How to work with people ... when you don't want to work with people

In this era of increased, required (and expected) collaboration, it can be tough to work with people, if there are times when you don’t feel like working with people!

Particularly if you see yourself as more of an introvert or ambivert or shy, or you're dealing with some sh*t in your life. Showing up and putting on your ‘collaboration face’ can be tough if you’d rather work alone.

For some it’s a feeling of social anxiety where we might find the interaction, talking or problem solving parts of working with others a challenge or uncomfortable. Some days collaboration is one of the last things you feel like doing, especially if you think there are more pressing things to do or important alone work to be done. For some people who get frustrated easily or have less patience and want to just get stuff done, collaboration can feel slow or time consuming or plain annoying.

Yes indeed, many of us are loners and may well prefer to be alone, work alone and do it all alone. 

When we are required (or strongly encouraged) to join a project, team, group, workshop, planning session or conference that suggests networking and games to 'get to know each other’ ... maybe we just don't want to. 

But isn't collaboration a 100% positive thing?

While we might understand the benefits and positives of collaboration, sometimes we just need some breathing space and prefer space alone.

It can be overwhelming for some people to be constantly in the company of others. Think of people who have customer service and customer facing roles in high volume and high pressure environments. Or those who are constantly problem solving with others, dealing with group behaviours, beliefs and barriers for an extended period of time. 

Recharging, retreating or relaxing

We often need to grab some time alone and recharge or be with people we can fully relax around and not be expected to collaborate. 

You might have seen people lunching alone at a busy conference, or having quiet time to get stuff done or taking some time away from a group meeting or workshop. They may well retreat to recharge. 

And of course, for many, we know there may be plenty of other humans who you absolutely must collaborate with when you get home - that includes pets, partners, friends or family, members in community groups and others in the interests and network groups we are part of. 

Are we 'over collaborating?'

At times things can feel ‘over collaborated’; that is, we’re required to do so much with others, there never seems to be a break from team, group or unit work. 

In the work I do bringing teams together, working with leadership groups and helping people co-design, co-create, decide and do, there are always always always people who don’t want to play in this group space. They may be forced into it by colleagues or have gentle pressure (and guilt?) applied by leaders that insist that collaboration is ‘the way’ or the expectation is constantly there, yet they would prefer to contribute in other ways that don’t involve full-on collaboration.

The messages that 'the group is wiser with you' or 'everyone has their strength' are high on inspiration (and yes, fact) but they can also be low on the practicalities of what to do if you just don’t want to work with others. 

So when you’re next faced with a workshop, meeting, space or situation where you’re expected to collaborate an don’t feel like, there are some things you can do.

Cohesion over collaboration

There are other roles you can play in collaborative environments that don't require you to be the leading light and winner of the collaborative stakes.

Rather you can play a role that builds the cohesion of the group, keeps the group or team together, performing and progressing well.

Sometimes cohesion is better than collaboration.

If you adopt a role of helping the group stick together, you don’t need to be the star of the show or the loudest mouth or need to present yourself as the wisest in the room. You’re simply playing the ‘glue’ that helps the group ‘stick’. 

Here’s what you can do:

1. think about the role you can play; this may not be your normal role or default behaviour. So how else could you be, what could you do or how could your act to contribute and collaborate and build cohesion? 
2. adopt a role that is not IN the group, but rather FOR the group.  What could you do that places you in a support role - you’re still contributing and doing, but not as one of the collaborators?
3. think about offering to facilitate, guide or enable the process and progress of the group. This is real cohesion work. Think of it like a tour guide or an air traffic controller. You’re not the artist of the artworks you’re explaining in the museum, you’re taking people through and showing them. You’re not flying the planes landing at the airport, rather you’re helping keep the planes in order; which one first, which one next. 
4. be at the service of the group; what do they need right now? Do they need someone to listen, scribe, time keep, summarise, present back or distill or make sense?
5. lead a session rather than contribute content to it; ask the team questions - get people’s input, ideas, suggestions and contributions. Your role is then to listen, to make sense of, to get them talking. This is a mega-cohesion activity. Good stuff!
6. be the listener, the hearer. Too many meetings, workshops and sessions are full of people intent on putting their points of view across as soon as possible. Take on the role of a listener, a distiller. What are you hearing? Who said what? What did that mean? Are there similar points of view in the room? Are there different points of view? This helps to keep the group together despite differences. 
7. And importantly, let people know you’re taking on another or different role in the meeting or workshop and that you are being at the service of the group and to the group or team’s outcome. 

