As the world experiences the shift toward a more participative and friendlier way of working, here are some tools/practices that will help create a collaborative culture at your workplace



Practice #1: Be social

If you are one of those people who thinks social media is just something young people use to share pictures or ‘check-in’ at cool hangout spots, think again. The phenomenon of social media is beginning to have a very significant impact on the way we think, connect with others and, of course, on the way we work.
According to marketing strategist Deb Levoy, we are starting to appreciate the efficacy of simpler, friendlier ways of dealing with work, problem-solving and business. And this new paradigm is pouring into the enterprise via the business pundits, the newly agile engineering team, the “social media experts” and old-fashioned necessity. Social media tools usually provide the ease for creative collaboration and sharing between teams and customers because they are designed to be user-friendly, informal and accessible. And when you have teams that spread across continents, they become the mainstay for many businesses that want to establish a collaborative culture.

Practice #2: Set group expectations

It is fairly common for managers to set individual expectations defining goals and discussing outlines to achieve milestones. However, many managers fail to set team goals and expectations. While goals may be defined around work-related targets, team expectations can be centered on the experience of creating high quality interpersonal relationships. Desired behaviors can include sharing information, asking for feedback, working through disagreements, sharing responsibility and so on.

Practice #3: Define collaborative behavior

Collaboration has a lot of different meanings, and it’s important to take some time and try to define what you want it to look like. IDEO founder, David Kelly, did just this. He outlined what he wanted collaboration to look like at IDEO. For example, “Before a person can make a decision, that team member must consult with colleagues likely to be affected and, if it is likely to have a negative effect, that person does not follow through with the decision.” Devising a process like this fosters collaboration. A positive team culture will develop as team members approach individual responsibility in a manner that ensues a positive result for everyone else on the team.

Practice #4: Embrace diversity

According to leadership coach, J. Clint Anderson, It has long been recognized that personality differences can either improve or hinder a positive team culture. Personality diversity can improve team performance, as people understand self and others in a way that leverages complementary strengths and covers individual weaknesses. Alternatively, personality diversity can create conflict, mistrust, and low productivity. Teams that benefit from different personalities work to understand and accept one another. A reality of personality in teamwork is this: the person who drives you the craziest is probably the one you need the most. When it comes to personality and working together, you can also safely assume that individuals are being misunderstood while misunderstanding others. A positive team culture develops as each individual understands and accepts his or her personality as well as the other team members’ personalities

Practice #5: Provide accountability through feedback

One of the cornerstones of creating a positive team culture is creating accountability through feedback. You must go beyond information and lead by example. Expect some time to elapse before you see team mates start to embrace this desired culture. It’s important to establish accountability for the new practices by observing individual and group behavior and most importantly providing feedback. Feedback should help guide team members through desired changes and help them enjoy the new culture.

This article is inspired by Young Upstarts, a website that talks about new ideas in small business, entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship and social causes. To read the original article click here.

Living in the Green Zone

The language you use to communicate at work could improve your flow of communication, reduce stress levels greatly, increase the amount of fun you have together, and make everything work more smoothly. Here’s how ‘Living in the Green Zone’ works…

Arjuna Ardagh and the team that delivers the Awakening Coaching training have a unique way of communicating. They talk to each other using the code language of being in the ‘red zone’, ‘yellow zone’ and ‘green zone’. Based on the popular color-coding of traffic lights, they have defined the zones to reflect their moods, state of being and way of working.

The Green Zone

Living in the green zone means that everything is flowing smoothly, almost as if you are not doing anything at all, and things are just happening on their own.
When you are in the green zone:
• There is a feeling of ‘the wind in your sails’ – a lot gets done with very little effort.
• Communication with other people is easy, open, and complete: you understand each other well and nothing is held back.
• People laugh a lot, have fun, and feel like what they are doing has more of a sense of play than work.
• At the end of the day, or work period, you feel more energized than drained.
• Creativity is freely flowing, as you get the sense of something wanting to give itself through you rather from you.
Everybody knows the green zone from time to time in his or her life. It is where you live when you are on vacation, or when you go out in the evening, or when you are being creative or involved in something that you do really well. Unfortunately many people equate the green zone with recreational activities more than with their work.

