the walls in open plan offices
I recently coached a senior finance leader in a corporate… we were having the early 3 way meeting with her boss and then something they said made me do a double take – I heard them say they sat next to each other – their desks were literally feet apart… and yet for the last nearly an hour we’d been talking about how ‘far’ apart they were, how they were disconnected, and working and talking at cross-purposes… to the extent that my client was disengaged and disempowered and her boss was frustrated and lacking trust in his direct report. And I’d imagined that they must be at least on different floors, if not in different buildings!
Of course one of the things that then quickly emerged was that they needed to have real 1:1 conversations about their work and how they work together… rather than continuing the silent assumption that the brief snatched talking at each other across the desk was actually real dialogue. I came away so struck by this that it made me curious how many other leaders work in open plan offices, ‘near’ their teams or direct reports, and yet have these invisible walls dividing them?
For the (R)evolution of human intelligence
2 年I think there are two kinds of distances between people. One is the physical distance and the other the mental one. To shorten the mental distance, I suggest people share some values such as treating others the way you want to be treated. The more values we share, the closer we are despite physical distances. To avoid getting embarrassed or interrupting colleagues' work in open plan offices, it's better to have a conversation only with the ones related to the talk through messaging software than through vocal organs.
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8 年thanks for all the thought provoking comments everyone, the physical environment certainly impacts on us in many ways with a number of potential unintended consequences
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8 年I have my own office again after the open plan of NHS Manchester. I wonder if open plan has compounded the usual communication problem. Even brief conversations I have with colleagues are at least private and can easily dig deeper quite quickly.in a way that wouldn't if we had open plan. I wonder if the absence of visible walls, removal of which was designed to breakdown the barriers, infact, has the unintended consequences you outline.Having to seek private space for these conversations adds to the formality.
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8 年I once worked in an "open and involving" open plan office, where communication flowed and work got done. With the exception of my direct report, who was also supposed to be training me. She sat right next to me, but insisted on communication by e-mail only. The only "round table" discussions we had were her trying to discredit my work. Our seniors didn't seem able to broach the lack of communication with her. Thankfully she left, and the rest of us got on with the job in harmony.