Expected and respected

Collaboration is an expected part of work these days. You've got to find ways that respect the values, expectations and behaviours of the workplace, but that also work for you. It’s important also to not ‘disappear’; don’t be invisible. Look for ways where you are contributing to a purpose, doing something that is of value to you and the team, as well as being helpful to all. This is great cohesion work. 

Your team mates will likely prefer to work with someone who’s supportive, helpful and collaborative in nature, rather than a grumpy quiet anti-collaborationist who skips meetings and gatherings and shows up in what might look like passive aggressive mode (even if you’re not!)

Plan ahead

In this era of collaboration, you’ll probably want to avoid the image of ’not being a collaborator’, so remember to plan ahead.

What meetings or gatherings have you got coming up?

What can you do before, during or after the event that is of service, help and assistance - and is just as valuable as you sitting around the table or being in the room contributing and collaborating as others are?

You be awesome

You have wonderful gifts, skills, talents and expertise to share and contribute. Acknowledge that sometimes you may not feel like playing with others. When that’s the case, adopt another role to help build cohesion in the group or event. You’ll contribute more than you’ll know!

Having a Design Mindset

The skills we’ll need for 2020 and beyond are shaping up as a slick looking list!
 
The skill of having a design mindset is right up there. 

This doesn’t mean you need to know your way around design software, or know which colours go with what or even what an industrial designer does.

Rather it’s the frame of mind, the mindset that you adopt to think, solve and respond to what’s going on in your team, business, industry … the world. 

Beyond ho-hum
A same/same response to strategy, performance, capability, culture and our teams is too ho-hum now. We can’t do the same as we always have.

Businesses who need to adapt and thrive (that includes the solo operator right through to mega-global big name players) need to increasingly take a design approach to many parts of their business. 

A Design Mindset
I think a design mindset looks like this: 


 

• Involve: it starts with people, finding out what’s going on, what’s working, what’s not, what’s needed. This is about connecting to your customers, colleagues, users, stakeholders.  

• Ideate: you come up with ideas, possibilities; it's ingenuity at work. Here you use your creativity and problem solving smarts to think of possible solutions.   

• Implement: start something, do something. Don’t wait until it’s complete, test out a minimum viable product, process or service. Put stuff to work, try it out, experiment and take note of what happens. 'Have a crack,’ as we say in Australia. 

• Iterate: You improve and evolve and keep working on it. Release another version, go again, ‘Have another crack’. The refining, adapting and responding is what keeps you agile, current and relevant. 

Having a design mindset is vital for change leaders, strategic planners, product owners, business owners, team leaders and executives.

And when you adopt and apply a design mindset to the situations, projects and pieces of work that you're working on, you're better equipped to remain competitive and respond to uncertainty.   

Strategy is changing; leadership is changing; organisations are changing. 

We need to also change how we think about what we do if we want to get closer, go further and deliver better.

"Don't tell ME what to do"

The days of a leader -- anyone -- being directive and telling people what to do 24/7 are gone.

Leadership has shifted to being more consultative.

And it will evolve further to leaders being facilitative, where the leader is able to draw information, ideas and insights out of the team rather than telling, instructing or adding their own thoughts to the team.

From a childhood memory of being told to 'clean up your room' to adulthood experiences of being told to 'doing this thing in this way', we are self-directed human beings and we don't really like being told what to do. 

So why are leaders STILL trying to poorly parent their teams and tell them what to do?

From sharing to eliciting

The telling role of leaders is shifting from just sharing information where the new strategy or project is 'rolled out' in a darkened auditorium or increasingly cliched 'Town Hall' event (that people THINK is collaborative) to one where the onus is on the leader to elicit information.

