Tag Archives: collaboration

What Changed?

“Tell me, Muriel, when your solution was challenged, how did you respond?” I asked.

“It’s pretty simple,” she replied. “I gave them the answer to the problem, but they worked in a different direction. They went directly against what I told them to do. I had to pull them together, find out who the ringleader was. You know, I have to find out who was bucking my authority.”

“Do you think the team believed in your solution?”

Muriel paused. “Does it really matter? I’m the manager. If I had the solution to the problem, they should implement it. It doesn’t matter if they believed in my solution.”

“Let’s play this out,” I prompted. “If they didn’t believe in your solution, but you forced them to implement it, how much energy and enthusiasm did they pour in your direction to prove you right? Or did they appear to follow your direction, without enthusiasm to prove you wrong? Either way, you still had a fight on your hands. Did that serve you? Did that serve the team? Did that serve the solution to the problem?”

“But!!” Muriel protested.

“No, buts,” I interrupted. “When you were part of the team, as an equal team member, how did you work together?”

“Well, back then, it was collaborative, we worked together to solve problems.”

“So, what changed when you became the manager?”

How to Interview for Human Relations Skills

From the Ask Tom mailbag –

Question:
Okay, we got integrity, customer care and individual initiative. The last value we want to interview for is our people. By that, I mean respect for others, support for others, collaboration and cooperation.

Response:
Same model as the past couple of days, interviewing for an attitude, a characteristic or soft skill.

Identify the behavior connected to the attitude or characteristic.
Identify a circumstance where we might see that behavior.
Develop questions about the behavior.

Your description identifies some behavioral things, like collaboration, cooperation and support. That’s a good start. Your team can likely come up with more related behaviors to the value you have in mind.

Connected behaviors

Collaboration, or cooperation on a team
Support for another teammate
Respect for a manager, or respect for another team mate

Behavior – Collaboration or cooperation in a team.

Tell me about a time when you worked on a project that required multiple steps and multiple people to solve a problem?
What was the project?
What was the problem?
How many steps involved?
How many people on the project team?
What was your role on the project team?
To solve the problem, how did the team have to work together?
When the team worked well together, what happened?
When the team did not work well together, what happened?
When the team did not work well together, what was the impact on the project?
How did the team know when it was working well together and not so well together?
When the team did not work well together, what did it do to start working better together? What steps were taken? What was said?

Behavior – Supporting another teammate.

Tell me about a time when you worked on a project where another team member was taking the lead, but some team members disagreed with the work method or sequence of work?
What was the project?
What was the purpose (goal, objective) of the project?
How long was the project?
How many on the project team?
What was your role on the project team?
What was the leader’s role on the project team?
What was the disagreement about?
What words were said?
Which side of the disagreement were you on?
How was the situation resolved?

Behavior – Respect for a manager, or respect for another team mate.

Tell me about a time when you worked on a project where you disagreed with the manager about a work method or sequence of work?
What was the project?
What was the purpose of the project?
How long was the project?
How many people on the project team?
What was your role on the project team?
What was the disagreement about?
How did you approach the disagreement?
What words were said?
How was the situation resolved?

You can interview for any attitude, characteristic or soft skill, as long as you can connect it to behaviors.

Yes, Managerial Execution Like a Dictator

From the Ask Tom mailbag –

Question:
Can you talk about the difference between a dictatorial management approach and a collaborative management approach?

Response:
Execute like a dictator!

No kidding. Execution often requires precision sequences of skilled behavior. Execute like a dictator.

But to be effective at execution (like a dictator) requires two things.

Collaborative planning
Practice (perfect practice)

So, there is a time for collaboration and a time for explicit direction. And effective explicit direction does not (cannot) occur without collaboration in planning.

In football, collaborative planning is called skull practice. Off the field, in a room, no pads and no football. The group assembles around a chalkboard (whiteboard) and there are fierce discussions about problems and solutions, roles and assignments. At the end, even if there is disagreement among the players, they still pull together. People will support a world they help to create.

Skull practice is followed by perfect practice on the field, hours of it.

But, during the game, work instructions are short, often shouted, There is no time in the moment of execution to discuss who is going to carry the ball. But, effective execution only works when it is preceded by collaborative planning and perfect practice.