Carla Miller 00:00
How good are you at collaboration?

Carla Miller 00:03
We've all experienced the joy of working with people that we collaborate well with, and the absolute grind of working with people who feel really hard to collaborate with. And sometimes it can feel like we're at the mercy of other people or circumstances. But actually learning to collaborate is a skill. Much like learning to influence is a skill. And that's what I'm talking about in today's episode. Welcome to the influence and impact podcast for female leaders. My name is Carla Miller, and I'm a leadership coach who helps female leaders to tackle self doubt, become brilliant influencing and make more impact at work. I've created this podcast to help you to become a more inspiring and impactful leader. And I want to become the leadership BFF you didn't know you were missing until now.

Carla Miller 01:03
So in today's episode, I have welcomed Deborah Meshech to the podcast, she is the author of a book called collaborate. However, it's got a silent H in it. So when you read it, it says collabora hate how to build incredible collaborative relationships at work, even if you'd prefer to work alone. Now, that title really jumped out at me because it summarised some of those highs and lows of the workplace and collaboration. So I really enjoyed jumping on with Deb and having a conversation about it. And we talk about what collaboration is and why it matters, how and why it sometimes goes wrong. And Deb shares some super practical strategies for building those strong, successful working relationships that basically help us to enjoy everyday working life a bit more and succeed in our careers. So I'm going to share that episode with you in just a moment. In terms of what's happening over here, we've just kicked off the most recent Open cohort of influence and impact. Quite a few other people participating have been podcast listeners. And so hello to them. If they're listening. Now it's a fantastic group. And I'm so excited to work closely with them and join them on their leadership journeys. be bolder, starts later this month in October. So if you're looking to build your confidence and assertiveness, this will be the last cohort we run this year. The next one probably be February next year, I don't know how many times we will run the open programme. So as if it's on your wish list to do go and talk to your line manager about it. And you can download a PDF and share it with them. And then finally, we are bringing back our influence for success workshop. It's a half day workshop, all about advanced influencing skills, and that's going to run in November. So I have been busy that that also settling in to every day school back to school life.

Carla Miller 03:13
And autumn as the nights drawer in. I am a big summer lover. So I've just got some nice, very light. So I'm going to hang up outside in my garden because berry lights bring me joy. So I'm hoping to bring a little bit of winter joy. And I need to go read those books on embracing autumn and winter and get my mindset in the right place. So that's what's going on over here. Also delivering a lot of in house workshops to all sorts of different companies and organisations. And that is a lot of fun and keeping me busy. So let's roll the episode and find out more about how you can become brilliant at collaborating.

Carla Miller 04:00
so delighted to welcome Deb to the show. Welcome. So much for having me, Carla.

Carla Miller 04:08
So this is a topic close to my heart because it's so closely aligned with influencing but I'd love to start by hearing a little bit more about your background and your story and how you came to focus on this area of collaboration.

Deb Mashek 04:22
So I start the book, I've memorised my opening line. I don't know if that's lame or interesting, but the opening line of the book is the trailer park, my parents alcoholism, and my PhD. These are my three great teachers of collaboration. And so my background is I grew up in a double wide trailer in North Platte, Nebraska. And this place was fascinating because you know, there's this moss fault grid with all of these little houses these little trailers on it and we were surrounded the perimeter was surrounded by a chain link fence and the rules were basically you know, the kids would spill out of their homes at 9am

Deb Mashek 05:00
And then they would be playing with each other, they were very few adults around. So this was in the 1970s. So ball theatre there, like we hadn't yet gotten so worried about all of the missing children on the sides and milk cartons created a lot of parental anxiety that in me that the trailer park was this Ultimate Free Range kid experience. So let's kids got to figure out what we were going to play, how we were going to play it, what the rules of engagement were going to be, what consequences were going to be some little jerk, like, didn't follow along with the rules. And so you know, that we had to figure out how if we, you know, offended somebody, by not following the rules, how we were going to re approach that group and get invited back. In other words, this was a great big play mat for figuring out how to do how to be how to play with other people, which, frankly, I think a lot of our parenting nowadays takes away that opportunity to socialise children in the in that way. So that was the trailer park piece, I learned a lot about playing well with others there. And then the second piece was both of my parents struggled with alcoholism throughout my life. And they died when I was 24. So this was like, you know, early life sorts of things, that they, you know, just any kid out who's grown up in a household with a lot of addiction is experienced this, this thing where it's sometimes hard for you to have needs or to express those needs. And certainly, it's difficult to have those needs responded to in the persistent, appropriate way. And so what I figured out really early on is how to turn to other adults in my life. So whether it was my teachers, or the parents of my friends, to get the sort of care and nurturing that I was often missing at home. And that was also through relationship and be i being able to pay attention to other's needs and interest and be able to engage with those as part, you're just as important as my own. And sometimes like, not into like, that needed therapy, and I get that. But this idea of it's through, you know, we're all moving through this world that needs and wants and interest and how do we navigate those in the context of working with other people ends up being important. And then ultimately, I ended up

