Insights Must Be Private and Positive

Before we proceed it's important to mention the critical importance of privacy. Team members should not feel like they are being monitored or unjustly scrutinized. Collaboration insights are only intended to enable teams to improve how they work together and to create fun, safe spaces. In particular, collaboration insights at the individual level should never be reported outside of the individuals.

But even further, a system for collaboration insights must employ all the controls necessary to avoid negative applications of these insights. It's also important to avoid creating any metrics that simplify the complexity and nuance of collaboration to a simple score that can be interpreted as “good” versus “bad.”

Team Assessments

Tools for measuring individual psychological profiles—such as Myers‐Briggs, Clifton StrengthsFinder, DiSC, Big 5, and similar scales—abound. Through assessments, it's possible to start to understand the personality types within a group. An identity for the team can then be determined as a “personality,” which is an aggregate of the energies of the personalities in the group.

Knowing this, the team can begin to consider how it might balance strengths and weaknesses, but also how to best solve problems together and interact with each other in general.

Consider a team in which members are likely to hold their opinions tightly and find debate as the best way to resolve issues. This particular team also has a balance of personalities that prefer teamwork and those that need to feel part of the group. A collaboration designer should consider equal amounts of synchronous and asynchronous interactions to get the most out of this group.

An enneagram is a popular model of the human psyche represented as a typology of interconnected personality types. The enneagram model is generally attributed to Oscar Ichazo, a Bolivian philosopher, though it potentially has roots going back to the 4th century. Ichazo found there are nine ways a person's ego becomes fixed in their psyche; these are represented by nine archetypes:

1. The Reformer. This type represents an idealistic, principled personality. They tend to be purposeful, self‐controlled, and perfectionists by nature.
2. The Helper. These people are caring and generous. They tend to be people‐pleasers, too.
3. The Achiever. As the name suggests, this type is success‐oriented, but in a pragmatic manner. They are also adaptive and image conscious to the point of being vain.
4. The Individualist. Sensitivity and introversion characterize this type. The individualist can also be dramatic, temperamental, and self‐absorbed.
5. The Investigator. This personality type is intense, perceptive, and innovative. But they might also be secretive and isolated.
6. The Loyalist. Often committed, security oriented, and engaging, this type can also be anxious and suspicious.
7. The Enthusiast. This type is characterized by fun‐loving, spontaneous behavior. Enthusiasts are known for being busy and versatile but also distracted and somewhat scatterbrained.
8. The Challenger. Powerful, dominating, and self‐confident, this type tends to be decisive and willful, while also being confrontational at times.
9. The Peacemaker. This personality type is easygoing, receptive, and agreeable for the most part, but also complacent.

These types are not exclusive. Any one person may have a dominant personality archetype but act like others in different situations.

Another existing framework to draw from is Dawna Markova and Angie McArthur's notion of thinking talents, found in their book Collaborative Intelligence (2015). These are the particular talents individuals excel at and enjoy applying to problem‐solving. We all have some thinking talent.

Through extensive research, Markova and McArthur have identified 35 talents mapped into 4 separate categories: analytical, innovative, procedural, and relational. Overlaying the dominant talents of an entire team can reveal key strengths and weaknesses.

Understanding the individual profiles of team members is important, but we can also look at the behavior profile of a team as a unit. By recognizing different styles of different teams, collaboration designers can better steer conversations.

For instance, if an aggregate team profile indicates that one team is more process oriented or analytical than another, it might be more beneficial to have that team lead in early stages of innovation. Other teams stronger in planning and execution might be better to lead at later stages.

We find the work of Patrick Lencioni particularly useful for both assessing team collaboration and changing it. In his 2005 book Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Lencioni maps out a complete process for assessment and change program in several steps.

It begins with an initial survey on a series of questions that map to Lencioni's five dysfunctions: absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results. A score for each of these areas based on the survey results then tells the team where to focus. In a team workshop, these scores are shared so the group is aligned.

Next, Lencioni proposes a series of target activities to address the weaker dimensions. If trust is an issue, for example, there is an exercise for team members to form deeper connections by sharing personal histories. Each person gives some details of their background (where they grew up, how many siblings they have, what challenges they faced, etc.). Others then indicate something new they learned about others on the team.

At the end of the workshop, participants commit to changing an aspect of collaboration. Each member declares what they will work on and how they intend to address any identified dysfunctions. The key is to make the entire exercise something that people feel accountable for.

Team Network Analysis

Learning about existing patterns of collaboration can reveal actionable insights. By initiating collaboration assessments, like an enneagram test, you can identify strengths of team members and put together winning teams. But there are tools that can go far beyond finding combinations of people for teams that work best.

