Why is collaboration so easy in some teams and so difficult in others?

In some teams, asking for help is the most natural thing in the world.

If you don’t know something, you say so. If you have a half-formed idea, you share it. If someone from another department can help, you ask them. And if something goes wrong, you try to understand together what happened and how to solve it.

In other teams, we do exactly the opposite.

We find it difficult to admit that we don’t know something. We keep certain information within our own department. And when a problem arises, we spend a lot of energy clarifying who made the decision or whose responsibility it was.

Why does this happen?

We might assume that some teams simply have more collaborative people than others.

But perhaps it’s not just about the people.

Working in an organisation where mistakes are treated as opportunities to learn is very different from working in one where they can be held against you. And working towards a shared goal is very different from competing for individual results.

The context also shapes how we relate to one another and work together.

THIS IS ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE TOO

We recently talked on this blog about how an organisation’s culture is built through the little things.

The way we collaborate is one of them.

What information we share. When we ask for help. How we respond to mistakes. How comfortable we feel disagreeing. Or how much weight we give to a shared goal compared with the interests of each individual area.

These are everyday behaviours, but they tell us a great deal about how an organisation really works.

Recently, we came across a model by William A. Guillory that helped us look at these dynamics from a different perspective.

Guillory describes three states from which we can relate to one another: survival, compatibility and spirituality. At Manahmana, we have reinterpreted this idea through our experience of working with teams and organisations, and we would sum it up like this:

PROTECTION → COLLABORATION → CREATION

Protection: me against you

When we feel we have something to lose, we tend to protect ourselves.

We defend our territory, avoid exposing ourselves and focus on our own position or responsibilities.

The shared challenge takes a back seat.

Collaboration: me with you

When we can lower our guard, a different way of working becomes possible.

We listen to different perspectives, share what we know and recognise that we need other people in order to move forward.

The other person is no longer someone we need to position ourselves against, but someone we can work with.

Creation: us facing the challenge

And we can go one step further: shifting the focus away from you and me and towards the challenge in front of us.

Ideas become less about ownership, we build on other people’s contributions and new answers can emerge that we would have struggled to find individually.

We move from me with you to us facing the challenge.

This connects directly with what we aim to achieve through facilitation: creating the conditions for a group to think better together than each person would be able to on their own.

Culture doesn’t change in a PowerPoint

There is another idea from Guillory that we find particularly interesting.

He talks about small acts of transformation: everyday actions that gradually change the quality of our relationships.

Keeping a promise.

Acknowledging someone’s contribution.

Sharing information.

Helping someone who is stuck.

Saying “I don’t know”.

Moving from talking about my team to talking about our challenge.

Because culture isn’t just what we say we are.

Culture is what we do with one another every Tuesday at 10:37 in the morning.

And perhaps that is one of the keys to transforming a culture.

Not only through major change initiatives, but also through all those small interactions in which, every day, we shape how we work with one another.