Deb Mashek 07:15
making my way to college and then making my way to graduate school and discovering that there was this whole field on the psychology of relationships. So there's like tonnes and tonnes of research being conducted on what makes a healthy relationship, and how relationships degrade how you repair and maintain them, all of these brilliant things. And that ended up being the object of my study, and my teaching and research for decades, whether as a professor at Harvey Mudd College in California, or later running an organisation focused on bringing viewpoint diverse or diverse viewpoints together, this idea of wow, you know, there are real strategies, there are concrete things, this isn't all smoke and mirrors this relationship building things. So those three parts, trailer park, my parents alcoholism, and my PhD then kind of came together to develop my interest in collaboration.

Carla Miller 08:09
I love it. And I thought it was a great first line, actually. So I think it's a good idea to memorise it and share it. And as you were talking about the children playing together, you're so right, in that I was watching my small child, he's five play with other five year olds, and it was really, really hard not to intervene, when you could see the dynamics weren't working. I was I was reading your book. And I was like, Oh, I really should just, he needs to learn how to deal with this. himself. Yeah, he was like the third person in a trio.

Carla Miller 08:42
And actually, I was worried for him and feeling some kind of anxiety on his behalf and some kind of rejection on his behalf that he just wasn't feeling at, right. So really, yeah, there's it's such a beautiful example where so much of it is our vicarious projection onto them about what we think they should be feeling based on our years and years of experience after their age. And I'll put in a plug here for let grow.org It's a fantastic nonprofit organisation focused on advocating for free range parenting and forgiving children, their freedoms marked by giving them these most likely, developmentally appropriate challenges, like how do you navigate the world, they also advocate for things like let the kid cross the street, guess what they're going to have to do it at some point. Let the kid learn how to use the knife. They're gonna detail art at a thought, you know? So it's, I love that organisation. And it's been really helpful for me to help give myself permission to remove myself sometimes from those situations. That because it is it's like how do you know how do we keep our mouths shut? How do we sit on our hands? When we say we want to be helpful, we all want the best for our kids. But sometimes we end up intervening in ways that in the long run, undermine their success, their sense of pride, their confidence, all those sorts of things that we say we want to be ignored.

Deb Mashek 10:00
bring in.

Deb Mashek 10:01
Absolutely. And the other thing I really enjoyed about the book was a how you pulled in you were talking about, there's all this research out there about relationships, and quite a bit of that is in what we would call sort of the personal development field, isn't it, it's about romantic relationships or relationships within your family. But the principles within that apply to the workplace as well, don't they? We do. And I mean, here's the thing. It's like all of us, whether we're in the workplace, the home, shopping at the mall, wherever we are, we're still human, but still individuals with hopes and needs and fears and anxieties, and dreams. And it's not like somehow we just shed those things when we walk, you know, into the elevator, excuse me the lift, and go to work.

Deb Mashek 10:47
So it's like, those are part of who we are. And unless we're developing our workplaces and our work lives, honouring the fact that those are a personal development piece, it's like we're leaving a lot of potential on the table. And we're leaving a lot of secret keys Unturned, because that's just who we are as people. And so to be able to take that research literature, from these romantic relationships, and then heart that over into how to create high quality collaborative relationships seems so natural and obvious to me. And it's been so fun to do, because it's really, it's the light bulbs have gone off, not just for me, but for my colleagues for beaters.

Deb Mashek 11:28
I found that myself as well, when I was going through a lot of personal development, learning and then applied that in the workplace. It was when I, it made me a lot more conscious of the dynamics and what was going on. And my career really took off from there. And also just spending that time thinking about yourself and your impact on other people and how you're holding yourself back. We just don't do it. Do we, especially when we're leaders are like, Oh, we've got so much to do. And my team should have all the training opportunities. It's like, actually train yourself, develop yourself and your team will benefit. Way, way more. It's so beautiful. And I noticed that in my AI. Recently, over the past year, I've been meditating more and the mindfulness that just rolling into these situations, and it's like, slowed down a little bit. And it's more of a slow motion, I can see the patterns unfolding. It's been so useful, not just in my personal life, but certainly in my work life as well. So I love that insight. And yeah, it's not a, it's not an indulgence. It's an essential thing in necessity, I think.

