Pivotal Transitions

Originally posted on Wednesday, February 6th, 2008

Our answer: shared vision, trust, and open communication.

The importance of communication is to get everyone involved in an organization to recognize how they fit into the system as well as the importance of their role/contribution to the greater whole. In an optimal organization, everyone would be aware of the importance of their role and how it creates an effective system, which, in turn, creates a healthy organization.

In examining the hiring paradigm, for example, we have identified that a shared vision is often missing, which in turn, creates a gap between one’s perception of why they are being hired and the reality of their role and responsibility. For example, often in an interview, someone will be told they are being hired because of their creativity, innovation, and diversity, but in reality, because of the underlying structure of an organization, they will fill, and be expected to maintain, the same role as the person before them. Thus, a new hire’s actions are being influenced from co-workers and the underlying structure of the organization, which affects their behavior, work output, and ultimately feeds back to creating actions that are incongruent with the goals of the organization. So the limiting factor, which prevents the organization from moving forward, is the lack of a shared vision… and more importantly, the expectation and awareness of that shared vision.

Recently, our team shared a very unique group process. We took the opportunity in our meeting to learn about each other and how best to work together…exercising the essence of feedback. We began by individually sharing our MBTI types, learning styles, lifestyles our personal “shadows,” vulnerabilities, teamwork histories and role preferences. From the beginning we were open with one another, which created a well-balanced perspective and understanding. This proved to be a productive meeting that not only established the spirit and focus of our team, but also created an underlying trust between us to be candid and honest with ideas, thoughts and perspectives moving forward.

The diversity of our group has turned out to be one of our greatest strengths– providing a balance of skills, resources, personalities, and experiences. While we don’t have a lot of actual group meeting time, because we had established our roles and responsibilities during the first meeting, there is a sense of shared trust among us that has helped us to be strategic in our approach and process…and most importantly, a shared vision.  As Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. stated, “A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience.” This quote captures the essence of our team process—Our shared energy, trust and understanding has proved to be the most important element to becoming a high performing team.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 13th, 2008 at 10:12 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.