Tag: partnership

Teamwork, partnership, culture, and passing the ball

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

What does a great, two-person partnership at work look like?

It’s a dance, an interplay between two people, one in which the undertaking develops a natural momentum. Synchronicity emerges. The mingling of the best two people have to offer gets the project to a better place than either person working alone.

The feeling reminds me of two athletes passing a ball as they advance down the court. There’s a grace and a fluidity to the way the ball, and the two teammates, move. The players look like they have a shared mind and a shared purpose. Together, they make magic happen.

What are the ingredients of great partnerships? Both players:

  • Have spent meaningful time in practice talking about how they’re going to work together << >> pre-project communication and expectation setting.
  • Are skilled at simultaneously paying attention to the ball, to their partner, and to the field of play << >> self + partner + situational awareness
  • Know, and act upon, their own, and their partners’, strengths and weaknesses << >> self-knowledge; partner knowledge; self-confidence coupled with humility
  • Always catch the ball that is passed to them << >> good comms, staying present, being willing to prioritize this thing now despite competing priorities
  • Communicate when they’re open, and when they’re well-guarded << >> effortlessly share their own availability, workload, mind-space for this job
  • Keep the play moving forward << >> even with competing priorities, demonstrate that, especially for shared work, forward momentum is non-negotiable
  • Know the goal, and have a shared intention to score << >> both keep track of the external deadline and will do what it takes to deliver on time
  • Place equal value on moving without the ball, receiving the ball, dribbling the ball, and passing the ball, << >> players don’t care about authorship or about getting credit for the part each played, they care about the result.
  • Full trust in one another, so that each will make the right pass, even under pressure << >> establish a foundation of “I’ve got your back” through repeated actions over time
  • “I know where you’re going to be, often without even trying / looking, and I’m going to pass the ball there.” << >>

In new, two person teams, there is time and space to walk through all these steps at something short of “game speed” – setting aside time in advance to talk about how we’ll work together, norms, expectations, our plan and timelines for each step or the project, etc.

And, in best pairings, that explicit pre-preparation and rigid timeline management ultimately give way to something more creative and improvisational. This allows the work to move faster, with more fluidity, less effort, and more positive surprises. This is the evolution from co-workers to true partners.

Having looked at and dissected the best pairings in this way, we can now zoom out and ask:

How do to replicate this kind of teamwork at an organizational level?

We are, after all, grouping and regrouping constantly in our organizations, forming new teams all the time. This means pairing up with people with whom we’ve communicated less often; people who we know less well, who might be on a different team, geography or both.

That sounds both challenging and important.

And yet we spend most of our professional effort (and our professional development conversations) our individual aptitudes, and very little on how well we partner with others.

This needs to change (how to do that is a topic for another day).

But there is a secret that gives an edge to everyone on your team. It’s culture, of course.

Culture is “the way we do things around here.”

It is born as the outgrowth of whatever was created by the founding team. It is then expanded, amplified, reshaped and transformed by each and every member of the team (for more on this, check out my post on Culture Graphs).

While each organizations’ culture will necessarily be unique, in all organizations, great teaming will lead to better results, and poor teaming will gum up the works.

So, now might be the time to ask how much your culture reinforces the elements of great teaming:

  • Upfront communications to set expectations
  • Self-awareness; situational awareness
  • Self-knowledge on the part of your team
  • Open sharing of strengths and weaknesses
  • Excellent, predictable communications
  • Teaching folks about high-quality, dynamic prioritization
  • Skillful sharing of priorities and workload; coupled with the willingness to flex when necessary
  • Embodying the inherent value of forward momentum
  • Prioritization of collective goals over individual ones
  • The importance of supporting one another
  • An unwavering norm that we keep our promises to ourselves and to others (around deadlines, around everything)

If good partnership is indeed universally valuable, then even though no two organizations’ cultures should be the same, all successful organizations must reinforce a set of behaviors that underpin successful partnership.

Without this, each team, of whatever size, has to both (1) Quickly and effectively create their own norms and behaviors for successful teaming; (2) Do so while pushing against the prevailing culture at your organization.

Why not have culture work in your favor instead?

Drop the Rope

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The person you want to give a piece of your mind.

The argument you want to win.