Deb Mashek 12:30
And the books, obviously, about collaboration, how do you define collaboration. So here's the stuffy academic version. So collaboration is the process of two or more people who know each other, working together intentionally to advance a specific shared goal. And in the book, I break down why each of those, each of those caveats or aspects is in there. But one of the things that drives me bonkers about this word collaboration is at the society, we said it's like the standard word for, you know, anybody working together to do anything. And I talked to a colleague, and she said that she was collaborating with another colleague on designing the new bulletin board for the lobby, another call as somebody else that they were collaborating on bringing in the lunch order. colleague was collaborating on merging two organisations and trying to figure out how to do it in a way that prevented job loss, I chose not to any one word can be used to describe all of that. Shocking. And so, you know, I wanted this definition, but still that definition, it leaves a lot of wiggle room. And so one of the frameworks that I found super useful comes from Arthur Arthur Ullman. He's an organisational change person. And he talks about the collaboration continuum, that there are these really basic things we can do together, like just not working and exchanging information. So you know, here, let's merge your database and my database. And that's this very tit for tat, exchange sort of form of working together, and a step up from there. Now we can start actually altering processes or approaches to advance a shared goal. And the step up from there, now maybe we can start to share resources, and that those resources might be our expertise, or talent or space or instrumentation or money. And that's different from just exchanging information. And then finally, at the end of this continuum, he talks about how there's collaboration, and the two defining features there are holding the other person's outcomes and goals and needs on par with our own. In other words, we're trying to dominate or take over anybody. And the second key feature for him is finding opportunities, rather creating opportunities to actually learn from each other so that we can be better at what we're doing alone. So there's a mutuality as it is

Deb Mashek 15:00
Collaboration is not necessarily present and, you know, networking or cooperating or are these other models.

Carla Miller 15:09
And you make the same point that I do around influencing that this is such an important skill in the workplace, but we're not taught it. Oh, we were not taught to collaborate.

Deb Mashek 15:20
Right? I find this so and I am sure you've talked about this too, just how crazy it is like, these skills, these quotes off skills are so incredibly essential in the workplace and in life, frankly, and very hard to do well, yet, there's the skills gap where we just don't teach people how to do it. And when I asked, I conducted a ready to help prepare for the book and asked 1100 people, these were people in the US all employed full time.

Deb Mashek 15:53
Have you ever received any formal training and how to collaborate? Well, and a whopping third said, no, none at all. There were a couple who said, Oh, I've gotten a few minutes, which I think means that they like get their professional development from tick tock, I can't, cannot wrap my head around, like, what does a few minutes of professional development look like? So that's really interesting. So it's important, it's hard. And we don't teach it, we somehow expect people just to absorb this by osmosis. And so we end up with a bunch of workplaces where we have people who don't know, you know, they've kind of figured out and felt their way through collaboration, but they don't necessarily know why what they're doing is working, or why what they're doing is not working. And then they're on a trainee and an informal way, people and so it's, it's kind of a big surprise, we end up with a lot of people who really don't know how to do this well, but whose personal lives whose professional lives would be so intensely augmented, including their their work products, the innovation, their workplace, well, being all those things would be elevated if we invested resources to actually train people how to do this.

Deb Mashek 17:03
And you said that it's important, and it's hard. And I'd love to dive into those a little bit more. So why is it important, particularly the audience for this is managers and leaders? Why is it important that managers and leaders know how to collaborate? Well. Now, I would reckon, anybody listening to this can point to at least one horrendous collaboration, that they've been a part of something that was took way, way more effort than anybody predicted it would have going in, or where the final product was like this measly blood presentation of what the anticipated vision was at the outset, or where somebody tried to strong arm their position and like, you pull the rug out from it, or the somebody steal credit, place blame, there are dozens of ways that collaboration can go wrong. And but if you think about okay, so why does it matter, there are four big buckets where our timelines, they slow way down, if the gears that the collaboration clock are not articulating smoothly together, so we create operational drag when collaborations aren't going well. So timelines, bottom lines are absolutely affected because of all these other things like the timelines, also the the well being of individuals when they're in these Clabber. I call it the clobber hate relationships where you want to poke your eyeballs out rather than collaborate with these people. And individuals who are in those horrible collaborative relationships, their anxiety is through the roof, their depression is through the roof, they're looking for other jobs, which is going to cost you manager your organisation money because of all of those rehiring costs. And so people just don't bring their best ideas to the table, when it feels like they're gonna, someone's gonna jump down their throat, or someone's gonna steal their ideas, or someone's gonna give them that nasty look across the table, shuts people down. And so whether we're talking timelines, bottom line, innovation, or well being, not having collaboration in place is costly to organisations, and to obviously the people. So that's the why, why it matters. And what was the other part? Why is it hard? Oh, yeah, it's hard because people are hard. People are so messy. And you know, we're inconsistent all of us are, we're who we are today is not the same person who we were yesterday, and yet, we're navigating all of these differences through really convoluted operational processes, through law theta, they're all these different variables at play and motivations. For the business, the business's interest shift, you know, from quarter to quarter. And so it's, it's like, trying to walk on a high wire in a windstorm across moving sands. I mean, there are all these metaphors that that can come up in here. And so it takes a lot of intention, a lot of attention, a lot of intentionality. It takes good systems and processes, and ideally takes the collaboration culture and the work

