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Sometimes I wonder why collaboration is so interesting to me and today I solved on the why. It’s because collaboration equals harnessing diversity.
Being an information explorationist, despite whatever job title I may hold at any given time, diversity means exposure to truckloads of information I might not find on my own. And that's cool!
Cynthina Heinsohn, my partner, and I collaborate with each other to manage our business and advance our projects. For the latter, we also collaborate with clients to meet their business objectives and with external partners in various capacities.
We’re like everyone else when it comes to collaboration. Sometimes we hit the mark and others we fall short. We’ve learned successful collaboration can be encapsulated by a simple formula:
Collaboration = Connection + Communication + Cooperation + Integration
The challenge is finding pathways to collaboration.
One of our Intellicore Design Consulting clients needed help in understanding the value of a community-enhanced website versus their traditional website. You know, “community” as in social media outreach.
I put together a short PowerPoint presentation to explain what’s the what and thought others might also want in on the whata.
Check it out.
In response to queries about the solution sets offered by Intellicore Design Consulting, I prepared a video to give folks and up close and personal look. Our solutions focus on on-demand business automation, collaboration, and eCommerce.
The slide below is taken out of the presentation and gives you the quick answer. The presentation gives you more information, hosted by moi.
I love my mother but some conversations with her drives me crazy. She needs to explain everything is in excruciating detail, even when I get it, or she provides me with such a minutia of detail that I lose sight of her point. She can take 5 minutes what it takes me 15 seconds to convey.
The reason? She and I have conflicting communication styles that require us to work hard to adjust for each others.
While that’s a personal example, variations in communication styles directly impact in the business world and on the ease of collaboration within a group.
There are four primary styles of communication. Different folks have variable names for them but I playfully call the styles Airheads, Firebrands, Waterways, and Earthworks. Let’s explore how each style is conveyed and the stylistic impacts on social media and internal collaboration.
Tower Bridge in a fog.Cynthina Heinsohn, my business partner, and I have logged more than 20 years in our business and social relationship. Yet for all those miles traveled together, we’ve sometimes fail to communicate effectively and our connection became like a bridge in the fog…we knew the connection was there but we needed to let the fog blow away to find it.
The fog didn’t derive from a deficiency in either of our abilities or from a lack of our willingness to collaborate. Rather, sometimes mishaps occurred because we forgot about the reality of several of differing attributes.
Since we became business partners with Intellicore Design Consulting and now conduct the majority of our joint business via phone, some of our attribute differences are more pronounced, impacting our interpersonal art of collaboration with each other, and we’ve required new collaboration tools to help us ensure we keep our bridge unhampered by fog.
Today, one of the differences I want to discuss are the differences in thinking styles and how these can impact collaboration and communication. Variations in thinking styles impact everyone so businesses need to pay attention to this attribute to be successful collaborators.
Cynthina Heinsohn, my business partner, and I have known each other for more than 20 years as both business associates and close personal friends. We’ve worked together in two companies and on a variety of projects -- and we work well together too because our strengths compliment each other.
Cynthina and I teamed up together in Intellicore Design Consulting because we wanted to work together and are both passionate about collaboration. It’s what’s made our partnership strong over the years.
For all of that, though, we still sometimes stumble in our communications and drive each other bonzo. It’s funny too, because for a small business, we have collaboration tools up the wazoo…because, hey, one of our raison d'être.
GroupSwim solutions, our most favorite on-demand social software, offer role-based permissions for members and unlimited groups so it’s fabulous method to foster online collaboration and communication, with privacy levels to match.
How do I group thee in GroupSwim?
Let me count the ways.