The Yellow Zone

The yellow zone has a slightly addictive quality to it. It is where we go when we set intentions, have goals and create visions. The confusing thing about the yellow zone is that it feels really good. In fact, it often feels more attractive that the green zone. Not that is a terrible place to be, but it is a place to be attentive.
Some of the statements that are symptomatic of yellow zone living are:
• Let me jump in the car, dash back home, and I’ll zip it off to you.
• Ok, let me log in reeeeal quick here
• Let’s just jam on it and get it done, no matter how late we have to stay up.
• I have a great idea, let’s rebuild the whole website, it can’t take that long.

When we are in the yellow zone we have completely lost awareness of time and space. We think we can accomplish anything we dream up, and get it done in no time at all. It is actually quite difficult to spot when you are in the yellow zone; it is easier to notice it in other people.
You know you or someone else has entered the yellow zone when:
• Their breathing becomes shallower.
• There is less awareness for the needs of the body, particularly for water, food and rest.
• Getting the job done has become more important than listening to other peoples’ point of view, or feeling into their comfort area.
• You feel impatient or frustrated with how long things are taking.
• There is much more attention going to what can or will be accomplished in the future, than appreciating what is already here right now.

The Red Zone

Just like with traffic lights the red zone is what follows the yellow. It is the zone of stress, burnout, missed deadlines, people annoyed with you, you annoyed with people. Finally, you want to crawl under a rock and make the world go away. When we have got to the red zone our debts are greater than our income, projects are left unfinished, and even though we are burnt out we just can’t get to sleep. Most people today know what the red zone feels like, but relatively few people realize that the break-through-the-limits, take-it-to-the-max, yellow zone mentality is actually what creates the red zone experience.

You know when you are in the red zone when:
• People around you appear incompetent and even like saboteurs.
• You are faced with an impossible to-do list that seems you will never get completed.
• You develop symptoms of stress: like insomnia, anxiety and hypertension.
• People make polite excuses to avoid you and don’t want to work with you any more.
• You feel “out of sync” with life around you
The commitment that Arjuna and the team have made to each other is to come back to the green zone as often and as quickly as possible. They recognize together that the end never justifies the means. In other words, he says, it is literally never worth missing a meal, missing sleep, or going without daily disciplines like yoga or meditation, just to meet a deadline. If the deadline can’t be met in a relaxed way, it is the deadline that needs to change not the sense of well-being.

The Green Zone is for everyone

The responsibility that everyone carried in the team is not just to create or live in the green zone themselves, but also to create it for each other.

A story that Arjuna shares is a good example of this:
We had a meeting of the staff at one of our trainings. One member of the team was tired and needed a nap. So her roommate said, “Don’t worry, you sleep, and well take care of everything without you.” But she did not take the nap, because she knew that there were key pieces of information that only she had, and that were needed at the next meeting. She knew that if she napped she might get nicely snuggled into deep Green Zone, but the rest of the team would go into yellow or red trying to figure everything out without her. Here commitment was to a Green Zone experience for everyone on the team, not just for herself. She went to bed right after dinner that day, and got a really good sleep.

Recreating the zones at your workplace

This system of codes seems to have worked remarkably well for the team. However, like all good teams, they have had to work towards it. Here are some ways they have found helpful:
Reminding each other:

It helps you to remind each other when people are in the yellow zone because the culture in most organizations revolves around pushing boundaries, meeting deadlines and higher productivity. While there’s no problem when you are in the yellow zone from time to time, Arjuna cautions us that staying in the yellow zone for too long will cause us to go into the red zone or drive other people there.