Deb Mashek 20:00
place that really supports it and creates that sturdy container for these difficult behaviours to unfold.

Deb Mashek 20:07
And presumably, if we think about those kids in playing together, there's something innate within us that wants to collaborate with other people. Yeah, when we are social animals 100% of our ancestors would not have survived the savannas, have they not been forming groups and tribes. And,

Deb Mashek 20:26
you know, in our more recent history, I like to say those barns didn't raise themselves, it is like we need community and we need to know how to navigate the complexities of community. And so that there is absolutely an I think, an instinctual need a very core human need an act to belong to do and to be together.

Carla Miller 20:48
And your book is called collaborate, but it's got this silent ah, isn't it, hasn't it? So it's collaborative hate, which really, like I saw that and I said, Oh, that's interesting that we look at that, because it resonated for me, why did he go with that name?

Deb Mashek 21:01
So I just say, first, the caveat that I love collaborating, obviously, this is something that's near and dear to my heart, it's been my life blood as a professional. So I want to say that. And I want to say it's really freaking hard sometimes. And I don't know that we talk very often about the hard stuff. Instead, there's all of this kumbaya energy around collaboration, that somehow it's some combination between sliced bread and the bee's knees and the best tool for every job. And I just, just don't buy that because Bounders Yeah, in fact, seven out of 10 people in the survey so that that they have been in a collaboration that was absolutely horrendous. There's a lot of pain out there, where people have had these bad experiences, when they carry that baggage with them into the workplace. And, you know, the psychologist, I'm not a clinician, but gosh, I read a lot of psychology. One thing we know is that you can't make things better by not talking about them. So I wanted to put that ah, in the title, the clapper hate to help us give voice to the hard parts, because I think that's really the only way that we're going to be able to the athlete as we lift up that gross carpet and see what's underneath that's like, oh, gosh, that's what I have to clean. Once we know what's there, we can start unpacking it and addressing it and bringing the solutions to those problems. But unless we talk about the hard stuff, the silent age, the pain, we're not going to be able to make this whole collaboration thing. You know, at our firm more people.

Carla Miller 22:30
I completely agree. And I also think it normalises the fact that it's a struggle sometimes, because otherwise you can sit there go, there's something wrong with me, I'm finding this hard, I shouldn't find it hard, it must be my issue. And I find women, we tend to do that a lot. We tend to internalise and rather than blame the external situations, we will go, Oh, we're not enough, maybe I just need to work harder or be better.

Deb Mashek 22:54
So I really liked that we're unpacking that the you unpack it in your book, and you're open about the challenges that come with it. And know you've got you've developed your matrix as well, haven't you? And obviously, it's easier to see a matrix visually than describe it on a podcast. So we're gonna give it a bit of a shot already. So tell us about your matrix. You know why even just you saying that, I'm going to send you a link for a PDF. So if people would like to download the pretty version of this, that way, you could follow along or just I am looking at my wall right now because I have a copy of it hanging up. So I'll share that. So the magic matrix articulates that there are two dimensions that underlie whether or not you have a high quality collaborative relationship. First one is your collaborative relationship quality, which is so simply, while good or bad, you feel about the relationship that you're in. So do you like this person? Do you trust them? Do you can you count on them, these are all the things by the way, that signal a positive relationship in our romantic lives also. And so like, oh, this person's responsive to my needs. Great. So we've got this relationship quality variable, and it could go from low to high. And then on the other axis, we have interdependence, and what interdependence is, was the extent to which we're in the same boat, so we're gonna sink or swim. So more formally, it's the extent to which our outcomes are mutually dependent on the other person's behaviours. So what you do influences me but I do influences you, and the stronger that influences. Then the more interdependent we are, when you have this really high interdependence, we're like hand in glove, I throw the ball I know you're gonna catch it. And you have really high relationship quality. So I, I like you I enjoy spending time with you. You're I see you as competent. I see you as responsive. That's where you have these Clabber great relationships. This is where you I like to say the glitter encrusted unicorns fly through the sky. And you can do that

