Stories

Tag: Encourage collaboration and team learning

  • Mind the gap

    Mind the gap

    How do we establish a mentoring relationship? What do we do when we identify a knowledge or performance gap in a colleague? This is a sensitive issue. Pointing to a gap is more likely to lead to a productive process when mutual trust is a pre-existing condition.

    When we mentor a colleague, we rely on our relationships as peers and our shared values. We deploy a range of context-specific approaches.

    We use sophisticated strategies to provide support while respecting silo boundaries, personal pride, and limitations circumscribed by institutional culture.

    When we establish a mentoring relationship, we take a careful, considered approach, respectful of the other person’s experience and context.

    Developing mentoring is easier in smaller teams.

    Because the concept of “mentoring” implies different levels of experience, we emphasize mutual support between peers.

    One recurring gap is the lack of knowledge or experience in the organization or industry. Those of us who have a long affiliation feel a responsibility to induct “outsiders” to the values and practices we share.

    We feel responsible to our colleagues, whether or not they are our direct reports. Our ability to collaborate is improved when we help others address gaps.

    Photo: Under the Bridge (Kim Hill/flickr.com)

  • Being mentored

    Being mentored

    Mentor was the name of the adviser of the young Telemachus in Homer’s Odyssey. A mentor is an experienced and trusted advisor. In the workplace, mentoring usually involves providing counsel to colleagues. Mentoring relationships may be purely informal one-offs or imply a deeper investment for both mentor and mentee. For mentoring relationships to deepen and become sustainable requires mutual identification and recognition.

    The organization does not currently formally prescribe or support mentoring. And, for some of us, at times we have had to find our own way because there was no one to turn to for guidance or support. Yet, most of us can recall how support, counsel and advice received from more experienced colleagues both helped collaboration and furthered our individual development. By exploring when and how we received mentoring, we can better envision how the organization might be able to recognize and support it.

    Line managers may be de facto mentors, although this role overlaps in complex ways with the guidance, direction and leadership as well as evaluation and feedback they are responsible for. When our line manager takes the time to provide context and explanation, we find this helpful. Unlike other relationships with colleagues, which require prior negotiation, turning to your line manager for guidance and support is perceived as legitimate. And, in fact, in our resource-scarce context, there is often no one else to turn to.

    Some of us find mentors amongst our external partners as well as trusted colleagues and friends who may in completely different areas of work. Such mentoring relationships with people outside our immediate work environment provide additional benefits by connecting us to other ways of thinking and doing.

    Photo: Chinese Garden of Friendship in Sydney Australia (Ajith/flickr.com)

  • Onboarding

    Onboarding

    How do we get newcomers onboard?

    Onboarding refers to the mechanism through which new staff acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and behaviors to become effective “insiders” of the organization.

    The organization’s onboarding process, for most us, was very informal and lacked structure, except for various administrative tasks. We know that there are no shortcuts, given the amount and complexity of tacit knowledge that is difficult to transfer. When we started working in the team, we may have found gaps in our knowledge, skills, or experience – including ones that no one could foresee or expect.

    Efforts to formalize onboarding inevitably run into the same difficulties as formal training. When a person arrives in a role, there are likely to be urgencies to attend to. In the process of dealing with these, newcomers have to establish themselves, begin building relationships with others, and make sense of the complexities of the workplace, often on their own (as everyone else is supportive but simply too busy).

    This points to issues at the level of the organization (beyond the team) around succession planning and handover. For example, the budget for a post does not allow for the new hire to shadow outgoing staff, and there is no established mechanism to ensure a comprehensive handover.

    Gaps in technical knowledge are possible, but less likely than gaps in “understanding how everything works together and the procedures and so on”. Other gaps will appear over time. Yet onboarding is a repetitive process, some gaps can be identified ahead of time, and there is a tangible benefit to abandoning the prevailing sink-or-swim” approach.

    Photo: Boarding Royal Carribean’s Vision of the Seas in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (Light Nomad/flickr.com)

  • Mentoring

    Mentoring

    Fostering relationships that enable and sustain collaboration and inquiry requires building trust about both technical competencies and each person’s interest in dialogue.

    Therefore, two contexts require special attention. First, when newcomers come onboard to the team, they may or may not be familiar with the general organizational context or the specific working conditions. This requires thinking through how they are brought on board (“onboarding”). Second, when a performance gap is identified, in-service coaching and mentoring may be considered, especially if stopping work is not a possibility or the gap covers tacit knowledge that is not taught formally.

    Although coaching and mentoring require specialized skills, most of us recognize that the mentoring and support we receive helps develop our capabilities. Having received support, we are also willing to provide it, with or without institutional support. When we identify a gap in knowledge, skills or experience in a new colleague, how do we provide support to address this? When and how do we mentor colleagues?

    Yet, like other dimensions of informal learning, mentoring may no longer be assumed to “just happen”. Despite our recognition of its importance, it is seldom included in formal tools such as job descriptions or performance reviews that are supposed to identify competencies, experience and achievements. This needs to change.

    Photo:  Benjamin West, Calypso’s Reception of Telemachus and Mentor (Daniel Reinberg/flickr.com)

  • Encourage collaboration and team learning

    Encourage collaboration and team learning

    Our areas of work are siloed due to limited resources and time, the huge scope of our global mandate, the high level of specialization required, and internal politics. Collaboration and learning as a team (beyond the unit level) requires leadership and concerted effort. It is hard to sustain over time.

    Yet, to collaborate we build, sustain and renew many individual relationships based on trust and need. These are much less subject to fluctuations in our environment. We may get to know each other and become friends first, perhaps because we work next to each other in the office, share lunch or coffee breaks, or engage in the same activities outside of work. Being in the field together is a powerful accelerator. We also share the commitment to the mission, despite our frustrations with the here and now. This is how, on one level, we come to establish trust, by being human together. For collaboration to lead to results, the quality of human relationships is a critical factor. “Good colleagues” are those whom we trust.

    On another level, we learn to be careful given the volatility of our environment. Perhaps we first test the waters of both technical and collaboration competencies by asking for input on a concept paper or inviting a colleague to contribute to a meeting. We observe how they behave to determine how and to what extent we can collaborate with them – and how much value can come from collaboration. Only then can we begin to be transparent with each other to achieve shared understanding.

    What about those of us who are not technical experts, but provide support, for example, for planning, project development, learning or communication? Negotiating collaborative learning is a necessity. Asking questions of others is legitimized by the recognition that your own expertise is in another area of work.

    Even though much of relationship building depends on the behaviors of individuals, our organization can do much to provide an enabling environment to foster dialogue and collaboration. We also need to rethink the rules of engagement that, in some cases, provide the appearance of consensus but slow our ability to identify and tackle a problem.

    Photo: Synchronicity of Color (DWPittard/flickr.com).