As we work toward becoming an effective and highly functioning team we will need several shared tools and techniques. I offer two simple frameworks and suggest that all team members familiarize themselves with each at their earliest opportunity. I will present them briefly in our next meeting.
The first is Difficult Conversations, by from the Harvard Negotiation Project. This approach is used successfully to handle world crises. It should help us. Three job aids may prove useful to you: Notes, Framework, and Preparation.
The second is Edward DeBono's Six Thinking Hats. Several of you may have noticed the weird little icon in all of my e-mails |||||| These are the colors of the six thinking hats. Red for feelings and intuition; blue for overview, oversight, or process; white for information or data; green for creativity, new ideas, brainstorming; yellow for best case scenario, ideal goal or outcome; and black for critical thinking and decision making. The key idea of the book is that we can all wear the same hat at the same time and change hats in unison so that we, as a team, are using the maximum intelligence of the team for each of these types of thinking. This approach also helps change the common situation so that no one person feels like they have to wear a particular hat all the time because the rest of the team seodom dons that hat.
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