely useful way of thinking i.e. ask yourself this question “(Stated in the positive) What is this person trying to achieve?” The result is that rather than answers such as “They are trying to stop me achieving the position I’ve given them” you end up with a positively stated, and usually more specific, alternative such as “They are trying to achieve a compromise result that’s somewhere between our positions”. Learning to negotiate effectively needs quality practice. It’s a multi-person, multi-positional, dynamic exchange that places great demands on the levels of interpersonal insight that each party brings to the table. As previously stated, the very last place that I’d want my leaders to be learning negotiation is in a negotiation, so I’m a very strong advocate of investing in their development.
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