They draw information out through communication, questioning and eliciting techniques.

This is what builds engagement. Posters, videos, promotional products and pot plants don't build engagement. 

Humans create engagement with other humans.

Teams are co-creating

Changes are afoot in some teams where they're moving from teamwork to collaboration and now shifting and evolving further to people co-creating and working with customers, clients, colleagues and others from diverse fields to make and design the stuff they do.

Leaders are increasingly needing the capabilities of facilitators, to prime the environment, set up a process for engagement, run that process and honestly and authentically gather the input and contributions from their team. 

Lip service sucks

Saying you're using facilitation skills but you're not is clunky and out of touch. 

Increasingly, consultants, business analysts, project managers, middle level team and people leaders as well as those new to managing and leading a team are seeing and experiencing the benefits of being able to engage with a group or team, draw information from that group, and help them collaborate to achieve an agreed outcome.

And things are changing for experienced leaders too: leadership styles continue to evolve and shift.

Diversity needs it

There is a mix of diverse ages and cultures on every team, and finding ways of engage them and work with them is up to the leader, not the team.

The days of simply ‘telling’ people in a team what to do are fading; people need to be engaged, their capabilities harnessed and the group given the environment, situation and processes to help them work together and collaborate.

Today's leader is a facilitator. 

Making sense of WTF is going on

It can be entertaining to see how we predict the future. From characters like The Robot on Lost in Space, to any Star Trek episode, we are always imagining into the future and picturing what our world will be like.

Reading Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock or the classic from George Orwell 1984, watching science fiction and thinking of future technology… we’re predicting what it might be like up there, in the future.

Equally entertaining is when we then look back and see where we’ve come from; there may have been plug and cord switchboards for telephones or we hear the old dial up noises that connected us to the earliest versions of the Internet. Or when we see an older film – from the 1940s or 50s or from the 1990s or early 2000s - and see the technology we used to use: big boxy mobile phones with external antennas and battery packs the size of suitcases?

What were we thinking!? 

Today we continue to use all that we know and all that we can get our hands and minds on to predict and plan for the future.

How do we make sense of the now to plan for the future?

We are humans and we use sense making.

We make our best guess.

Our discussions, thinking and mapping help us predict and scope, ponder and plan.

And then we look back on it … and sense is made… and often it’s not quite as we thought is might be. We might smile or shake our heads and laugh at what we were thinking then.

But it’s what we knew at the time. We made sense of what we knew at the time.

We proposed scenarios, situations, possibilities and options. We were creative and thought provoking and making our best guess of what the future would be like or what we could do based on what know now.

In the world of work today, for the future of work, we have to keep doing our best to make sense.

 The Institute for the Future reckons Sensemaking is the #1 skill and capability for the future, for 2020 and beyond.

We can make sense alone... or together. So when you're alone, how do you deliberately make sense of something?

When you're at a conference or meeting or event and so much data and information is pummelling you, how do you deliberately sensemake?

Then when you're in a team, group or business unit and you're working together on things, how do you all make sense of what's going on... and do it - kind of deliberately?

How do you make sense?

I think you need a tool... no, a handbook of tools. There isn't just one way to make sense. There are many ways.

"Making Sense: A Handbook for the Future of Work" is just that... a handbook.

This is not a book about the future of work; it’s a book that will help you handlethe future of work… whatever it is, whatever happens, however it impacts you.

Making Sense is full of approaches, questions, techniques, tools and models to help you as you respond to what the future has in store - for you, your team, your organisation, industry, country… your world.

It is a tool and a handbook that will help you put your sense making to work. You see, this sense making topic has got some balls, and that's where it can get tricky. It's a capability needed in workplaces and communities today and the irony is that it can be difficult to make sense of making sense. 

There’s such a depth of information on the topic of sensemaking; journals, well-researched articles and peer reviewed detailed pieces that go deep, deep, deep on sensemaking. But I don’t think they help us make sense of making sense. Time is of the essence. How do we make sense swiftly? How do we get smart… quick?