Deb Mashek 25:00
Amazing things together because of that high interdependence high relationship quality, but you are not my interdependence, low relationship quality. So in other words, I am hitched to your waggon and error, my you know, my waggon is hitched, I should say, my waggon is hitched to your ill mannered horses and I think you're gonna run me off the cliff and I can't get out of this thing situation.

Deb Mashek 25:26
And I don't like you, I don't trust you, I don't think you're good at your job. I know that you don't follow through on anything. So I don't think you take your work seriously. Like all these sorts of things. That's where I'm especially miserable. So that big, the big differentiator there is that relation to your quality piece.

Deb Mashek 25:45
Interesting. In the world of work, you often don't get a choice about who you collaborate with, do you I mean, you and I work for ourselves. And so we can choose whether or not we enter into collaborations, but in the world of work, you will probably be collaborating with quite a lot of different people across different departments. Without any choice on that. Yeah. And so given you've got a lot of managers and directors and executives listening, this is the advice there is, be intentional about creating opportunities for your people to create the quality of relationships before throwing them on teams or them on to to smaller projects first, so they do you know, there's not a tonne of interdependence, like, Yeah, we're gonna be here for a month, whatever, we're not going to be stuck on this team for two years, maybe start with something small to give us a chance to get to know and respect and like one another. Likewise, if you're having personnel conflicts in the workplace, sometimes what will people will deal with you like, Okay, well, we're gonna put the two of you together, to work it out, or we're gonna bring in some support. So you can work on your relationship. And not not face to because I talked about this in the matrix that the powerplay from collaborate, to collaborate and you can't just shoot straight up there, you have to first decrease interdependence, and then increase relationship quality, and then increase interdependence again, so it's kind of like, if you have a marital couple that is on the, you know, on the edge of divorce, it's not going to be helpful to them, if the therapist says, you know, what you should do is go do some trust fall, that would be really great for your relationship. Know what, what they're going to is, is if the resources are available, to separate for a while one person moves to the basement or to another flat, get some confidence, so release some of that interdependence. And then start working on the relationship quality, maybe therapy, maybe through some intentional, you know, re getting to know you exercises, and then once that relationship has struck me again, then bring people back together, by you know, bringing, like, let's get back in together, but you can't just ignore the really intense power of interdependence, you really have to flex that as well.

Carla Miller 28:04
That's really interesting. And presumably, there's some role as well for them working on themselves in terms of reflecting of how am I showing up at my worst in this situation? Or how am I being triggered by this? Or how's my, how am I impacting the other person? Because often we go into that blame thing, we want to be right. They're wrong, therefore, we're perfect.

Deb Mashek 28:25
And actually, that reflection piece is probably really important. Yeah. And this whole idea of how do we slow down the stories we're telling about ourselves that other people like we're the hero, or, you know, that persons that irresponsible jerk, as opposed to person might have other things going on their lives? How about I get a little curious about how they're doing and offer that sense of, you know, move into that sense of caring connection, which is foundational to what it means to be in a high quality relationship?

Carla Miller 28:53
And what do you think about personality profiling and how this fits so that because often, you see team building days where they will do insights, or disk or Myers Briggs or something like that with the idea of recognising different personality, we approach things differently, we communicate differently. Do you think how does that map on to,

Carla Miller 29:14
to collaboration, do you think?

Deb Mashek 29:16
Well, I find those those tests have various levels of empirical backing. Regardless of that I think what's really valuable for teens, is it gives them a shared vocabulary for talking about buying needs, my preferences, the way I approach the world. And it lets people know for maps to have themselves been able to identify those differences, or to say like, I have a preference, it gives them the ability to do that, perhaps for the first time. In other words, it creates opportunities for self awareness and through self awareness, then we can communicate and explore what that means what those puzzle pieces mean, in relation to others. And yes, I like I like the tools

Deb Mashek 30:00
For that reason, and then to be able to say, so what what does this mean for how we work together, we've started to talk about my, you know, my preferences. And now I'm going to structure and what assumptions I'm making and realising like what you need. Not everybody creates a to do list on Monday for the entire week.