Instituting agreements

Often we think we have to live in the yellow zone, so that we can get more done and be more productive. However, instituting agreements within the team to create green zone experiences for everyone can help people get more done with much less effort. According to Arjuna, the work can also have better quality, serve people in a deeper way and leave everyone involved feeling good about themselves and wanting to play together again.

Have you instituted simple practices at your work place to help people and teams collaborate better? How has this affected the job you do? Please share; we would love to hear from you.

This article is adapted from facilitator Arjuna Ardagh’s blog. To read the original piece click here

Wharton management professor Sigal Barsade and Donal Gibson of Fairfield University’s Dolan School of Business have spent years researching and proving something that we have always suspected and perhaps never paid adequate attention to – our emotions affect our performance at the workplace. When we ask ourselves – why does affect (“Affect” is another word for “emotion” in organizational behavior studies) matter at the workplace, the answer is quite simple: Employees’ moods, emotions and overall dispositions have an impact on job performance, decision making, creativity, turnover, teamwork, negotiations and leadership.

Positive or Negative
Barsade and Gibson further talk about how attitude can make or break a workplace and talk in particular about three different types of feelings
• Discrete, short-lived emotions, such as joy, anger, fear and disgust.
• Moods, which are longer-lasting feelings and not necessarily tied to a particular cause. A person is in a cheerful mood, for instance, or feeling down.
• Dispositional, or personality traits, that define a person’s overall approach to life. “She’s always so cheerful,” or “He’s always looking at the negative.”
Quite obviously, all three types of feelings, big or small, can be contagious; many a time without people themselves knowing it.
The authors also state that “The idea behind emotional intelligence in the workplace is that it is a skill through which employees treat emotions as valuable data in navigating a situation,” and how e-mails and instant messages can be misunderstood because they are devoid of facial expressions, intonation and body language, things that we all are used to as aids to convey emotions.

Positively Positive
Positive thinking is an attitude that makes the mind soak in emotions, thoughts, words and images that are conductive to growth, expansion and success. A positive person most often expects good and favorable results.
Research suggests that positive people tend to do better in the workplace and it isn’t just because people like them more than the ones who are constantly pointing out the flaws. Positive people are known to cognitively process more efficiently and appropriately. So, if you are in a negative mood, a fair amount of processing is going to that mood. When you’re in a positive mood, you’re more open to taking in information and handling it effectively.

Emotions are valuable data
“The idea behind emotional intelligence in the workplace is that it is a skill through which employees treat emotions as valuable data in navigating a situation,” according to the authors. “Let’s say a sales manager has come up with an amazing idea that will increase corporate revenues by up to 200%, but he knows that his boss tends to be irritable and short-tempered in the morning. If the manager has emotional intelligence, he will first recognize and consider this emotional fact about his boss. Despite the stunning nature of his idea — and his own excitement — he will regulate his own emotions, curb his enthusiasm and wait until the afternoon to approach his boss.”

How to avoid ‘catching’ a negative attitude
Whilst it is not always possible to change the attitudes of your co-workers, you can take some steps to avoid ‘catching’ a negative mood.
Step 1: Tell yourself before a meeting that the person who shoots down everyone’s ideas won’t bother you.
Step 2: During the meeting, don’t let the negative people become the focus of your attention, thereby reducing the possibility of contagion.
Step 3: Drastic as it may sound, you can change your office routine if all else fails. Barsade gave the example of a manager who was dragged down at the start of every day when passing by the desk of an employee who either grunted or gave no acknowledgement. The manager took control and simply started following a different route through the office.
While a co-worker who smiles when you say hello in the morning or a manager who may hold the door open when you have your arms full of documents may be something you take for granted, these are some of the very human interactions that eventually make us feel like we belong at a work place. After all, according to Barsade, “Emotions travel from person to person like a virus.”

Reflection: What have been some of your experiences with positive and negative attitudes at the workplace? Have you dealt with someone exceptionally difficult or has someone helped you refresh yourself at the end of a hard day? Do write to us, we would love to hear from you.
To read the complete article, click here.