Connecting us
We know the importance of networks. Some well-known networks as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest are networks where we connect with people or organizations whom we want to follow to learn or share about something that interests us. Recently, an unexpected network was caused by the outbreak of a virus that emerged in a city in China, spreading to millions of people around the world. This shows us that even without knowing each other, all humans can connect with each other.
In my experience, find clients, sell a product, find a competent lawyer, or hiring the right people, we can take enough time if we don’t build trustworthy connections around of us. Even I have found specialist lawyers, accountants or hired people due to connections with people I trust.
Havey Mackay in his book Dig Your Well Before You Are Thirsty, “No matter how smart you are, no matter how talented you are, you can’t do this alone.” This means that in a relationship 2 people will always be better than 1 person. Some examples, a seller needs a buyer, an architect needs a builder, a builder needs a painter. In the same way, to build a software product, a Technical Leader needs developers on his team, and Users need a Product Owner to specify a product.
I was allocated as a Project Manager of a work team that they had been working for about 1 year and 6 months. They have been building Financial software with the involvement of different areas and roles, whose members are distributed in several countries: Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. That means different languages, time zone and cultures.
After various conversations and meetings with the team members, I found misunderstanding, unpunctual meetings, discomfort in some members, and quality problems in the construction of the software product. My purpose was to remove these impediments to close the project. It had a delay compared to the initial plan and an extra cost for the organization. Being the new member in a cell or work team with these characteristics requires empathy with the members of the work team to generate reliable connections.
Reviewing my toolbox, I found that I had participated in a webinar made with people from different Latin American countries. In this, there was a practice whose focus is to create empathy to generate close relationships, breaking the professional, hierarchical and cultural walls and they get to know each other. Its name is Personal Maps practice.
If you want to know about this practice, I invite you to visit the following link.
The objective of the practice is to generate close relationships between team members to help increase communication and create empathy in a trustworthy connection knowing different aspects of our personal lives.
Below you can see the steps:
Elaboration. The Personal Maps is a practice to explore different aspects of each member of the team, to represent them graphically in a mind map. This Personal Map was prepared in the Miro Collaboration tool for each of the team members.
Some of the aspects to explore that I chose were: Values, Family, Home, Education, Work, Hobbies and Goals. Please, keep in mind that the order could be random and new aspects could be included. An example:
Then, I sent an invitation for preparing the participants by email requesting to turn on the camera in Zoom and looking for a day and time. It would generate space for exploration.
As part of the preparation, I made my personal map to share as an example of the practice.
Exploration. A time of 10 minutes was established to write what each member voluntarily wanted to share with each other, depending on the aspect. Two important considerations were made:
· Each member could respectfully ask about those aspects that we want to inquire about that person. The maximum time to explore was 1 minute.
· Each person had the right to reserve the information they want for themselves, the idea is to protect the privacy of each person.
Realization. The practice began with my personal presentation using my personal map in a natural and informal conversation. For this step, a maximum time of 4 minutes was defined.
Reflection. After the presentation of the last participant, I opened a time of 3 minutes in order to share what the team members learned from this practice.
For this practice, the Leaders of the areas did not participate.
Now, as a facilitator, I learned that the members did not really know the personal aspects of those co-workers with whom they interacted day-to-day during more than 1 year. This broke down professional, cultural and communication barriers.
Some of the learnings mentioned by the team were:
· The team learned that people are who made the projects.
· The team learned that we have diversity in culture, education, nationality and languages. For that, we think and act differently.
· Some members learned although they had been working on the project for over 1.5 years, they did not know each other enough as they thought.
· The team learned that we are focused on the same aim, although we are diverse in culture, personal history, education and dreams.
· The team learned that there are common and different values as a person, understanding why each person thinks, speaks in meetings or writes an email in a particular way.
· Some members of the team found that they shared the same passion for music, riding a bike, or watching the same types of movies or series.
· Some learned that we have dreams that we want to achieve for ourselves and our families.
Below some of my experiments for the next practice:
· My next experiment with this practice will be to open a space for each person to tell what they know about a member of the team, at the beginning of the “Realization” step.
· Another next experiment with this practice will be to add other aspects such as movies, languages, trips or books.
For the next facilitation, I want to invite the Leaders of the areas participating in the project.
Regarding the results got by the team, here are the following:
o The team members found new tools and practices to improve remote communication.
o The team members opened space to comment on their personal and family situations, showing that the mental barriers were removed.
o Some team members scheduled bike outings for the weekend, showing the connection among them.
o Some members share their views, discuss them respectfully, and analyze to make the best decision as a team.
o We noticed that we were interested in learning English. For that reason, we experimented with making some meetings in English.
Dear Reader, if this is the first time you read about these practices, I encourage you to use remote tools like Miro or Mural. If you want to make the activity face-to-face, you could use blank sheets, colors, markers and pens. If you want to make remotely, you can use Webex, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams.
If you know about Management 3.0 practices, I encourage you to experiment with this practice, it is a simple and natural way for each member to introduce themselves and tell about who they really are, what they like, what their family is like, what are your dreams.
Lastly, I want to invite you to use the Personal Maps practice to generate close and empathetic connections with a wonderful relationship between the members of your teams, this is connecting us.
