Category: Collaboration

Collaboration, communication, Decisions, Leadership

Get them to start talking

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 But more to the point, it was another suggestion, and the crowd in the reading room was breaking up into small groups along preferred language lines and starting to argue and discuss, to come up with ideas. Trying to help. I didn’t care that all the ideas were useless; we’d literally only just started thinking.

By Naomi Novik – The Last Graduate

Working with new groups, the important thing is to get them to start talking, sharing perspectives and ideas. Don’t focus on quality, reinforce the act of talking and listening. Each new group needs to learn  and decide how they want to talk and act. They need the chance to get to know one another both how people act and what knowledge, skills and experience they bring to the group. 

The biggest challenge to get a group going is not if people are quiet, it is if you have one or two people dominating the conversation. If they have more experience with the problem and use that to push their ideas forward too quickly then the group might get too dependent on them. I have often tried to identify these people beforehand and either talked to them and asked them to let people in or I divide the group into smaller groups where I either put all the talkative people in one group or try to place them in a group where there are people who can manage them.

Collaboration, communication, Learning, Personality

What are you passionate about?

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 But what if science isn’t your world? I admit, I don’t know whether people outside of my social sphere would care about this at all. I’ve spent my entire adult life embedded with scientists and the people who love them. I take it for granted that this sort of knowledge is cherished, is yearned for. And I am keenly aware that in order to tell you what we found, it required a thousand words of explanation before I could get to the crux.

by Becky Chambers – To Be Taught, if Fortunate

What are you passionate about? What have spent so much time thinking/working/reading/playing with that you know “everything” about it? I love to watch someone talk about their passions and what they find interesting. You can see how excited they get, and how they feel more alive. It’s amazing to see how a person or a group of people can get stuck in the small details that for outsiders feel completely irrelevant but for the people who care is the most important thing in the world.

It also has its downsides. If you are new to a group and just getting started. It can be hard to get in. You don’t have the history, the knowledge nor the language to fully take part in the discussions. This means that the group needs to work extra hard on how to include them. Let them make mistakes or say the wrong things without getting ridiculed. We all need to start somewhere. I think the language is especially important to teach to new people. Words have a history and a special meaning in organisations and they might not mean what you think when you get started. 

Collaboration, Motivation, Uncategorized

Let the adventure begin

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“In his experience, practically anything became an adventure if framed properly.”

Will Wight, Soulsmith

Starting the new year, I decided to try to restart this blog. I want to start writing again, and one of the biggest challenges with it is to frame this as an adventure and not a drudge or something I’m forcing myself to do.

I went from writing a lot a few years back; this blog, other articles, and a book. And now I don’t write anything: I need to relearn writing again. To be able to write as quickly as I did before will take practice, frustration, and will be part of the adventure. And, to remove the voice of perfection in the back of my head and allow myself to see a text as finished. Let’s see how it goes!

I think this quote as well is something to think about when we work together. How can we now start this new year as an adventure instead of with stress? How can we start our new projects as an adventure we are going on together. To see the uncertainty as part of the adventure and the team you will be working together with as a party of heroes.

Brain, Collaboration, communication, Conflicts, Meetings, Trust

Same reality different views

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There is but one reality; that is true—but the two of you experience it in slightly different ways.

-The Cinder Spires by Jim Butcher

Based on your experiences, goals, and personality you will experience the world in a different way than all other people you meet. The difference might be really small or very big. But we all focus on, see, and remember different things. This will cause a lot of conflicts and frustrations. But it will also create amazing solutions, make us learn new things and see problems in a different way.

We often need the similarities to start collaborating and getting to know one another. Then we need the differences to creates something unique.

 

Collaboration, Conflicts, Personality, Uncategorized

What do they remind you of?

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“There’s the opposite of love at first sight. There are people walking the earth that the moment you meet them, you want to punch them and keep punching them.”

– Richard Kadrey, Sandman Slim

Some people we get along with directly and others we just want to punch the moment we meet them. The people you like and the people you don’t like are either really similar to you or your complete opposite.

I think it comes down to that we like people that remind us about our good traits, and we dislike the ones that remind us about our bad traits.

Action, Collaboration, communication, Decisions, Meetings

What is perfectly obvious might not be the same thing for everyone there

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“Sometimes what goes without saying is best said anyway.”

– Iain M. Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata

One of the most common mistakes that I see other people do, and my self quite often as well: It is to end a meeting or a conversation without summing up what was decided upon. It might seem perfectly obvious to you, and it probably is perfectly obvious to all the other people there. The problem is that in many cases what is perfectly obvious might not be the same thing for everyone there.

Collaboration, Organizations, Trust

Trust is a lot to ask of someone

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“Trust is a lot to ask of someone.”

– Gail Carriger, Manners & Mutiny

It’s really interesting who we trust and who we don’t trust. We trust that complete strangers will not run us over with a car when we cross the road, but we don’t trust our co-workers to hand in their reports on time. We trust the company we work for to pay us every month, but not that they have good reasons for the strange decisions they make. We trust that the date stamp on milk is correct but we always check that the eggs are not broken in their carton.

What makes us trust some things and not others?

Collaboration, communication, Failing, Love, Uncategorized

Who will love you regardless?

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I know that when ye think o’ love you’re supposed to think of kissy faces and scented soap and hummin’ happy songs together, but there’s another vital part to it that people rarely admit to themselves: We want somebody to rescue us from other people. From talking to them, I mean, or from the burden of giving a damn about what they say. We don’t want to be polite and stifle our farts, now, do we? We want to let ’em rip and we want to be with someone who won’t care if we do, who will love us regardless and fart right back besides.

– Kevin Hearne, Staked

There is nothing else to add. The quote explains love perfectly! 🙂