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I know of a global organization where people are hired for their technical expertise, not their interpersonal skills. When a key team started to have a lot of friction and constantly missed deadlines, they brought in a leadership coach for the leader of that team. The coach found that the leader was only focused on his own perspective of what was going wrong with the team. He had no sense of what people on the team thought or felt.

He never tried to learn how they saw things, let alone get to know them. What this leader lacked was skill at teamwork, a competency of emotional intelligence. 

When we think productivity, we rarely think of workplace design as a major contributor or detractor, but compelling ongoing research shows that it plays a much larger role than initially thought. According to research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, an empowered office environment can increase worker productivity on cognitive tasks by 25%, and possibly more.

Workspace design today is undergoing a major creative shift. We've gone from cubicles (people are productive in isolation) to open-plan spaces (collaboration leads to success) to what I believe is the next major step - integrated multi-function design which recognizes that people need multiple spaces based on their ongoing and changing needs within a business day.

Instead of looking out across rows of cubicles, today's office worker needs a mix of team meeting rooms, open lounge-like areas, and private workspaces.

From winning sports teams to globally successful businesses, there are so many examples of how collaboration in teams can produce incredible results. Building and developing a collaborative culture within your team is key to improving the share of knowledge throughout your business, which will ultimately lead to a more efficient working environment. Whilst many people like the idea of working in a collaborative environment, they aren’t always willing to undertake the investment required to establish a fully collaborative workforce. 

As the working world becomes increasingly global, and teams are split across different geographies and time zones, the need for collaboration has never been so important. With new technologies and cloud-based systems offering teams the ability to communicate information and share knowledge, businesses should utilise the opportunities available to improve the collaboration amongst their teams. 

Debate: a formal discussion, often in front of an audience, in which two or more people put forward opposing views on a particular subject; any general discussion on a subject, not necessarily in one place or at one time. 13th Century, from French ‘debatre’ meaning ‘to discuss’. Chambers Dictionary.

The importance of fair discussion and a chance to challenge and explore new opinions and ideas cannot be overstated.

Leaders, debating is your chance to explain what you know, win supporters for your strategies and probe and improve the goings-on throughout the company.

Team-members, innovate in a collaborative and iterative manner by putting your solutions through a debate.

Shareholders, find out whether a strategy is in your best interest, or decide how to move forward.

Staff, solve problems and improve transparency and communication by talking openly about issues and opinions.

Debating in the workplace can have a number of uses:

Collaboration is crumpling under the weight of our expectations. What should be a messy back-and-forth process far too often falls victim to our desire to keep things harmonious and efficient. Collaboration’s promise of greater innovation and better risk mitigation can go unfulfilled because of cultural norms that say everyone should be in agreement, be supportive, and smile all the time. The common version of collaboration is desperately in need of a little more conflict.

In the world of design-thinking collaboration is an esteemed means to an end. Good designers wouldn't go about designing a dress or a chair without the input of other peer-designers and colleagues from other core-competencies such as materials science, engineering or technology. Similarly from a design thinking perspective, one wouldn't go about designing a new transportation infrastructure or service delivery system for a fast food chain without factoring in others' ideas.

In general, whether or not you work directly in design, collaboration sounds swell and it's something that we all know is good to do in principle. But it is definitely easier said than done. After all, couldn't you save a lot more time and money if you just did the project yourself?

The way brainstorms are practiced in most companies today is still almost exactly the same way that was recommended by their inventor, advertising executive Alex Osborn, over 60 years ago. Business and our understanding of how the brain works have both moved on so much in that time, and yet we’re still hanging onto this old technique for so many of our idea-gathering sessions.

Here’s how to rethink your brainstorm so it goes for longer than you're used to, but proves much more productive once it’s over.

Cornell professor Kathleen O’Connor, who coaches teams on effective collaboration, says that when psychological safety is absent from the workplace, teams lose the individual knowledge and expertise each member brings to the table and begin to experience what is known as the Common Knowledge Effect.

When this effect is at play, says O’Connor, “teams tend to focus on shared information”, and as a result they have “trouble capitalizing on the diversity of knowledge and expertise in the team”. The very same knowledge and expertise those people were recruited for to begin with. This often leads to poor performance, poor decision-making and missed opportunities for innovation.

John Spencer

In many organizations, the longing for wholeness, more appreciation, a sense of purpose, and – at least to some extent – self-management is noticeable, even in organizations not aware of the Teal or Reinventing Organizations context.

Appreciative Inquiry is a value-oriented change and development process that starts from and is based on creating a safe space in which people feel seen and appreciated as whole human beings. On this basis, they are able to contribute fully, listen into their shared purpose, and create the desired future in a more and more self-managed way.

All three Teal breakthroughs of Wholeness, Evolutionary Purpose, and Self-Management are in-built qualities in the AI processes. And since it is a neutral process, any theme, as well as the breakthroughs themselves, can be addressed as a “core-theme.”

Since AI is such a powerful process and support structure, we want to tell you what this method is and to encourage you to experiment with it.

Jewish-Israelis and Palestinian-Israelis have spent decades in conflict over disputed territories. The mutual distrust and skepticism have built to a point that the two groups struggle to work cooperatively on solving their issues.
But a Stanford-led research team of psychologists found that teaching Jewish-Israeli and Palestinian-Israeli teenagers that groups are generally capable of change—without ever mentioning a specific adversary—can significantly improve their ability to cooperate.


Amit Goldenberg, a graduate student working with psychology professors Carol Dweck and James Gross, was lead author on the paper published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, along with co-authors Kinneret Endevelt, Eran Halperin, and Shira Ran of the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Israel.
“We found that people who believe societies and individuals are capable of change cooperate much better with each other,” Goldenberg said.

Innovation is a team sport. Although creativity is a characteristic that is often used to describe individuals, the idea of the lone genius is a myth. Even famous inventors such as Thomas Edison where in reality representing the ‘work of many men’. Francis Jehl, a longtime assistant of Thomas Edison , used this phrase to describe the group of engineers who worked with Edison at his Menlo Park lab.

On the journey from ideation to a successful product launch, innovation necessitates the interaction of multiple actors, across many departments, with different expertise and knowledge. In writing about the illustrious history of Bell Labs, James Gertner notes that, ‘…almost by definition, a single person or even a single group, could not alone create an innovation. The task [is] too variegated and involved’.

Multidisciplinary collaboration is the stew in which creativity and innovation thrive. Such collaboration creates insights by exposing people to ideas from other disciplines besides their own area of specialization. This creates tremendous opportunities for serendipity. However, even in cross-functional teams, work is ultimately performed by individuals. Each person has to play their part. So how can we get the combined outputs of our teams to be more creative?

Massive tasks or projects have the capacity to strain the limits of any company’s knowledge and resources at times. The CEO must decide if it’s worth spending valuable time and money to tackle something that could dramatically affect the team’s productivity. Often, only an outside third party can knock out those projects and get the company from point A to point B. Finding a third party that can work seamlessly with your own business may seem daunting. But leveraging outside partnerships is often more effective, and less expensive, than taking big projects on yourself.

Do executive leaders always have a clear idea of what powerful collaboration looks like? Do they always understand what it takes to build high-quality, result-focused collaboration between and across teams? What can we learn from Abraham Lincoln when it comes to collaboration? Read mor