Integrating the Team Transcendence Working Model (T2WM): Contextual Leadership & Integration of Complementary Skills
creativity
Oxford Languages
/ˌkriːeɪˈtɪvɪti/
noun
the use of imagination or original ideas to create something; inventiveness.
Great ideas are not developed in isolation – we need teams with high creative agility, where each of us plays a role in creating the next iteration of a good idea until it becomes great. Our current global pandemic has compounded the already intricate challenge of finding solutions to increasingly complex problems by altering and, in some cases, eliminating many modes in which we previously collaborated together. Our evolution as social beings has shown us that our survival depends entirely on our ability to work together. Our species existence today is testament to the intrinsic necessity of creativity and collaboration, which are interdependent and indivisible.
Contrary to the stories and lore I learned growing up in the United States that individuals should “pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” the reality is that very few lone wolves are authentic solo survivalists (and there are far more variables in the equation than our own bootstraps). We are programmed to relate with, empathize with, and adapt to and within social structures. We need these connections and interactions, as the past year of social distancing and isolation has made blatantly evident.
So where does this leave our collaborative efforts and our creative agility? Even prior to the current pandemic, many of us worked physically apart from our teammates utilizing tools and technology to advance our collaborations. So we know that physical proximity is a variable, but its absence is not an inhibitor to creativity or collaboration, as our current reality demonstrates. So what can we do to make our collaborations (remote or not) more effective and efficient and to produce more creative outcomes?
Our team has spent the last few months defining and developing what we’ve dubbed the Team Transcendence Working Model (T2WM). Our idea is to create a framework for teams to apply in an effort to enhance their creative problem solving capacities. There are six characteristics spelled out by T2WM that are essential and entangled. Let’s take a look at two of the six.
Contextual Leadership & Integration of Complementary Skills to boost creative agility
Contextual leadership is tending toward a horizontal team structure that allows for dynamic changes in leadership based on the needs and requirements of the task at hand. Depending on the situation, each team member is empowered to and expected to stand up and lead the group when their skills and vision are best suited to guide the group’s problem solving process. Contextual leadership is characterized by the team accepting, welcoming, and adapting to these dynamic shifts in leadership and trusting when their team members take charge.
We define a “team” as a collection of leaders with complementary skills (distinct from a work group, where group members have similar skills) where the individual is subordinated to the performance of the team. This is a dramatic departure from the traditional, vertical hierarchy of team structure with predetermined “leaders” and, therefore, often predetermined “outcomes.” With an intentionally curated culture that promotes contextual leadership, the whole team holds the responsibility for solving the task at hand, not a single leader and not subgroups.
Democratizing Creative Processes
Now within a horizontal structure, we can take contextual leadership to the next level. I’ve been experimenting with “democratizing creative processes” in the form of knowledge sharing (tools, approaches, processes) and blurring the lines of both explicitly and implicitly defined team roles. What does that mean? We are each selected to be involved with our team(s) because we individually bring a set of skills and perspectives that are complementary to those of our teammates. Our ability to integrate these complementary skills collaboratively is key to reaching the full potential of the team. This is the challenge. With distinct backgrounds and experiences, we may find ourselves having to translate our ideas to our teammates.
For example, I am a visual designer and when I’m collaborating with my teammates from fields outside of visual design, I am often selective with how I express my ideas to avoid too much design jargon. I want to create a welcoming conversation for everyone to express their visual needs and critiques without feeling lost or intimidated. This is a subtle example of how I translate myself in order to collaborate, but what if I offered a bit of training on the tools I use and shared some of my design language with my teammates?
My goal in “democratizing creative processes” is to give my teammates the confidence to participate in the creative processes I often facilitate, which fundamentally is just one of many modes of problem solving our team can pursue. Our ability to solve problems with this mode improves with more accurate, effective and efficient communication. After all, we are gathered to solve problems together. Increased communicative efficiency expands the range of creative outcomes possible.
While I’m still the team’s expert and go-to when it comes to design processes and tools, my teammates are now familiar with said tools and the parameters we work under when creating our design products. My practical role has not changed, but now everyone has more ownership in the creative processes, can express themselves more fluently in these terms, and feel empowered to contribute more ideas. The more ideas we have to work with the more likely we are to find a good one and work together to make it a great one. Think of this as transdisciplinary collaboration and an advantage of a more horizontal team structure.
How does the old adage go? “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Allow your team to relax their grip on their hammers and touch a few other tools to spark new ways of thinking.
I challenge your team to blur lines of who is “the __________” of the group and allow contextual leaders to emerge. This exercise functions as an “ego check” as we each must acknowledge that there are other tools aside from our own tools and perspectives perhaps better suited to work through the task at hand. How does the old adage go? “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Allow your team to relax their grip on their hammers and touch a few other tools to spark new ways of thinking. Everyone on the team should be at least somewhat familiar (not experts by any means) with the tools, approaches, and processes their teammates specialize in and that the group can utilize to solve problems.
Further discussion
I realize that “democratizing the creative process” may not be the best approach for increasing the creative agility of some teams or for solving certain tasks. Collaboration is complex and each situation is unique. Where have you seen contextual leadership emerge with your team? How can we more intentionally integrate our skills on our teams? Does this process have anything to do with releasing or dissolving our ego? Does “relaxing the grip on your hammers” strike a chord with you? Join this conversation with the Transcendeam Community.