The “I told you so” that you’ve been molding and honing until it’s perfectly crafted.

All of these responses are infused with an emotional energy that isn’t going to help.

The first step is to drop the rope.

Not because you are indifferent, but because you care. You care a lot. And whatever this thing is that you have to speak your truth about, it’s not the kind of thing that will have a right, a wrong, a winner and a loser. 

Not if it’s ultimately going to get where you’re so yearning to go. 

My Job

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Is my job, right now, to tell you what I’ve figured out, and share my wisdom?

Is my job to show you all that I don’t know, and show my openness and vulnerability?

Or is my job simply to write half of the sentence, and let you fill in the…?

Each day, every moment, a choice.

Not-so-small talk

~ Sasha ~ 6 Comments

It amazes me how much time we waste in our effort not to waste any time.

Five, even ten minutes to understand who a person is, where they are today, now, at this moment…there’s no way that you can skip that step and hope to create any sort of real connection in a meeting.

Almost every culture in the world knows this – that you cannot start a conversation before you’ve talked to someone as a person.  Except Americans, of course.  We pride ourselves on “getting down to business.”

There’s wisdom in those old civilities of asking after someone’s well-being, their family.

Two people might be able to strike a deal, but two human beings are needed to create any sort of partnership.

Blah blah blah blah Ginger

~ Sasha ~ 3 Comments

There’s a great old Gary Larson cartoon about what we say and what dogs hear.

I wonder if we could re-title this cartoon “our needs,” as in: every time we regale someone with “what we need” we remember that all they’re hearing is “blah blah blah blah.”  But whenever we say their name, whenever we paint them into the picture, whenever we make them part of the story, they hear us loud and clear.

If you agree with the notion, rather than thinking tactically how to make this shift by “changing your pitch,” you might instead ask yourself what’s keeping you from actually seeing the person across the table as an integral part of the story….because she is.

If you don’t feel that way, she certainly won’t feel that way, and you’ll be stuck in exactly the wrong place: “blah blah blah blah blah.”

Dear (potential) donor

~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

Dear (potential) donor,

Please, please, be careful and clear with your intentions, with your time, and with our time.  I know you don’t want any special treatment, and I know you don’t want different rules to apply to you…but they do.  (Nonprofit) folks will always take that extra, exploratory meeting with you, that broad-ranging conversation to better understand the sector, the work they’re doing, all the little intricacies that are their special sauce.  They’ll do it because they honestly want to share with you, and they’ll do it because it’s very difficult to tell the difference between a casual conversation and an active exploration of a partnership that leads to a funding decision.

(Worse than loose exploration, please, please, please, don’t make commitments that you cannot or will not keep.  There are few things more debilitating than that.)

It’s true, it really is their job – the nonprofit’s – to draw the line, to be clear, to ask you the tough questions.  But it’s a hard thing to do, and sometimes they won’t.  Sometimes they’ll talk and talk and talk, keeping that distant hope alive that sometime soon you’ll see that glimmer of what you’re looking for and decide to write a big check.  No, that’s not the only thing they see when they see you coming, but it is certainly part of what they see, and they’re going to give you more leeway than they would give to someone else.

So, please, explore, talk, brainstorm, ask questions, give advice, but also insist on clarity if they’re not being clear.  If you know you’re not planning to fund them, but the conversations are going great, you have a chance to speak up, to level set, to explain where things are and explain why you’re talking – because there are many ways to partner, and funding is just one of them.

You’ll be doing yourself and them a great service by speaking up.

Very truly yours,

Nonprofits

[coming tomorrow: Dear Nonprofit]

Why sweat the small stuff?

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Yesterday I wrote a post about making sure to get the font right in emails you send out.  The day before I reflected on responses to the simple question, “How are you doing?”

Why sweat such small stuff in a blog about generosity, philanthropy and social change?

It’s because from what I’ve seen, change happens – especially in the nonprofit sector – when the right people, ideas and resources come together to attack a particular issue.  The driving force and the glue are relationships, the ability to bring together seemingly disparate people and organizations that form strong, lasting partnerships.

