If you’re gonna talk the talk, then you also need to walk the walk. Right?
YES… certainly right at our (family) business.
This week we officially launched our Skillful Collaboration website — with coffee, mint tea, water, and cake!
And to celebrate, we decided to take our own Team Assessment as the Skillful Collaboration Development Team.
I’ve been the leader of the project, Barnabe has been our tech support and website designer, and Elsa has been our background inspiration with her ever-critical eye for detail.
So, what did we learn in our debrief session?
What we’re proud of
One highlight was our score on how open we are to speak up, challenge each other, and bring our own ideas.
We all gave the maximum points here. We’re especially proud of this score from Barna… I mean, how cool is that when your ‘kid’ brings his full self and ideas into our “professional” environment?
We also scored highly on peer coaching — phew! Sometimes they say the cobbler doesn’t wear the best shoes, but our data shows we are learning from each other very well.
What surprised us
It seems we need to take a closer look at our decision-making, and two things in particular:
- External perspectives. Early on, when we first had the idea of Skillful Collaboration, we talked with lots of friends and colleagues in our network. But in the final months leading up to the launch, we’ve been much more internally focused. This showed up clearly in the data.
- Meetings. Elsa scored our meetings much lower than Barnabe and I did. Interesting! Barnabe and I have structured weekly meetings, but Elsa’s role in the team is less intensive, so our meetings with her are more ad hoc. A great eye-opener.
What we’ll change
We’re happy with our weekly meetings, so we’re not going to “oblige” Elsa to join those — that wouldn’t be very engaging for her.
But the point about including external voices in our decision-making is spot on. In the coming months, we’ll be much more intentional about stakeholder engagement and feedback to support our decisions.
What an eye-opening, fun, and tasty (raspberry tart is still our favourite) debrief session it was!
If you’d like to know more about our team assessment and debrief sessions. Let’s connect!
