Lived Life Differences, Style Differences & Innovation Teams
Robert Eckert
What might happen??? -When you decrease the friction that impedes innovation & productivity in your organization? Good things, for sure. Let's do that together. Training? Facilitation? OD guidance? I've got your back.
This article is adapted from "More Lightning, Less Thunder: How to Energize Innovation Teams" written by Jonathan Vehar and Bob Eckert.
Brace yourself. We're going to rock your world with this amazing factoid: people are different. No! Wait! What? Yes, it's true!!
And while we may know that intellectually, sometimes it's hard to be actively conscious of it when someone we're working with (or trying to work with) is acting in a way that is opposite of the way that we would act. Or think. Or be. We have different backgrounds. We live in different social pods. Our gender identity, race, skin pigment, familial wealth, access to education – you name it – these things all create different lived life experiences, and can be leveraged to foment friction and discord, or they can be leveraged to create better solutions to complex problems and create more innovation success. Gee, which would you prefer? You know our answer.
?There are so many different ways to express personal style. There are so many different dimensions of lived life experience that we can go crazy trying to figure out just how different or similar people are. And how to work well in and among all of those unique perspectives.
Consider just some of the different ways of looking at personality differences from a psychological theory perspective:
?We all know that there is no one right way to be, right? Even if you are an Introverted-paradigm-strengthening-implementing-feeling-rule-making-low-energy-auditory-cerebral-vicarious- public-displayer-of-affection-fighter-who-reads-in-the bathroom, there is at least some value to other perspectives.
Yet it's so easy to find ourselves frustrated by people who, for whatever reason, don't see things the way we do. They insist on doing/seeing it their way and we insist on doing/seeing it our way. So tension results.
Unnecessarily.
Yup, get this: Tension and conflict are not inevitable, but we need to design organizational cultures differently if we want tension to lead to fun, and more innovative success, vs conflict and waste. We've written about energizing humility and curiosity extensively, so setting our thoughts on that aside temporarily....
One of our former bosses used to want to know everything about the situation, while we were busy suggesting strategies to be implemented. One of our former colleagues needed to see all ideas in writing before making a decision, while we hated "wasting" the time to write the memo. Were they wrong? No.
Were we wrong? Of course not.
Yet is commonly friction between the styles and viewpoints derived from different lived experiences.
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Until we realize what's going on. And see that there might be something good to come out of listening. Out of empathy, out of the insights derived from a lived experience that is different from our own.
Only when we realize that we're bumping up against differences that might be a font of innovation or the seed of a more robust solution, only then we can begin to make headway on moving forward and working together productively.
When you and the ‘other’ person can become aware of the style differences, and “lived life experience” differences, then you can begin to lubricate the friction by cooperating in helping the other person work in their preferred style while you work in your preferred style to become more and more effective in your work together. You can create a pathway to excellence by fully utilizing the wisdom that comes from diverse life experiences, all of which have useful insights to bring to the table. But only if they are welcomed and nurtured in a way that works for them.
And, please, get this. From me, a cis-het 65-year-old upper-middle-class white guy with a great private education: Those of us who have been more in the majority need to do more welcome-wagon work than others. Full stop. Sorry, not sorry. And for those of us willing to do so, inclusively, we’ll share leadership and success in the new post-pandemic economy and world. Stubborn, entitled folks will not.
Bottom line for those who take this message to heart: Look out Innovation Team, here we come!
Utilizing Different Perspectives on the Team
Just as different styles on a team have the potential of causing friction, so too do these style differences offer the possibility of profound insights and discoveries. Imagine the power of two people with opposite ways of doing things approaching a task, compared to two people with the same way of looking at it. Which will create new insights? Which will create synergies never seen before?
There is huge opportunity potential in having people get new insights by looking at things in new and different ways. One way to make this happen is to pair up opposites on a project. Or to make sure that for every yin in the group there's a yang.
Jerry Hirshberg of Nissan Design International used to hire car designers in pairs who are very different in order to generate creative tension.
Another way to do that is to assign "roles" to team members: designate a provocateur, a rule-finder, a heretic, a synthesizer, an organizer, a disrupter, or whatever function is needed to shake up the group. Either through disruption or through synthesis. By messing things up or tidying things. By drawing pictures or putting them into words.
Ask your team, "What are we good at?" More important, ask yourselves, "What don't we do well?" By focusing on what are the deficits, you can begin the process of actively searching out ways to compensate for them. That could mean a new person or someone who is responsible for paying attention to that deficiency...for a day, for the week, for the duration of the project.
Not only will that cause growth for the team, but also for the person. Sounds like a bonus!
?We envision a future world where high levels of diversity, equity & inclusion is the most common pattern, rather than the thing we have to yet strive for. Why? Because in full careers of helping humans solve problems, at every level of complexity, we have learned…
?ONE ABSOLUTE TRUTH: The more diversely experienced the minds working cooperatively to develop a solution, the better that solution will be.