Successful relationship management is first and foremost about attitude.  You have to care (or, potentially, you have to decide to care) about building strong and genuine relationships.  You have to have honest-to-goodness respect for the people with whom you’re building these relationships.  This goes in all directions (donor to nonprofit; nonprofit to donor; nonprofit to program beneficiary, program beneficiary to nonprofit; etc. etc. ), and it’s non-negotiable.  Without this attitude in place, you’ll fall short.

Once you’ve got this right, though, relationship-building and relationship management is a skill that can be learned.  Like any skill there are big pieces and small pieces; there are people who are born naturals and people who learn along the way.  There are a million ways to get this right and probably even more ways to muck it up.

So posts about how to write emails, or posts about the first impression you make when someone asks “how are you?” are part of the mountain of little tweaks that I’ve found help me get better at this every day – things I’ve seen, things I’ve messed up, things I’ve learned from others.  One by one they pile up, until one day, to your (or my) surprise, you’re in a totally different place.

Fundraising tip

~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

Silence is your friend.

When you’ve shared the great work that you’re doing, when the person across the table from you is clearly excited and ready to jump in with both feet, and when you’ve asked them to make a significant donation…then be quiet.

They probably feel a little uncomfortable at this exact moment.  You probably do too.

If you’re an empathetic person (which you obviously are), you’ll be dying to rescue them from being uncomfortable, and you’ll do it by filling in the silence.

Don’t do it.

If the partnership is the right one, and the funding decision is the right one, then the kindest thing you can do is stay quiet.

Let them fill the silence by saying yes.

Scarcity, urgency, and a sense of accomplishment

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Here’s how a great bebopper on the subway was selling his CDs.

“We started today with 100 CDs and we’ve sold 48… we’ve got 52 to go.  They’re only $5 each.  If you stand up and buy one you’ll create a cascade of other buyers!”

Nice.

Let’s parse that pitch:

–          “We started today with 100 CDs and we’ve sold 48:” these things are good and they’re selling fast.  Other people have decided that they’re good already.  You’re joining that crowd when you buy one.

–          “, and we have 52 to go….” we’re getting towards the finish line, and you can help us….

–          “If you stand up and buy one you’ll create a cascade of other buyers!” your actions are bigger than just you.  A lot more is going on here than you giving us $5 and us giving you a CD.

Without a doubt, it’s almost always better to create scarcity, a sense of urgency (a deadline) and a feeling of accomplishment on the part of your buyer (donor).

And no, it doesn’t always have to be “act fast time’s running out” (though that’s usually a good thing…but then again it’s not true each and every time).  But there’s a lot more you can do than describe just the thing that you’re selling and how much you’re selling it for.

Help people understand that you have a limited number of seats (scarcity), where the finish line is how they’re helping you get there (urgency), and how their actions can and will influence others for great impact (sense of accomplishment).  And then take the concrete steps that allow you to keep each of these promises that you’re making.

Don’t do me any favors

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Building on last week’s post, some more thoughts on how to ask for things.

A friend and experienced public speaker recently shared that for any speech she thinks about an audience full of friends – people who want to see her succeed (different from a room full of clones of my inner critic…)

It’s the same with asks.  Go through the world acting generous and expecting generosity in return, and make asks with this mindset.  This will affect both the way you make asks and what you ask for:

  • the way you ask because in expecting generosity you will ask unapologetically, which inherently makes your ask stronger;
  • what you ask for because as a generous person you won’t fall into the trap of asking without giving back, nor will you act like you have nothing of value to give (of course you do!).

But “favors” are another thing entirely.  “Favors” to me feel like one-off, I’ll-go-out-of-my-way-this-one-time sort of things.  That’s absolutely fine when what you actually need is a favor (“help, I’m totally stuck, can you bail me out?”), but most of the time you don’t need to be bailed out.  Most of the time you need help from someone who’s on your side, who has the same goals, who is part of building what you’re building.

I see this dynamic play out a lot when someone at a nonprofit feels like they’re approaching someone more high-powered than they are – a major donor, a board member, etc.  With the mindset of asking for a favor, the donor is treated with kid gloves, the nonprofit staff member is sheepish and apologetic, and awkwardness and a “we/you” mentality ensues.

Ask for help, give help.  Leave favors for everyone else.

http://sashadichter.com/2010/10/28/right-ask-right-time-right-way/