Mastering Collaboration

by Gretchen Anderson

  The trick is elevating their negative energy into an official part of the process. Help critics feel valued and be useful by:

  Being rigorous

  Give them specific guidance on how to frame their feedback. List out specific questions you are looking for them to answer about the work so they know where to focus. It also helps to be clear about where in the process the work is, and what assumptions you’ve made along the way.

  Letting them air their reservations

  Don’t give in to the tendency to argue with their critique. The points that are valid can be used to make solutions stronger. Points that are conjecture or strawman arguments can be ignored.

  Giving them dedicated space

  Ask critics to lead a specific session to tackle ideas, versus interrupting while the team is generating options. It can also be useful to ask them to write down their arguments, or comment on what others have written rather than do it all face to face.

  Testing their theories

  Remember that in general, the critic’s arguments are just as much a guess as the ideas they critique. Enlist the critic to help test ideas out and identify what evidence is needed to categorize an idea as good, bad, or impossible.

  Celebrating their improvements

  When a critique does make ideas better, be sure to call that out. That is something the whole team should feel good about.

  The Facilitator

  In addition to a navigator, you may need a separate facilitator to guide discussions—most often when the core group of close collaborators are bringing in stakeholders or subject-matter experts to explore ideas and give feedback. Most facilitation experts see the key responsibility of this role as guiding the process, with less focus on the content of the problem area or solution. Appoint a facilitator to wrangle larger groups, especially if there are many different levels of seniority, authority, and expertise coming together. If you or those you work with will not be seen as impartial, and the challenge is highly charged or political, consider hiring a facilitator or finding someone in the org who is seen as impartial and can be a trusted facilitator.

  Facilitators are primarily responsible for:

  Structuring and managing time

  Keeping focus on the material and appropriate topics

  Keeping discussions and decisions visible (working with navigator)

  Helping the group make “lasting agreements” and move through the diverge/converge process together

  When choosing a facilitator, look for someone who can stay above the fray and keep the big picture in mind. You, as someone who is curious about successful collaboration, are a likely candidate for this role. Facilitators tend to be:

  Above the fray

  A facilitator is a guide to help people move through a process together, not the seat of wisdom and knowledge. That means a facilitator isn’t there to give opinions, but to draw out opinions and ideas from the group members.

  Invested in the team

  Facilitators focus on how people participate in the process of learning or planning, not just on what gets achieved.

  Open-minded

  A facilitator is neutral and never takes sides.

  If you feel like you aren’t this person, or maybe don’t feel like you have enough political clout to pull it off, the navigator is another role to consider where you can hone your leadership skills.

  RACI Models for Stakeholders and Supporters

  Many organizations use a model known as RACI to organize their decision-making. To summarize it briefly, RACI is an acronym that encapsulates each of these key roles:

  Responsible

  The person who fully understands the challenge and desired outcome, and who is accountable for the success of the effort. Without adequate incentive to make “winning” decisions or be accountable, this person serves more of a facilitative role. As the person who arguably is closest to the problem and the possibilities, they benefit from having the risk/reward of making the right decisions, or more likely, learning from decisions to get to the right decision.

  Accountable (or the advisor)

  The person (or people) who are positioned to understand the risk implications of different decisions, who have veto authority, and who are aware of how outcomes affect the company. I have found that while the CEO might be ultimately accountable for a decision, assigning them the explicit accountability role means they rarely have enough information to question the ideas of the driver. To this end, making them instead an advisor who can veto or challenge ideas sets them up as a contractive foil to the driver, and makes them less likely to blindly accept their recommendations or argue for argument’s sake.

  Consulted (or contributors)

  These are people who are responsible for actually developing solutions to challenges and seeing them implemented. They will certainly include the close collaborators we looked at previously. This category may also include those who are responsible for aspects of the solution that are dependent on, or highly related but adjacent to, the core solution (such as platform engineering or members of the legal team). Often contributors are actually those who inhabit the creation-oriented roles described earlier, such as drivers or navigators or critics.

  Informed

  This group tends to be overlooked and dismissed in the (mistaken) assumption that they are less important that the others. However, as we will see, and you likely have experienced, if those who should be informed don’t feel adequately prepared, they are likely to become bottlenecks or adversaries who need to be won over after the fact.

