2. A Common Language

Embracing a common language to harness a broad range of team diversity is another essential ingredient of effective team collaboration. The SmartSkills model of mind provides a common language for thinking through tasks and creates a practical framework for team members to understand each other better, as well as develop their own ability to flex their thinking energies to best match the requirements of each task they face. A shared language for teams to work through tasks such as innovation, strategy and project management, to name a few, are needed to provide the necessary process skills and structure that most teams desperately need. Real collaboration requires that teams develop the discipline to focus their thinking energies and learn to do the right thinking at the right time. Without an effective process framework, team meetings get derailed, team members get frustrated because they feel they have not been heard and precious time is wasted. Figure 2 depicts the SmartSkills framework of mind that developed its roots from Rhodes’ system of Effective Intelligence.

Figure 2: The SmartSkills System of Effective Intelligence

What The Six Mind Frames or “Frames of Mind” Mean:

		The Logical Mind Frame: Hard Blue
		The type of thinking that is driven by relevance, proof, comparisons, disciplined and logical reasoning.
		The Personal/Evaluative Mind Frame: Soft Blue
		The type of thinking that is driven by action, personal values, commitments, enthusiasm and personal views.
		The Analytical Mind Frame: Hard Red
		The type of thinking that is driven by realism, quantitative information, data, precision, organization and a sense of context.
		The Impressionistic Mind Frame: Soft Red
		The type of thinking that is driven by impressions, sensitivity, qualitative information, concern for communication and a holistic perspective.
		The Ingenious Mind Frame: Hard Green
		The type of thinking that is driven by ideas, options, many alternatives and outside-the-box approaches.
		The Imaginative Mind Frame: Soft Green
		The type of thinking that is driven by hunches, metaphors, “what if” scenarios, vision and imagination.

Intelligent Teams

The degree to which the group truly capitalizes on the rich diversity of each of it members will directly affect the quality of their results. Intelligent teams make a concerted effort to continuously improve their collaborative skills. Collaboration requires deliberate, focused attention and conscious effort to sustain it. Real collaboration is not easy because it requires individuals to scrutinize the way they think and interact, and it requires a tremendous amount of emotional self-management. It’s when the stakes are high and the pressure is on the team to perform better when emotions run high. Intelligent teams learn how to harness both their emotional power and conceptual energy to navigate the pressures of continuous change.

Any team, work group or task force that gets together for the purpose of working toward a common goal becomes a micro-learning community embedded within the larger system of the organization. Organizations need to pay close attention to the way individual teams think and interact. It is the quality of those daily team interactions that will ultimately determine how well the larger organization responds to the pressures of an increasingly competitive and complex world.

Brett Richards is an innovator, performance coach and energizing facilitator. In addition to being a master trainer in the SmartSkills System of Effective Intelligence, he also holds certifications in EQi (emotional intelligence) and executive coaching.

<< Page 1 | Page 2 <<

Intelligent Teams: The Dynamics of Collaboration : Page 3 of 3

DPA . . .   Articles  |  Case Studies  |  News Releases