Opening Doors to Teamwork and Collaboration, livre ebook

Top diversity experts Katz and Miller offer a short, engaging guide to four simple behaviors that fundamentally change the quality and nature of people's workplace interactions, thereby opening doors to more productive interpersonal relationships, greater job satisfaction, and increased organizational success.
Your people might be your organization’s greatest assets, but their interactions with one another are what determine the quality and the quantity of their contributions. Too many neglect this basic truth and fail to create the sense of excitement, energy, and shared mission that occurs when people truly join together.
In this concise, engaging book, Judith Katz and Fred Miller describe four deceptively simple behavioral guidelines that fundamentally change the way people work together:

• Lean into Discomfort: Encourage yourself and others to move beyond comfort zones, speak up, do new things, and grow.
• Listen as an Ally: Work to understand and build on others’ ideas instead of sitting in judgment of them.
• State Your Intent and Intensity: Why make them guess? Let people know how committed you are to your ideas.
• Share Your Street Corners: Actively seek out others’ perspectives to see all sides of the story.

Katz and Miller show exactly how to put each of these behaviors into practice and offer examples demonstrating the extraordinary impact these concepts have had in building greater trust, understanding, and collaboration. This book is for any individual or team from the shop floor to the executive suite in search of higher performance, greater collaboration, and game-changing leaps forward in speed and quality of decision making, problem solving, and the ability to create breakthroughs.
Introduction
4 KEYS THAT CHANGE EVERYTHING
We know this is a BIG statement. These 4 Keys do change every interaction. We have seen it. We have lived it. And yes, we understand why you might be skeptical.
We would doubt such a BIG claim. But we have observed these keys at work in organizations all over the world.
The Keys provide a common language that everyone can use. They are simple and powerful.
KEY #1 LEAN INTO DISCOMFORT
Opening the Door to Trust
KEY #2 LISTEN AS AN ALLY
Opening the Door to Collaboration
KEY #3 STATE YOUR INTENT AND INTENSITY
Opening the Door to Understanding
KEY #4 SHARE YOUR STREET CORNER
Opening the Door to Breakthroughs
KEY #1 OPENS THE DOOR TO TRUST
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Opening this door feels like I am taking a risk, but if I want greater teamwork and collaboration, I need to Lean into the Discomfort I feel in order to get to know you better. How else can we work together? How else can we solve problems and eliminate confusion and wasted effort?
When I Lean into Discomfort I help make it safer to be honest and open with you. As I feel safer and you feel safer, we can open the Door to Trust. Unless I am willing to Lean into Discomfort, the door to those possibilities and potential will remain closed.
KEY #2 OPENS THE DOOR TO COLLABORATION
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When I Listen as an Ally, it enables me to hear what you, my team members and colleagues, are saying, and all of us to build on each other's ideas.
Slowing down to hear you is the key that unlocks the door to collaboration, which results in faster achievement of our goals.
KEY #3 OPENS THE DOOR TO UNDERSTANDING
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When you State Your Intent and Intensity, it helps me, my team members, and my colleagues take the guesswork out of suggestions or directions and opens the door to greater understanding of each other. Stating my Intent and Intensity does the same for you.
As the door to understanding is opened, I see how to contribute more quickly, confidently, and decisively. When I know how best to contribute, I know how to add value; and if you do the same, we can each add greater value. And this combined greater value results in our saving time as we achieve Right First Time interactions.
KEY #4 OPENS THE DOOR TO BREAKTHROUGHS
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When you Share Your Street Corner and I share mine, we learn to hear differences as contributions, rather than as sources of conflict. As we share our different perspectives, we can see the fuller 360-degree view, use our combined resources, and achieve breakthroughs none of us could have envisioned or accomplished alone.
By using all 4 Keys, the doors to trust, collaboration, and understanding are opened, and the door to breakthroughs unlocks.
Using the 4 Keys Starts with Joining
Judging or Joining? Every interaction begins with this critical decision, and it impacts everything that follows. We do it so quickly and automatically that we are usually not even aware of it.
When I meet you, do I join you-see you as a friend, an ally, someone on the same side of the table? Or do I judge you-size you up, wonder if you are someone not to be trusted, engage cautiously with you, and deny you the benefit of the doubt?
If I decide to join you, I treat you as someone worthy of respect. I listen, am open, extend trust, share information. I am willing to have honest and perhaps difficult conversations. I seek to learn from you. I give you the benefit of the doubt.
If I truly want to open doors to teamwork and collaboration, I need to start by seeing what I could gain from joining you.
Rather than believing I am better off going it alone, I begin to believe that the best way to succeed is through partnership and collaboration. And by joining you, I am investing in our partnership with the expectation that we will connect and together do great things.
If we begin by truly joining, we have the ability to open many doors and unlock the potential and power each of us can bring to the team and to the larger organization. But we have heard others say
Joining is difficult.
It is hard to trust others and to earn their trust.
It is hard to listen to others, especially when they
are not saying things I want or expect to hear.
It is hard to define my intentions clearly
when others aren't defining theirs.
And it is very, very hard to actively seek out and
support perspectives that are different from my own
to make sure all Street Corners are heard from.
We used to think these things too.
But when we began to observe the 4 Keys in action, we noticed that people quickly made them a way of life in their organizations-and in their personal lives as well. People actually like to practice these simple Keys; and when used, these 4 Keys change Everything. We invite you to join us as we open new doors.
Foreword by Willie A. Deese
Welcome to Opening Doors
Introduction: 4 Keys That Change EVERYTHING
1. Opening the Door to Trust Key #1: Lean into Discomfort
2. Opening the Door to Collaboration Key #2: Listen as an Ally
3. Opening the Door to Understanding Key #3: State Your Intent and Intensity
4. Opening the Door to Breakthroughs Key #4: Share Your Street Corner
Last Words: Our Hopes and Dreams
Acknowledgments
About the Authors