Making Sense is my thinking and experience on how I've worked with people, to help them work together to think, map and act… to make sense of whatever is going on in their industry, their organisation, their team - or for themselves.

It’s a book that is about making sense. And no matter what the future holds, no matter what technology comes or what changes are made to the world we live in, we will always be striving to make sense of what’s going on.

We are humans and we use sense making.

How to deal with creative sads, dips and roller coasters

Creators and makers the world over (and history past) know there are times when the muse shows up and times when it’s in hiding.

In between times, you get the opportunity to beat yourself up about:

• how you’re not creative;
• are only creative after alcohol or cupcakes;
• sometimes think you might be creative but other people have already thought/done/published/shipped made a gazillion dollars doing what you thought might have been original;
• can’t keep the creative thing going every day; and
• feel like giving up; who would notice anyway.

These thoughts are all part of the creative dip; that roller coaster of thinking about your wonderfully human capability of ingenuity, of making sh*t up, of being brilliant and insightful and clever.

Even if you think your creativity comes as often as a leap year, look out because even if it's a leap year or not, creativity IS there. 

When the dip hits, reach for this list of action-based solutions to wind you up-up-up and back on the rails to the heights of the brilliance you know is yours.

Know it - know that it WILL come; it’s not a case of if, but when. The creative dip will come. When you know that, you’ll notice it when it does. It won’t shock you into taking a day under the covers … alone; with ice cream or choc-coated marshmallows. 

Name it - when it comes, name it. Call out to it. “Hey you, you dippity dip of creative process. I know you, you’re not gonna get me! Ha! You’re just here to make me… no way, I’m not even gonna say it. Screw you! I’ve got stuff to do!”

Shift focus - when it aches on the downward slope, go to another thing you’ve got bubbling on the back burner. You know that ‘thing’, that other project, idea or wonderment you’ve had before? Get that out for a moment and spend a little time with that. This stage of being in the dip will pass. 

Distraction with another action – There is no sense falling into the pit of wallow and staying there; start immediately on another piece of this project. Persist despite the dip. 

Not-negotiable - Do not debate or argue or negotiate with the dip. As Richard Carlson says in his brilliant book ‘Stop thinking start living’. If you think, debate, negotiate or ruminate, you’re going to be done-for down there in the depths. Carry on. Simply carry on. (PS: By the way, thinking about why you’re in the pit is not carrying on.)

Thank it and keep moving - Acknowledge the pit and that it’s simply your ego looking out for you, trying to protect you from the scary stuff of shipping and publishing and creating. Seth Godin knows it; Steven Pressfield knows it; Austin Kleon knows it; Elizabeth Gilbert knows it; Nancy Duarte knows it. You too are currently knowing it. Doing creative thinking and work is tricky, challenging and hard but you’ve got this. You have. 

See the light of dawn – Not suggesting you do an all-nighter, rather as you’re on the up slope, you’ll think ‘Hey, hang on a minute, this could be… maybe it’s a bit good after all.’ This is the light of awesome firing and flaring up again. Acknowledge that. Say ‘I’m coming up for sunlight again here people’. 

Step on the gas – With some light coming your way, speed up, go safely but at breakneck speed. You’re up and out of the pit, pick up some momentum and carry on. Double time. With a renewed view from another peak, you have a wonderful capability to go further, faster and fairer than before. So go go go and do do do.

We don’t need to deny or delete the roller coaster dip of the creative process; we need to acknowledge it. The creative sads and the dip of doubt hits us all at some time through the course of a project or piece of work. Yes, sometimes it feels more frequent or that rollercoaster is a nauseating ride we paid for…but it does pass.

When you get to the top of the next roller coaster hill, enjoy that expansive view. You’re just one scream away from the next pit. But by then you’ll be an expert hand at this creative dip thing. You’ll get your rhythm, flow and creative mojo on and you’ll go, onward and upward, screaming with the wind in your hair: ‘Aaaarrrggghhhh! I’m aliiiiivvvveeeee!’