We help leaders and teams collaborate better.
Developing the leadership capability to engage others in collaborative conversations for enhanced business results
Photo by Samson on Unsplash
An Interactive Online/ Face-to-Face Training
SPACEnotGAP
Conversations
The SPACEnotGAP Conversations Training Program aims to equip participants with the necessary mindsets and skills to engage others in collaborative conversations to resolve a problematic situation and make progress toward a common objective.
In particular, it aims to strengthen their capabilities to:
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Connect with others in a productive way, even in conflict situations
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Create openness towards differences and reflectiveness to pay heed to one’s assumptions and bias for generating more possibilities
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Identify & synergize diverse and paradoxical perspectives to create better options
The Program includes 7 modules (or 7 three-hour live training sessions) designed to strengthen the participants’ competencies to engage others in effective collaboration based on the following framework.
“Psychological Safety was by far the most important of the five key dynamics we found, It’s the underpinning of the other four.”
Julia Rozovsky
The five key to a successful Google team
Managing Complexity & Collaboration
Seeing
the value of
collaborating with others
in this complex
and diverse world
The increasing complexity of leadership challenges requires leaders to engage a diverse group of people in collaborative conversations and actions.
Expanded perspective and engaged participation are required to co-create & co-execute effective solutions to deal with the adaptive challenges in this complex and diverse world.
Module 1 - Managing Complexity
Different work contexts require different type of teamwork. The difference between complicated and complex work contexts and related team-functioning is explored.
Participants review the nature of their own leadership challenges and identify areas where they need to collaborate with others instead of only relying on one’s own subject expertise and experience.
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Understanding Complexity
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Adaptive Challenges & Teamwork
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Coordination, Cooperation and Collaboration
Building Psychological Safety
Creating
the emotional space
needed for team members to take interpersonal risks and express diverse points of view
Based on researches, psychological safety is highly correlated with the effectiveness and performance of teams. It is because team members’ willingness to take interpersonal risks within the team affects the team’s collective intelligence.
Module 2 - Social Sensitivity
The dynamics behind human interactions is explored to offer a new perspective on how people connect with one another.
Participants learn how to tune up one’s social sensitivity and build stronger relationship so as to create the connection and openness needed for enhanced collaboration.
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Psychological Safety & Desirable Collaborative Behaviours
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Human Connection & Social Sensitivity
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Building Stronger Relationship
Module 3 - Non-Judgmental Communication
People’s tendency to create gaps with others is explored to heighten participants’ awareness on their defensiveness toward others.
Participants explore how to speak non-judgmentally so as to reduce the aggressiveness in our conversations.
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Judging, Labeling & Enemy-fying
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Diversity & Seeing Others as People
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Defensiveness & Speaking Non-Judgmentally
Holding
Generative
Dialogue
Creating
the mental space
needed for team members
to suspend judgment
and think together constructively
In order to enact new realities, leaders need to engage one another in generative dialogues, shifting from 'debating on existing options' to 'paying heed to what is possible'.
Their abilities to maintain an effective balance between advocacy and inquiry are critical for uncovering the hidden creative potential in any situation.
Module 4 - Assertive Advocacy
Effective collaboration requires leaders to bring the best of their thinking and knowledge to the situation. One should not be shy of expressing one’s point of view, and one needs to do so with clarity and impact.
Participants learn to articulate one’s point of view in ways that add value to the conversation.
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Dialogue – How to Think Together
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Assertiveness & Value-added Communication
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Articulation & Linguistic Acts
Module 5 - Reflective Inquiry
Our points of view include hidden assumptions that we layer onto reality. Bringing the assumptions that people have brought into the conversation to the surface help us see new possibilities.
With heightened awareness, participants assess one's conversation pattern and practice the language of empathetic & reflective conversations.
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Reading the Conversation
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Listening & Suspending
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Working with Assumptions
Synergizing Diverse Perspectives
Creating
the mental space
needed for team members to hold multiple perspectives
Finding a better third option is more than making a reluctant compromise or trade-off. It requires us to shift from an “Either/ Or” to a “Both/ And” mentality. Holding multiple perspectives transforms our understanding of the situation. New relationship, new intention and new action become possible.
Module 6 - Multiple-Perspective Taking
Leaders need to make an intentional search on the “Perspective” of the other side in order to understand the situation better and get buy-in from others.
Paradox in leadership challenge is not to be solved as a problem. Instead, it is to be embraced. Participants learn how to perceive & manage the contradictory qualities of a paradox.
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Multiple Perspective-Taking
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“Both/ And” Mentality
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Mapping Paradox
Module 7 - Managing Diversity & Difference
To create results, leaders need to move the conversation forward. They need to find and enlarge the intersection of diverse points of view.
Participants learn how to calibrate one’s questions to steer a conversation toward better alignment and agreement. They also learn how to facilitate effective team decision.
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Finding Intersection & Alignment
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Steering the Conversation
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Team Decision-Making
“Instead of being oppressed by the “Tyranny of the OR”, highly visionary companies liberate themselves with the “Genius of the AND” — the ability to embrace both extremes of a number of dimensions at the same time.”
Jim Collins & Jerry Porras
Built to Last
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