Rob Cross is one of the leading voices in the field of network analysis. He's identified patterns that correspond to six different types of dysfunction within teams, which can be identified with anonymized personal information. ²

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  Hub‐and‐spoke. Decision‐making is centralized, and leaders become bottlenecks to collaboration, thereby slowing creativity and innovation.
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  Disenfranchised team members. Some members are marginalized, reducing the diversity of perspectives and contributions. Engagement and retention may trend downward for the whole team.
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  Misaligned team members. Factions form within the team, often leading to different “camps” or approaches to problem‐solving and decision‐making. The environment may become toxic, reducing overall team success.
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  Overwhelmed members. Team members can't keep up with the collaboration demands of the team, leading to inefficiencies, compromises, and burnout.
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  Isolated team members. A subset of members block input from others in an impermeable group within the team. Decision‐making becomes uninformed and there is a general misalignment.
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  Priority overload. External demands distract team members from their focus areas. Competing priorities result in work overload that affects quality and timely delivery. This pattern eventually leads to burnout.

Once you know these patterns exist, you can work toward concrete solutions. To resolve issues with a hub‐and‐spoke dysfunction, leaders can delegate more of the work and the decision‐making while increasing the amount of coaching they give. With disenfranchised‐ or isolated‐members dysfunctions, increasing the visibility of a team's work while deliberately forming better connections and building relationships both inside and outside the group can be a productive path forward.

Collaboration Feedback

Can you imagine playing a musical instrument and not being able to hear what you're playing right away? You'd sit down with a guitar and pluck a string, but there would be a delay of several seconds before it made a sound. And some of the notes wouldn't be heard at all. This is what is currently happening to all of us as we collaborate in teams. We don't get a good sense of how things are going as we work together.

Providing feedback to teams as they collaborate can allow them to change their behavior for the better in near real time. Collaboration insights like this can not only inform effectiveness at a macro level across departments, they can also help teams improve on a team level in the moment.

Let's say you're in a meeting and you notice one person seems to be talking much less than others. We've all experienced similar situations, where the louder voices dominate the conversation and drown out folks.

Now, imagine that instead of your subjective experience, you could actually see how long everyone on a call is actually taking the mic. There are plugins for Zoom that do exactly that. Based on participation in a meeting, the app can calculate and report back how much time each person talks. Of course, in some situations there may be a natural imbalance—for instance, if someone is giving a presentation. Like any insights, these results require interpretation.

At the simplest level, there are basic insights about teamwork we can gather from collaboration feedback. First, we can see how the group interacted and engaged with each other: How many people were involved? Was it synchronous or asynchronous collaboration or a mix? What tools, documents, and formats were used?

It's also possible to look at the materials the team has created together. Who added what content and how much? How many ideas were generated with the group together? With basic computations, it's possible to aggregate data in real time. For instance, during a clustering exercise, teams could see how many items are being added to clusters.

More sophisticated types of content‐based feedback is also imaginable. For instance, sentiment analysis—algorithmically detecting the tone of text passages—of content generated could show if the mood is positive or negative.

Paired with visualizations of content, insights for collaboration in the moment can have a powerful effect. Groupings of tagged content, for example, can show novel patterns that teams literally couldn't see in other forms and formats.

Finally, there are also cumulative collaboration insights to consider. For instance, after a workshop the team can provide feedback about how well methods were employed. A collaboration designer might get basic anonymized, aggregated analytics about the amount of content generated or overall team engagement throughout the session. This then directly informs the design of subsequent sessions as the collaboration designer engages in a continual effort to improve the team's collaboration over time.

This type of cumulative roll‐out of teamwork also helps sharing the output of collaboration with others. More often than not, there is some reduction of decisions and conclusions a team agrees on that gets integrated into other materials or shared with other stakeholders. Having post‐synthesis summaries of teamwork along with content reviews helps keep the momentum going and connect teams with each other. People can start to see whom they work more closely with, what types of work they did together, and who else was involved.

Ultimately, it's about changing behavior. Using these insights like a group Fitbit, teams can see how well they are working together in the moment. And collaboration designers can see how a group participates and responds so they can design better collaboration experiences. Groups can then respond and improve.

Make Time To Reflect

The point of assessing team dynamics is to be able to reflect and improve. This is often best done as a group. Sure, collaboration designers can use assessment insights to build the right cohorts of people for a given project, but connection really happens when the outputs are discussed together as a group.

We recommend sharing team assessment outcomes and creating sessions for the team to reflect. These can be at key points in a team's formation or as a way to learn at the end of an effort.

Getting a sense of how your team is operating doesn't have to be elaborate and sophisticated. It's not group therapy. Some of the best gains, we've found, come from regular, ongoing check‐ins and touchpoints that allow a team to openly discuss how things are going.

For instance, the staff at the Rotterdam Eye Hospital³ improved patient care and raised staff morale with the “stop light” exercise, a simple technique that takes 10 minutes a day. Staff teams gathered together and discussed two questions on a daily basis:

• What's your mood today? Team members rate their own mood as green (I'm good), orange (I'm OK, with some concerns) or red (I'm under stress).
• Is there anything the team should know to work better together? This can include things like delays in public transportation or special events happening at the facility.

