PREFACE
Radical Collaboration teaches practical methods to significantly improve your skills for building collaborative relationships. The training and research reported in this book present a clear case that collaborative skills can be learned quickly and easily. This book is based on research that documents dramatic improvements in both individual skills and organizational culture that can have a powerful impact on effectiveness. Many participants began with working relationships that were ineffective, adversarial, and nontrusting. Their relationships were transformed into effective, cooperative, and trusting partnerships. For example, research1 based upon data supplied by the State of California Public Employment Relations Board, where Jim was a senior administrative law judge and San Francisco regional director, showed:
Almost one hundred organizations reduced their conflict2 by an average rate of 67 percent.
The ten most troubled organizations at the start of the project reduced their conflict by an average rate of 85 percent over three years.
Research conducted by Professor Mayte Barba, a director of Business Administration Studies at Universidad Tec de Monterrey in Cuernavaca, Mexico,3 showed:
Over a six-year period, individuals from nine countries reported they reduced their own defensiveness in conflicts by half and were 45 percent more effective at getting their interests met in conflicts using the skills in this book.
Participants also reported significant gains in their ability to build and maintain climates of trust.
Research conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, Institute of Industrial Relations,4 showed:
Prior to the training, 70 percent of participants characterized their working relationship as adversarial. After sixteen months, less than 1 percent said it was adversarial.
Individuals also reported significant gains in raising trust levels and reducing the impact of adversarial attitudes in relationships.
The long-term sustainability of the benefits reported in this research demonstrates that these skills are not just another flavor of the month. This research is outlined in more detail in appendix 1.
The book is also based upon a heavily researched theory of interpersonal relationships and team compatibility called FIRO theory. FIRO stands for Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation and was created by Dr. Will Schutz5 when the U.S. Navy asked him to conduct research on understanding and predicting how groups work together, particularly in stressful situations. The research provided a wealth of information about how to improve the effectiveness of teams. In his research,6 for example, if randomly selected new teams were successful 50 percent of the time, using FIRO theory to focus on team compatibility increased that success rate to 75 percent. In today’s business environment that is so dependent on ever-changing project teams, that is a remarkable increase in effectiveness. In chapters 7 and 8 you’ll have the opportunity to take the FIRO Element B assessment online and learn the application of this research to your relationships.
We also base this book on our collective seventy years of firsthand experience helping people turn conflict into collaboration, on what we’ve learned from generous sharing by workshop participants over the past fifteen years, and the teaching and writing of Will Schutz and Roger Fisher.7 Knowing that these collaborative skills can be learned quickly, we give readers five essential skills that are necessary for successfully building long-term relationships. By learning the skills offered in this book, you can become more effective at building collaborative relationships. Because teams, businesses, and organizations
live or die based upon the effectiveness of relationships, learning these skills will result in a dramatic and measurable impact on the bottom line.
Radical Collaboration is divided into two main areas, the first focusing on the internal and the second on the external. Chapters 1 to 9 focus on the interpersonal skills essential for collaborative relationships. Chapters 10 to 17 focus on collaborative problem-solving strategies and methodologies that are necessary to succeed with the outside world.
We hope this book will give readers a clear picture of the terrain they must navigate and the skills they need to acquire on their way to building wildly successful collaborative relationships.
Jim W. Tamm
Ron J. Luyet