Every teammate listens and responds through their own filter. The complexity grows when you add a little stress to the environment. Customizing a relationship requires a clinical approach. Follow this sequence to learn your partners’ language and see the world through their eyes:
Engagement
Lower your guard to enable vulnerability. Let your teammate see past your veneer if you’d like to see past theirs. Communicate the genuine desire to share an alliance by practicing openness and transparency.
Assessment
Explore and discover the uniqueness of your new ally. Listen to his or her narrative to seek an understanding of perspective. Ask yourself what would have to be true about their history to make their thoughts, feelings, and actions make sense.
Planning
Define the scope of your collaboration. Ask your teammate what he or she needs most from you to be successful. Be willing to have the same question asked of you. Establish clear ground rules, communication norms, and goals.
Action
Support respect and accountability by practicing interactions that are true to your engagement, assessment, and planning. Attend to glitches before they take root when things veer off course. Allow the relationship to evolve through the natural stages of investment, trust, growth, and change.
Evaluation
Step back to re-assess quality and direction. Regularly ask your teammates, “How are we doing?” even if the answer is, “Fine, why do you ask?” At some point, the answer will be, “Well…since you asked…” and you’d rather make that course correction early than late.
Engage, assess, plan, act, evaluate. Repeat this cycle for the lifespan of the relationship to maximize collaboration and communication. The best connections are multi-lingual with your partner’s language being the one you learn to speak.
