ABSTRACT
How does organisational culture need to shift, to succeed in an era of collaboration? Often, corporate practices and structures are optimised for competition. While useful to that end, they can be harmful and obstructive when the goal requires working together across boundaries. Proactively creating a different approach can lay the foundations for constructive cross-sector working.
Healthy working relationships are built on trust. Trust itself depends on multiple factors including: transparency, mutual understanding, reliability, generosity, and shared values. Organisations can usually sustain reasonable working relationships with each other when times are good, but the real test comes when facing problems. It is tempting for companies to fall back into self-protective mode, perhaps hiding key information, or accumulating resources to the detriment of others. This does enormous damage to relationships, and trust may not recover after the hard times pass. So, what is the alternative?
In order to achieve sustainable and responsible mineral value chains, relationships between organisations must be able to survive increasingly difficult global conditions. Interestingly, relationships between organisations are held together by relationships between people. And, like all kinds of relationships, the quality of communication between those individuals is determinative of success. Good communication results in mutual understanding and trust. Even when organisational interests partially conflict, good communication enables the best outcome to be agreed for all parties.
In this session, you will learn and practice the single most important communication tool taught by relationship experts: reflective listening. This skill is both highly accessible and sophisticated. Reflective listening enables better understanding of the issues at stake and what can be done to solve them. It supports collaborators to find shared values and it creates empathy for different perspectives. This simple skill can have a significant impact on company culture, both internal and external. You will leave this session better equipped for collaborative working and, hopefully, inspired to continue the transformation in your organisations.
Skill building for collaboration 20 min demo
BIOGRAPHY
Robin Prospect coaches leaders and teams, with a focus on purpose-driven organisations. Among other work, Robin has supported collaborations between public, private and third sector organisations to tackle the wicked problems of inequality and mental ill health. She supports organisations to develop next-generation working practices, in response to the specific needs of the VUCA world we live and work in (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous). She is inspired by the work of Frederic Laloux (Reinventing Organisations), Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey (An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organisation), who have collected numerous case studies demonstrating that organisations of all sizes and sectors can meet the challenges of this era.
To contact Robin or find out more about her work, please visit her website: www.growinharmony.com and connect with her on LinkedIn.
