Do Your Team Members Like Each Other?
Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D.
Helping talented professionals build their leadership presence. LinkedIn Learning's best-selling video course "Body Language for Leaders" ? Award-winning book "Stand Out: How to Build Your Leadership Presence"
In the 1960s, the University of Michigan psychologist Robert Zajonc demonstrated an important, subconscious relationship that exists between familiarity and “liking.” Zajonc flashed up on a screen a sequence of irregularly shaped octagons, but too fleeting for the subjects watching to consciously register having seen them. He then showed those octagons again at a slower speed, together with a number of new ones, and asked his subjects to say which ones they “liked” best. Zajoc found that without exception they preferred the octagons they had been shown previously, even though they were unaware of having viewed them. He termed this phenomenon “the mere exposure effect.”
What has this to do with collaborative leadership? Plenty.
There are two kinds of knowledge in your organization: Explicit and tacit. Explicit knowledge is information that can be transferred in a document or entered in a database. Accessing tacit knowledge (insights, intuitions, things that “we don’t know we know”) requires a conversation and a relationship. The first building block of that relationship is “the mere exposure effect.” Familiarity increases the likelihood that your team will like one another and feel comfortable enough to share their thoughts and speculations.
To increase the value of face-to-face gatherings: When you hold offsite retreats, organization-wide celebrations, or workplace events, make sure to provide plenty of opportunities for social activities and to schedule frequent and long breaks. The more your team sees each other and interacts in informal ways, the more they will like each other and build the personal bonds that later translate into collaborative success.
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My programs on "Leadership Presence," "Body Language for Leaders," and "Collaborative Leadership" are available for in-person and virtual corporate, government, and association events.
For more information, contact me by phone, 510-206-4085 or email [email protected] . You can download my brochure on?my website: https://carolkinseygoman.com/
My newest book is available on multiple websites and in bookstores. It's on Amazon: STAND OUT: How to Build Your Leadership Presence.
View previews of my LinkedIn Learning video courses: Body Language for Leaders and Collaborative Leadership .
Helping talented professionals build their leadership presence. LinkedIn Learning's best-selling video course "Body Language for Leaders" ? Award-winning book "Stand Out: How to Build Your Leadership Presence"
1 年As a speaker, I am so grateful for in-person opportunities because I can see the difference it makes when engaging with an audience face to face. ??
How important this is to know after covid-lockdowns. In expert work remote-work is to stay after covid and many likes is a lot because of long journeys of work. I really like these face to face -meetings and I often talk for more social meetings.
Clinical Data Science Person | Advancing Healthcare with Expertise in Statistical Programming, Advanced Analytics & AI | Clinical Research and Transplantation Data Specialist
1 年Thank you, Carol for sharing this aspect of a collaborative mindset. Accessing tacit knowledge is a very crucial but also very challenging process. Asking questions, one-on-one meetings, and daily scrums create opportunities to share and make tacit knowledge accessible.