2: Creating the Conditions

Set up the environment

Think about the physical space where you will be working together in Deep Collaboration. This is important to create the container that we need.

Things that can be helpful include: neutral meeting place, comfortable chairs, rules of confidentiality, free from distractions and interruptions, separate from day-to-day work, and a setting that helps people relax and open themselves to discussion. Having an existing relationship with, or demonstrating reaching out to the First Nations people on whose land you are having your meeting will aid the cultural intelligence of your work together in Deep Collaboration. 

Who's in the room

Deep Collaboration requires people with different views to work together. Each of the people participating will have different levels of readiness, capacity for collaboration, skills, and sense of urgency around the work. We all should try to understand this as well as possible.

We will never have all the right people in the room at the right time. The group should agree who is and isn’t in the group and the group should be closed, at least for a certain period of time. Trust can be lost when different people come in and out of the shared conversation.

Develop shared language

Discuss and agree on how people want to be described and what terms and language are respectful. This process can help build towards trust as it requires every participant to listen and accept the others’ preferred way of being seen.

When people begin to use the same words with the same meaning, they communicate more effectively, minimise misunderstandings, and gain the sense of being on the same page, even while grappling with significant differences.

Explore the glossary for terms and our definitions

Create shared principles around trust

Ask people to reflect on what level of trust they need and what this looks like. It can be helpful to suggest to people to imagine the discussion getting difficult, and talk about what they might need. The goal is to keep people connected and avoid people retreating from the relationship. Discuss this as a group and write a list on a big sheet. Create some shared principles and go back to them when needed.

Create shared values and purpose

In a similar way to shared language, we need to find the values and purpose that are shared within the group. This means discussing the reasons people are participating and finding the common ground.

Coming back to shared purpose and values is vital to keeping people in relationship through conflict and at other times things are difficult. Deep Collaboration does not ask people to agree on everything, but to start with the common ground and create something new starting from that point. For further pointers see: How do you build a shared agenda? in Further Resources below.

See yourself as separate from your role

In Deep Collaboration we will each have many roles that we play in the collaboration. They can be personal feelings, formal and informal positions and worldviews. It is helpful to see our positions on issues being discussed as a ‘role’ that we represent as well as our personal view. The role is not just you or I, but part of the collaboration. Becoming more aware of what role we are in, and the role others see us in, makes it easier to manage conflict and progress collaboration, particularly when we feel criticism from others. Whilst difficult, if we can learn to understand criticism as criticism of a position or a role and not an attack on ourselves as a person, it can help us stay connected during conflict. By viewing our positions as roles, it also gives us permission to sometimes let go of a role, even for a moment, to step into another perspective or let someone else take that role up and learn from it.

After 6pm, there is an opportunity to think about the personal bit of some of the feedback we are getting.

Find and explore difference positively

Our goal is to create something new that is shared by everyone in the group. To do this, we have to talk about our differences and explore them as the key to success.

Deep Collaboration will bring up differences in agendas, approaches, culture and power. As more difference surfaces, we often look to those with power or authority to maintain order, or attack them for not suppressing or ending conflict.

The practice and skill of exploring differences requires us to listen for different views, bring them to the surface, and stay in relationship as we talk through them, even if they bring strong emotions with them.  

Once again, our shared purpose and values will bring us through these situations and turn conflict and difference into tools and keys for creating the new shared leadership we are here for.