What is the difference between an open question and a closed question?

Bigger Picture Perspective

Are we collaborating?

“Collaboration is the process of two or more people or organisations working together to realise shared goals.”

 But what does it take to truly collaborate?

We believe that it takes trust, empathy and balance for a whole team to be effective.  Collaboration needs self-awareness and an understanding of everyone's strengths and weaknesses, so that the achievement is that of the team, not just the individual.

Here be wild things

What is it that motivates us to work? A bag of doubloons can get you only so far, while a story, an ambition, a vision will take you around the globe and back again.

The only thing missing from this for me is the space for those engaged to make sense of why and what it may mean for them to undertake such a task.

Change needs shared commitment

We believe that conversations are the fundamental unit of change in an organisation. Only through conversations can leaders & employees get a shared commitment to the change needed & how to deliver it.

Us and them

Silos are present in just about every organisation, sometimes they are physical as well as psychological. If they already exist, we tend to exacerbate silos with phrases like “if only they would do what they are meant to…”

How do you go about removing some of what gets in the way?

Are you listening to your employees?

There's nothing quite so demotivating as sending people the message that their ideas and insights are not welcome.

What stops your employees from speaking up?

How can you find out? 

How can we nurture a safe space to be able to speak?

I am sitting in a meeting and there is silence from everyone but the leader of the session. They have asked a question and no-one is answering, why? When I think of my own experiences, when I don’t feel able to speak it is a very physical response to something that is unconsciously in the room. My voice literally cannot be pulled from me. It builds and swells deep in my stomach, but will go no further. A friend describes his as stopping in his throat. Yet neither of us can really articulate what exactly it is that stops us. There is something about that space that doesn’t make it safe to let my voice out. It is about the people in the room, the positioning of the meeting or session, the contradictions between meaning and what is spoken, the emotional state of the participants before they even enter the room.

In a moment of complete silence I wonder what other people’s reasons are for not speaking and what we could learn if we took a moment and were brave and inquisitive enough to explore them.