Seattle and Raleigh-Durham marketing, graphic and brand design studio Design Kompany

When it comes to building strong teams, knowing what you have in common is more important than your individual opinions. Durham Chamber of Commerce hosted a talk this morning that highlighted this and more tips on how to build successful teams.

It’s not often you walk into a business seminar to learn about how to talk to people effectively, but that’s exactly what this was about.

1. Listen intentionally. So much of creating a good team is what Center for Skillful Means director Theresa Beckman called “healthy communication.”
2. Don’t ask why once you’re midstream. “Why” can be a drain when you’re committed to an idea and have a shared vision with a team . To really work effectively, be sure to really be present as others telling you what’s important to them. If you ask, “Why?,” that can be perceived as intrusive, and they might get defensive and withdraw. Instead, focus on tangibles like “What do you aim to do?” “When will you do this by?” and “How do you plan to get there?” That’s delineation. That’s goal-setting.

   I also really like the book Dialogue for how to relate to others.

3. Visualize. OK, I’m editorializing a little, but one of the big take-aways was the fact that we really have to be clear in our heads what we TRULY want to achieve. The famous “BHAG,” or “Big Hairy Audacious Goals,” that we learn about in seminars like this really make sense when we talk about goal-setting.

   In high school, I had a notebook with “Grand Plan of My Life” penned on the cover. But I chucked it sophomore year of college. The thing is, LHAGs are good, too. Little Hairy Audacious Goals strung together can be just as fun, I think. And more adventurous.

   My thing is, you can really get too tunnel-visioned if you commit to your vision too early in life: you simply haven’t had time to explore your options fully yet. And only you can know when it’s time to pick a path and run it.

4. Commit to your own ideas. What’s your big vision for yourself? Your organization? Your team? What goal would you like to accomplish in the next 30 days? Put it down in writing. Something that social media marketing person Jason Falls talked about also last night at Social Media Club Seattle’s packed-out event on converting social media marketing into real sales. (Nice that there’s live streaming through U Stream, even if it does get interrupted irritatingly by popup commercials. Errrr.)

   
   

5. Breathe. Wow. Yoga class and relaxation tapes and learning how to Bring Baby Home all have this in common. There must be something to learning how to be aware of your breathing, and today’s theory was that breath is a physical and measurable indicator of the state of your mind. Anxiety, fast short breaths. Calm confidence, easy longer ones.
6. Cooperation can really bring meaning to your life. When it works, teams can really be brilliant. In Seattle, I was hoping to build more of these pockets of people coming together for a project and making it just amazing. We did have some luck with that, but it was more of a subcontractor relationship than a true collaboration in the sense that it’s long-term, and gives in two directions. Not just financially, but intellectual stimulation, too.

   DK Seattle really wanted to be something like a collective partnership with complementary services and pool of talent. But in Seattle, there are too many people who want to do things all themselves and they’re smart, so they can DIY most anything. We’re not about that. We’d rather bring the people in for specific parts who are specialists. Like the photographer we hired for a brochure’s photo shoot, or the web developer we teamed with on a site design, or the videographer Patrick Wright who one day I would love to commission for more than just our in-house video, Say Hello to Design Kompany. Our five interns have brought energy into our company and made us more aware of other ways of thinking, other approaches and philosophies around not just design, but life. Real teamwork and collaboration can augment you as a human being, and not just a provider of professional services.

   But how do you know when it will work? This is the most important point:

7. Care. If people who agree to work together have genuine caring for their goal, and if that goal is part of a shared vision (here at DK we think of it as similar values), then that’s a good setup for a collaboration that can really give you a lot more than it takes.

   But what do you think? What does a successful collaboration look like to you?