Deb Mashek 30:20
I could imagine that it's really annoying to me or to others, if I start emailing them on Monday asking about the Friday to do's I'd never occurred to me before. So just those, that insight can then change the storytelling, it changes the behaviours. And I think it changes the conversations that we're having with other people to set up the work and to track it to hold accountable and so on.

Carla Miller 30:42
And earlier, you mentioned, how that can be useful for identifying your needs, which brings me on to gender and whether women are naturally better at collaboration because we're attuned to other people's needs, or whether we're not better at collaboration, I think I've seen quite a few leadership studies saying we are better at bringing the best out of other people and that leading teams because we can engender collaboration, but what are your thoughts on on gender and collaboration, though, you know, one of the one of the things I talked about in the book is this idea of bringing the doughnuts

Deb Mashek 31:21
as a way of increasing relationship quality. And all it means is finding these nice ways of making other people's lives easier. And when I was writing that section, I was kind of breaking out in hives, because a lot of it was sounding like no, go do traditionally stereotypically female things in the workplace. And that's not what I mean. Because, and I even talk about in the book is like, you know, you can volunteer to take notes, but don't always be the person to volunteer to take notes. And that should not be tied to your, your gender or your gender expression, like move it around the room, people, you know, that sort of thing. But there are a lot of things that women have been socialised for that do smooth the radar collaboration, like asking other EDA being really intentional about monitoring what what else is happening in the room paying attention to power dynamics, those sorts of things that have historically been really important for our success in the workplace. So yeah, so I now want to be gendered. And some of those things that we've picked up actually do help us in the collaboration area arena.

Deb Mashek 32:33
I find it really interesting, certainly, for me, when I think about other people's needs, I've always been quite good at the collaboration and the influencing side of things and motivating people, because I can think about what do they need? And what do they want? The issue is, I don't always think about what I need, and in a workplace that can do that quite well, actually. Because I'm like, Well, this is my job, this is what I need to do. But in relationships, I'm all about the other people's needs. So then I'm like, Oh, don't even know what I want or need or you resent it because your needs aren't being met. But you've never even articulated them to yourselves to yourself, nevermind anybody else but it feels like something when I coach it shows like seeing a lot of women

Deb Mashek 33:13
kind of wrestle with and I think that is that socialisation, isn't it a totally agree. And I'm thinking about Lee and Davey, she's that New York Times bestselling author of the good fight, she has this wonderful story where she talks about the Valentine's Day effect where a friend of hers said I'm so excited for Valentine's Day, I'm really hoping my partner gives me the blank whatever the gift was. And Leon said, so have you told him that's what you want? And that friend is like, no, no, no, if he loves me, no, no, that's what I want. And, you know, none of us are mind reader's. And it's just, it's baffling, that we set ourselves up for disappointment by not communicating to other people, our needs and our ones I do think sometimes, it's because we haven't taken the time to going back to that idea of self reflection and getting to know thyself as a critical, not optional part of our own development, to say, what do I want? What, what's good for me here, what's feeling not right? And then and then once we have that awareness to be able to express it. So I totally agree if there, you know, if we've stuffed that sense of being allowed to have needs and once then big surprise, we're not going to be expressing them in our collaboration. So that's something I think a lot of us, myself included, can absolutely work on. It reminds me of a had this situation numerous times when coaching where someone's come to me and said, I want my support from my manager. My manager is not giving me enough support. I love girl. Great. Okay, so what support do you need? And how have you asked for it? And they never know exactly what support they need. There's just a general sense of not feeling supported and often they've certainly never articulated it. And we don't often think to do that. So it's good to have that reminder. Now I did

Deb Mashek 35:00
have any strategies that you offer your coaching clients on? How to how to create that habit of mind?

Carla Miller 35:07
I think it's about for me I took same as you in terms of not being a mind reader and just thinking when you're feeling that this This dissatisfaction with something just even just asking yourself, do I know what I want? And have I articulated it can be enough of a job to go Oh, no, I am exactly and totally expecting them, like totally expecting the boyfriend to get the right present without ever doing it. So I think it's just recognising that what we think is a flaw in someone else actually, is that lack of like is that the critical thinking like actually spending the time thinking about what you need. So sometimes I think people just need that reminder in relationships, that it's not always about the other person. It's about what we're bringing, or not bringing, or not articulating, or not challenging and then sitting there resenting so we do a lot of work on boundaries, because we can sit there and feel like we're being really kind, not having articulated any boundaries. But there there was just people don't know about them. And we're feeling resentful of them. So I love Brene Browns work on that. It just means so true. Love that. So true. And I love the way you express that now I can see it's probably see, you can see your listeners can't I've got a lot of sticky notes around me. And on one part of the wall. It's all like reminders to myself, and I think I'm going to add a sticky note about do I know what I would I shared what I would as a that would be a good sticky note to have out there.