  Note

  You may have seen or read about this model as DACI instead of RACI. In a DACI model, the R becomes a D, for the decider or driver of the effort. Given the previous discussion of pairing or close collaboration, I use RACI’s “Responsible” category to avoid confusion about this role. In my experience, and in the experience of those I spoke with, the differences are negligible between the two sets of acronyms. The key is to assign different focuses to those who have a great deal of accountability for a solution, but little hands-on time or experience, and those who work on a problem directly. Having seen this model employed in many different settings, I have seen it provide healthy clarity around decisions and help teams work in smaller groups, with less friction with those who are interested and perhaps want to be more than informed.

  Things to consider when assigning roles and putting the group together:

  Expertise and skills

  You need a variety but also need to cover what’s required to get the job done. Even if you can’t get full participation from someone with critical knowledge or abilities, see what time and attention you can get rather than trying to make do.

  Ability to think on their feet versus “offline” and on their own

  If the entire group loves to debate verbally and intensely, you may find that ideas are being chosen based on that public performance, without careful analysis. See who might be able to work offline or in writing to bring a different lens.

  Language proficiency

  If not everyone shares the same native language, see if you can get the group to use simple words and syntax, avoiding acronyms or abbreviations that won’t be well known.

  By being thoughtful about how you place people in a team, and being prepared ahead of time, you can channel people’s energy more productively.

  Troubleshooting Roles

  Assigning roles and getting people to stay in them is key to keeping people aligned and coordinated. This section describes ideas for how to handle issues within the core team and with stakeholders.

  Assumed Hierarchy in the Team

  While there’s nothing inherent in any of the roles I’ve described that specifically calls out one as more important than another, people may still think that way. Because our corporate culture tends to celebrate individuals who lead by speaking frequently and making decisions, it’s natural to assume a hierarchy that doesn’t need to be t
here. After all, no one can make a well-informed decision about something complex without the contributors who put in blood, sweat, and tears to lay out the options. While according to the org chart there may be an actual hierarchy in a group, the point of roles is often to establish different, more inclusive lines of authority that make room for those “at the bottom.” When people start assuming that some roles are more important than others in a collaboration, it’s not just a morale killer, it’s a perspective killer.

  So what can I do?

  Rotate roles

  One way to make it clear that all roles are valued—as are all people in a team—is to have people swap roles from time to time. This is less applicable to the RACI roles, which should remain stable among a group of people who aren’t working on an issue day-to-day. But asking navigators to be drivers for a cycle can help people see the value of both roles. It’s also a good way to give people experience doing things they may not naturally be drawn to or excel at. Asking someone who’s used to only generating ideas to instead serve as the “big picture” person for a while may give them some empathy for how hard that role can be. Likewise, those who don’t think of themselves as creative may be surprised at their ability to open up when they’re freed from charting the team’s path. This can be especially useful if there is a group of three or four people who are co-creating something and there is a natural set of alliances that emerge. “Forcing” people to shift their role will also help them shift their perspective and perhaps be able to get beyond their default position to achieve a breakthrough. Rotating roles also helps people skill up and grow their capabilities.

  Model and celebrate being a “contributor”

  When RACI roles are assigned, there’s often much more attention paid to who gets to decide things, and who gets to advise on or veto them. You can help draw energy away from these roles by calling out key contributions that the team needs, whether it’s expertise or key deliverables. When you yourself are a contributor, take great pride in knowing that the “real work” you are doing moves the needle as much as any leader’s input. Good senior leaders are very willing to share the limelight and call out the efforts of contributors, especially if you ask them to.

  Roles Get Ignored

  Just because you’ve assigned roles doesn’t mean they’re always respected. Especially over time, people can fall into natural ruts and let roles fall by the wayside. Or, people take on responsibilities that rightfully belong to others because they are easier or seen to be more prestigious.

  So what can I do?

  Look for a mismatch

  You may have a person who’s been put in a role that’s a bit of a stretch for them. Perhaps that was an intentional move to give them a growth opportunity, or perhaps they overcommitted themselves. It may be worth revisiting roles and adjusting responsibilities temporarily or for the longer term.

  Commit to responsibilities as a group

  If it feels like the person or people aren’t “staying in their lane” out of laziness or willful ignorance, have the group periodically review different roles and commit to them explicitly. When people have to sign up for something publicly, that gives the group the ability to hold them accountable, or gives them the needed prod to hold themselves accountable.

  Conclusion

  Roles help channel people’s energy and clarify boundaries and responsibilities, so it’s worth taking the time to define them and make sure they are understood. Having a set of roles for close collaborators will help them work through defining problems and generating ideas. For stakeholders and other interested parties, RACI roles provide structure to discuss and make decisions productively. It’s important to note that roles aren’t positions, and can and should flex over time, giving people different experiences and areas of focus. In the next chapter we’ll look at how to help teams develop trust in each other so they can persevere when things get tough or uncomfortable.