Scores for patient safety rose as a direct result of these simple moments of reflection, and caregiver job satisfaction has improved from 8.0 to 9.2 on a 10‐point scale.

Designing these moments into your everyday interactions goes a long way to increasing the relational intelligence of your teams because lasting, meaningful connection is something that is best fostered over time. And evidence suggests that regular reflection is the best way to foster team connection and improve performance.

Identifying Organizational Collaboration Challenges

Collaboration as a field of study is complex and multifaceted. No one point of insight will give a complete picture. The principles outlined in Chapter 1 are a good starting point. Reflect on each of those to understand your organization's beliefs around collaboration.

Next, take stock of your current investment in collaboration and the resources teams have:

• Do you actively develop collaboration skills?
• Are you well equipped for all modes of collaboration (in‐person, remote, hybrid, async, etc.)?
• Do you have a common set of methods and workflows to guide collaboration?
• Is collaboration openly discussed and improved in communities of practice?
• Are you able to gauge collaboration effectiveness across teams?
• Do you have broad systems and platforms to support collaboration both internally and externally?

Finally, you want to reflect on actual collaboration competencies and behaviors that exist in your organization, generally speaking. We find it helpful to look across categories of themes and topics for a holistic view. We evaluate collaboration competencies in two large areas:

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  Relational capabilities. Do teams trust and respect each other? Is there psychological safety to speak up and contribute? Do your teams strive to include diverse perspectives? Are people listening to and empathetic with one another? Is there a high degree of emotional intelligence in team interaction?
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  Strategic capabilities. Do teams in your organization know their shared purpose? Are team members aligned around a clear vision? Are roles and responsibilities defined and dependencies understood? Can teams operate effectively in different modes of collaboration? Is there alignment between decision‐making and actions? Do teams have momentum and continuity in interactions with each other? Is there both strong collaboration leadership and followership?

To arrive at a strategic view of collaboration in your organization, you first have to collect insights about how people currently collaborate. Ideally, feedback will come from a variety of sources. Consider these different types of input to start assessing collaboration effectiveness in your teams:

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  Observations. As the famous baseball player Yogi Berra once said, “You can observe a lot by just watching.” But when was the last time you just observed a team collaborating in your organization? Being a “fly on the wall” can reveal some of the most profound insights about how teams collaborate. Make an unobtrusive form of field research a regular part of your collaboration assessments. It's quite simple: Assuming the role of an objective bystander, observe how teams collaborate, both in real time and asynchronously. Simply sit in on meetings and monitor communication channels for a short period of time, making notes as you watch.
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  Listening Sessions. Hold group discussions about collaboration. This can be done team by team, or you can assemble a panel of people across teams. Lead a discussion with targeted prompts about collaboration experiences. Ask participants to provide specific details. Use open‐ended questions like, “Remember a time in the recent past where working with teams went wrong. What happened? Where was the trouble exactly? What should have happened in an ideal situation?” In an hour‐long session, you'll likely gain awareness of issues that would not have otherwise surfaced in meetings with just a handful of people.
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  Surveys. Consider how more direct questions about collaboration and teams can be added to employee‐engagement surveys. Otherwise, a separate survey on the state of collaboration will provide the best identification of the deepest issues to address. Unless your plan includes a full collaboration audit, generally only a few key questions are needed to provide a wealth of insight. Here, rather than open‐ended or yes/no questions, we find scales are a good way of requesting feedback.

Organizational Network Analysis

By analyzing networks of collaborators, we're able to gather insights about collaboration across departments and organizations. This network analysis also includes a look at the types of activities and methods people are using for a deeper focus on teamwork. A network analysis diagram shows aggregate patterns across an organization.

With the bulk of teamwork happening in digital tools, we're able to find patterns in metrics and analytics that can be directly used to improve collaboration performance across teams. These patterns of interaction can help us identify both “hot spots” and outliers in collaborative activities.

For instance, network analysis can identify collaboration silos and help address them at the organization level. Knowing which teams are collaborating most and with which other teams, collaboration designers can craft a series of methods to close the gap. If network analysis finds that sales teams aren't collaborating with product, for instance, team‐building methods could be deployed to create connections, followed by a customer‐journey mapping workshop to look at concrete actions each team can take to deliver a better customer experience.

In a Harvard Business Review article, researchers Paul Leonardi and Noshir Contractor detail the “silo signature,” their term for an indication that one group is disconnected from others.⁶ They show other insights that can be drawn from collaboration data, including an “efficiency signature” that highlights which teams are most likely to complete projects on time. These teams are well connected both internally with each other and externally with others in the organization.

Even more sophisticated, an “innovation signature” can predict which teams will innovate effectively. This pattern shows teams with broad, nonoverlapping social networks that provide diverse input and ideas while being well connected but not tightly knit. Too much interaction within a team results in similar ways of thinking and less discord—something needed to spark new ideas.