Carla Miller 36:33
Yeah, I've not had much therapy, but the one bit of therapy I did have, they were like, what are your needs, so the relationship was completely blank, because that had never occurred to me. So I'm quite good on the workplace. But I'm going to apply that everywhere. Now the other day really quickly. Another question I love on that is what kind of relationship Am I ready for?

36:55
Yeah, awesome. Right. Okay. Sorry, sidebar.

Deb Mashek 36:59
And then upon to that, I'm also going to look at the resources from that nonprofit about letting your kids be free range because I totally need to work on that. I'm like, Oh, by Neil person, keep them safe at all times. So yeah, I will have a look at those. Now on the on your matrix, you had those two points on the axis, and one was around relationships. And in your book, you share nine strategies to increase relationship quality. Now people want to know or nine, they're going to have to go read the book. But we picked out a few that we picked out bring the doughnuts, which she talked about, but talk to me about expectations and how they fit into relationship quality. Yeah, so it actually is a great build on from what we were just talking about how we have needs and once and we need to express them. But we also have expectations. And this tations can be as basic as you know, if I send you an email, do I expect that you'll be responding in two minutes, two hours, two days, maybe in a couple of weeks? As we're setting up a team, we all have expectations about email responsiveness. Have we actually articulated what those are and created shared consultations about how we're going to be responding to each other? And it's around all these really functional tactical things like the email reply, what where are we storing our shared files? How are we naming them? Are we using a standardised folder structure so everyone could find that later. Make sense? Ben keeps some things on our desktop and some things in Dropbox and some things in Google Drive. And, you know, we'll be able to hunt it out later. It's okay. Maybe that is how you want to roll. But unless you've had an explicit conversation about those expectations, and what it means, here's another one, what it means to come prepared to a meeting. So if you know are for only meeting to really do the thinking work. And in order to do the thinking work, people need to have read this article or this draft or something. They haven't done it have we are we ready to articulate that this is truly an expectation we can't do our work together unless everyone comes prepared, coming prepared looks like this. And if you don't come prepared, that we could talk about what the consequences of that are. But you know, so much of that, you know, if I go into a group, I know, I know what I expect. I know what I am hoping for. And unless I articulate that it's so easy for other people to disappoint me. So it's such a simple thing. And in terms, you know, we were talking about your interest in influence. And in terms of influence, you articulate expectations, but other people aren't articulating expectations. Right there. Your expectations are going to have more influence on how that group is operating. And the people who are who haven't thought about their expectations or who aren't articulating them so that that one I think connects pretty clearly. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts though.

Carla Miller 39:54
I totally agree. I do a bit of training on them.

Carla Miller 39:58
I do a lot of influencing do it by do a session

Carla Miller 40:00
stakeholder management. And one of the key things I say when it comes to managing your senior stakeholders is getting really clear on their expectations of you, in terms particularly in terms of communication, because you can think you're doing a fantastic job communicating, but if they are chasing you for information, they do not think you're doing a fantastic job. And equally anyone can sit there going that someone's job to do X. But and this, he says, whose job it is that everyone's sitting there frustrated thinking, Oh, it's not my job. So that expectations piece, absolutely key in so many areas, as I used to be a recruitment consultant and run improvement company, and we will place directors into roles within the nonprofit sector. And the thing that determined whether someone succeeded or not is whether their expectations and the organization's expectations were aligned in terms of things like change, how much change do you want to make? How much are they empowered? How much are the senior leadership team prepared to change their own behaviour in order to create change that they want to see in the organisation, it was always that expectations piece, and it applies across all different areas I talked to, I work quite a lot with managers who are relatively new as well. And I talk about stepping into your authority that comes with the role. And many people feel uncomfortable. Doing this, we are trained as women quite often to embrace responsibility, but not necessarily embrace authority in that setting expectations piece as a line manager is so important, and goes back to that idea that if you're not sharing those expectations, you've still got them in your head, and you're not being fair to someone by not sharing them and not holding them accountable. I think that's probably another one within the nine isn't it though, once you set those expectations, how you hold people accountable to them, and especially holding yourself accountable to them. So if you know that the group has set us expectations around the communication programmes, or when things need to get escalated up the chain and things like that, but you're not then doing them? Why would anybody be excited to work with you again, is this a whole bunch of this actually is while we, we create a situation where we ourselves are valued and valuable collaborators and so honouring the expectations that the group set is a piece of that.