  Key Takeaways

  Collaborations include differing levels of contribution. Not everyone is focused on the problem full-time, so it’s good to distinguish between the core team of close collaborators and the stakeholders and subject-matter experts that support them.

  Close collaborators need roles that keep them focused on their contributions when defining objectives and exploring ideas.

  The navigator role holds down the big picture and directs the team’s efforts to explore ideas and generate solutions to be tested.

  The driver(s) role focuses people on the solutions to the problem and thinking creatively.

  The historian role keeps track of what the team has done, and what it has discovered, to help tell the story later.

  Critics are those who help evaluate ideas and bring in constraints to make them stronger.

  The facilitator role focuses on the process and team dynamics, rather than the content of the collaboration, to keep things flowing and keep conflicts productive.

  For stakeholders and subject-matter experts who might be tempted to be overly prescriptive and dictate solutions, the RACI model helps with making decisions, establishing accountability, and knowing who should be informed along the way.

  Chapter 3. Enable Trust and Respect

  This chapter looks at how trust helps teams come through adversity, and be more open to sharing ideas and getting to a breakthrough. Trust isn’t something you can inject into people, but there are things you can do to help seed and support its growth. Learning how to lead teams in ways that enable trust, instead of diminishing it, is critical to collaboration. Working closely with people who are quite different from you can feel uncomfortable, but being able to work through differences yields great results; it just takes a little time and experience together to get there.

  No one knows this better than Jimmy Chin, a photographer and filmmaker who is known for his work with athletes in extreme situations. His first major film, Meru, tells the story of three alpinists on their first ascent of an especially challenging peak in the Himalayas. The endeavor was so tough that they faced death multiple times before succeeding. His second film, the Oscar-winning Free Solo, captures a premier rock climber, Alex Honnold, climbing the 3,000-foot-high sheer rock face of Yosemite’s El Capitan—without ropes or protection of any kind. What stands out in these extremely risky endeavors is the deep trust between the teammates, because they are quite literally putting their lives in each other’s hands.

  But Chin’s collaborations aren’t limited to the rock faces he shoots on. He produces his films with his wife, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, an award-winning documentary filmmaker herself with seven titles under her belt, including Incorruptible, which follows the youth resistance movement in Senegal in 2015. When Chin was developing Meru, his wife saw that while the raw footage of the incredible story was compelling, the film needed a narrative arc and emotional connection to bring it to life, so she stepped in to deliver that. The pair now works more formally together, with Chin handling the shoots on location and Vasarhelyi driving the editing and story creation, as Chin explains:

  On Free Solo, I needed to be the one to put together the crew to film Alex’s climb. It took everything I’ve learned in last 20 years to put together. I needed to know what it feels like to be on both sides of the camera and how it affects your climbing. Chai’s got deep experience in the nonfiction documentary space; she gets the emotional narrative and structure of the story and has objectivity about the climbing aspects. She’s extraordinary at that craft and I trust her, respect her work—not just decision-making, but she’s also just better at things than I am and I know and trust that.

  Having deep respect is crucial, but it doesn’t come easily. “The struggle with your own ego when collaborating is so hard,” says Chin. “Trust is crucial to have, or else you feel you are giving more than the other person and it tears you apart. I’m great when collaborating with those who are better than me for that reason and terrible with there’s no trust. Over time, you learn who c
an really walk the walk, and once I know I can trust them, it’s for life.”

  In most business contexts, you can’t hand-pick your team, at least not fully. And bringing along junior people is often part of the process, so many teammates may be unknowns or lack experience either in working in teams or in their particular skill set. So how do you go about establishing trust, especially when, more than likely, you aren’t selecting your team from the cream of the crop of each specialty?

  Trust Comes from Experience

  Trust comes from the experiences that people have with one another, but, paradoxically, in order to have good experiences, you may need trust. Even if most team members don’t have experience together, having even a few who do can help establish an anchor of trust and model it for others. Trusting those recommended by others you know and respect can also help. As Chin says, “I can take people sight unseen from those who are ultra trusted.”

  Another way to get through this situation is to develop genuine trust and respect among at least some of the team members to help keep everyone grounded amidst the pressure. Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, sees teams that have experience together as a competitive advantage because they can often move more quickly, with quality: “Whether you’re spinning through the sky at 10,000 feet, or trying to do something more grounded, there will be times when you need to build trust fast.”