Deb Mashek 42:23
And that links to one of the other pieces we were going to talk about for relationship quality, which is about being responsive. Yeah, so this one comes directly from the close relationships that are charged as well. So we know that one of the biggest drivers of relationship quality and any of these relationships is feeling like other people see us and are responding to our needs. And so if I say, your manager, I'm feeling totally overwhelmed. I need a hand figuring out, you know, what, how to prioritise or this off the plate and the manager replies, okay, we'll set up a time to talk about that next month, not being responsive, it's like, yeah, you've heard that I'm having a problem, and I need some help. But to cut me off for a month isn't going to be particularly helpful. And so

Deb Mashek 43:14
you know, somebody signals, whether it's, they're overwhelmed, or they're struggling with something, or they're feeling this particular interaction, or this relationship or collaboration is feeling a bit risky, for some reason, were rational. Last time I worked with this guy. And in the middle of our big presentation, he stood up and started listing off the seven unmitigated risks. Now, you can run it mentioned during any of our team meetings, I'm feeling really nervous to go work with him again, those are all opportunities for a conversation about, you know, what, what can we do right here and right now, to help

Deb Mashek 43:50
address that need that you're expressing. And so that was our response. And this is important.

Carla Miller 43:56
And as you say that I was thinking about the self awareness piece, how is there anything I'm only halfway through so far? But is there anything in the book that can help someone identify how good a collaborator they are?

Deb Mashek 44:09
So I did not include any particular assessments like in the book, but there's an assessment that you can go and take online, and then get your your scores that evaluates your particular relationship along those two dimensions. And what's interesting is, as you're reading the book, I've had a number of people reach out and say, Oh, my gosh, I didn't realise I was being such a bad collaborator. In fact, one friend texted me and she said, Deb, I'm reading the book, and I just had to put it down because in the middle of it, I realised I really left it one of my collaborators hanging on this big project because I hadn't gotten back to her even though I told her I would read her a draft of this thing that they were working on, you know, weeks ago, I haven't and your book has made me feel really guilty about that. And now I'm taking reparative action. So so there's not so much an assessment that you can go do to evaluate if you're a good collaborator or not, but

Deb Mashek 45:00
in there, it's things like, you know, are you

Deb Mashek 45:04
going above and beyond every now and again, just to make other people's lives easier? Yes, you get a point for being a good collaborator, if you only ever do only what's written and exactly what's expected of you, and nothing more, and you're never looking after other people's needs, though, it's interesting, maybe I should make that the pretty easy piece to put together and make available to people. So all I'm gonna write that down is an idea for a future piece of content.

Deb Mashek 45:30
Excellent. And now, there's so much we could go into, but we're short on time. So I'm going to draw the questions to an end there and just ask her if people want to find out more about you. Obviously, your book is out there. But where else can they go? The easiest place to find me is that Deb mashreq.com. So it's D B, ran a S, H, E. K, calm. And there are links bug to newsletter to all my socials, all the things and I love, love, love being in conversation with people. So if you ever want to chat about a collaboration challenge in your workplace, please reach out.

46:07
Fantastic. Well, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure to meet you. And to learn all about this, I'm looking forward to what I'm going to learn in the second half of the book, I was also reading it and I don't do a lot of collaboration at the moment because I work for myself. And I realised there's, there is apprehension that comes with the idea of collaborating, because with collaborating comes the introduction of tension, even if that's healthy tension, because you are balancing other people's needs. At the moment, my working world is revolved around my client's needs online. And actually, it's a lot It takes effort and energy doesn't get to collaborate effectively. Yeah, I feel strongly that a collaboration is not the right tool for every job and be we should not be collaborating because we think it's, you know, the, like, Oh, we're supposed to or we have to, to me the reason to collaborate is because we truly and authentically believe that the end result meets our needs and interests. So some people find that surprising that I'm a huge advocate for self interest in collaboration, if you don't know why you're doing it, or what you're gonna get out of it. No bother.

Carla Miller 47:11
I think that is a great summary sentence there. So Thanks, Deb, do go and buy the book, not you the listeners

Carla Miller 47:20
by Dave's book, go and connect with her. And I hope that this gives you some really useful tools and structures to get you thinking about how you can be a better collaborator in the workplace.

Carla Miller 47:42
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