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These two allegorical essays explore the nature of collaboration in architecture

2020-10-08T11:44:00-04:00

Collaboration is an essential part of architectural practice. To realize the complexities of built work, architects and designers must work with one another and a slew of other disciplines to ensure a successful final result. But what is the nature of this collaborative effort? What are the mechanics of it? These two allegorical essays, previously published on Archinect explore two aspects of teamwork and collaboration in architecture.

Apple Store, London, by Foster + Partners, Photo by Nigel Young

Steve Jobs and The Collaborative Framework

Steve Jobs and The Collaborative Framework looks at the conception of the Apple Store and how Steve Jobs relied on the insights and disagreements of his colleagues to manifest his ambitious vision. The extracted lesson revolves around the importance of conversation in the creative endeavor and the value of team members who will tell you the truth.

Still from Ocean's Eleven

The Collaborative Team Dynamic

The Collaborative Team Dynamic dive into th...

In the workplace, when you don't know, say so

2019-09-30T16:40:00-04:00

Have you ever been in a meeting where a certain topic or term is brought up that everyone understands but you? The urge to try and play along might build up, pretending you know what everyone else does. You may even make it through the meeting unscathed, having avoided being asked anything regarding the subject. A near miss, you think; that was a close one.

What's the fear here though? Of being found out? That the discovery of you becoming the intellectual minority on this one topic will in some way diminish your status? Why so? There is a quote I love from Bruce Lee that says, "A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer." Having the courage to say, "I don't know," is an invaluable asset that will propel you to heights those too full of ego only hope to reach.

Your personal growth is your own, unattached from the thoughts and opinions of others. If someone thinks you are some kind of fool for asking a "silly question" then that's on th...

How should a leader delegate to their team?

2019-08-20T10:00:00-04:00

Architecture's collaborative nature means that leaders, more than ever, need to understand how to guide their teams. We've all had that supervisor or project manager who asks us to do something, only to leave us feeling confused and unsure of what needs to be accomplished. When we finish the task, we discover that we had it all wrong and have to redo hours of careful work. Or perhaps, if we switch roles, we remember those moments where we've asked someone below us to complete something. When we return, we discover the work is nowhere near what we were looking for.

In both cases, it's often the one doing the delegating who needs to refine their approach. The person who received the direction has typically done their best to follow the instructions they were given. Delegation, like most other things in professional work, is a skill that we can improve. Leadership coach, Deborah Grayson Riegel has identified eight practices of leaders who delegate successfully:

They pick the right pers...

How can you deal with working with someone you don't like?

2019-08-16T16:30:00-04:00

In an industry dependent on working with others, it is inevitable that we will come in contact with people we don't like. It might be a contractor, a consultant, or even one of our colleagues in the office. Whatever the case, working with someone we don't like can make work difficult. How do we deal with this? Bregman Partners CEO, Peter Bregman has some ideas.

Bregman says that we can't just "grin and bear it," like we might be tempted to do. "According to research, the more people like you, the easier, more productive, and more profitable, your life will be. Which means that someone you don’t get along with—even if you grin and bear it—poses a risk," he writes.

Instead, according to Bregman, we need to really look at the reason that we don't like someone. Perhaps, they're selfish or dismissive or mean. Ultimately, they tend to have some character traits that bother us. And so, after we identify this, we are supposed to look at ourselves and see if we can detect elements of these ...

Groupthink and the Hiring Process

2019-08-15T17:00:00-04:00

The dominant approach to hiring today – in which the hiring manager convenes a huddle and goes around the room hearing opinions on each candidate is particularly prone to groupthink. That is because in free-form discussions, the person with the metaphorical “loudest voice” typically over-influences the committee’s decision.

CEO and author, Atta Tarki, believes the hiring process can be prone to inefficiencies, particularly in group collaboration. He offers some recommendations on "how to make a true group decision:"

First, the hiring team "should not share their interview experiences with each other before the final group huddle." Next, each member of the team should perform these steps before the final group huddle:

distill their interview rating to a single numerical score.
write down their main arguments for and against hiring this person and their final conclusion. This will help them stay true to their beliefs once the discussion starts, which leads to less biased predictions.

And, finally, "the hiring manager should take note of the average score for a candidate." Tarki emphasizes that these scores should not be followed blindly but should instead be used as a process for "richer, unbiased and uncensored discussions." This, coupled with some other components, should lead to a process of more fruitf...

When team-building isn't working, try this

2019-07-25T15:50:00-04:00

When we build better teams, we tend to have better work. But sometimes the traditional team-building approach can leave people feeling more separated from one another. University of Sydney Researchers, Julien Pollack and Petr Matous, say that this is because we tend "to gravitate towards those we know." It's great to strengthen already strong relationships, but, if we want to increase trust and familiarity, two things present in successful teams, we must create what Pollack and Matous call "psychological safety."

"Research suggests psychological safety is crucial in the work environment. There is much more to team success than simply focusing on the task at hand. Team members need to talk regularly, and be comfortable raising difficult issues," they write. To achieve this comfort the pair has adopted a spin on the 36 questions that lead to love.

Essentially, the idea is to pair up people across a given group and allow them to do this exercise that involves a conversation lasting ju...

Cognitive scientist debunks the problem behind ineffective collaboration

2019-07-25T13:09:00-04:00

Collaboration is essential to our work in architecture, but, as the saying goes, a team of experts does not make an expert team. Cognitive scientist, Stephen M. Fiore believes he has an answer to better collaboration. He suggests to start in our schools, where students work in groups but are not "explicitly instructed" about teamwork. Based on his research, he provides three recommendations:

First, is to introduce teaching on teamwork into the classroom as early as possible. "Research has demonstrated it’s possible to teach collaboration competencies such as dealing with conflict and communicating to learn," Fiore writes.
Second, it's important to give students the opportunity to practice working in teams. This is already quite prevalent in schools but Fiore believes students should focus on working across different disciplines.
Third, instruction and practice needs to be followed up by regular feedback. "Instructors should assess students on teamwork processes like relationship manag...

When "Friendly" Competition Becomes Backstabbing Survival

2019-07-24T14:57:00-04:00

An organization that relies upon individual goals or performance benchmarks to evaluate employees...needs to be careful to design competitions and structure comparisons that thwart the efforts of some workers to sabotage their colleagues. Otherwise, saboteurs may bring down everyone’s numbers — including their own.

Associate professor, Szu-chi Huang at the Stanford Graduate School of Business has been studying how competitions within the workplace materialize among larger teams. She explains that competition inside companies "is something that needs to be carefully structured and managed." And that while they do increase engagement, destructive effects can be had as well.

Colleagues can grow preoccupied with proving that they are better than one another, especially, when competition is encouraged inside a professional work environment. According to Huang, this distracts from the larger goals of the group.

One proposed solution for better in-house contests is for companies to try to "restructure the comparison by matching employees who are at different phases of their careers instead of the same phase, for instance through a mentorship system...Or they could highlight the differences and uniqueness in each employee’s background, task, and project, and thus make the comparison less meaningful....

Researchers look at why some workers avoid sharing information with colleagues

2019-07-24T13:13:00-04:00

Companies want employees to share what they know. After all, research has found that this leads to greater creativity, more innovation, and better performance, for individuals, teams, and organizations. Yet despite companies’ attempts to encourage knowledge-sharing, many employees withhold what they know — a phenomenon known as knowledge hoarding or knowledge hiding.

A team of researchers have been exploring the dynamics behind knowledge sharing in work environments. While this is something many leaders encourage, their study has found that sometimes individuals within a team have certain reasons for hiding knowledge that might be able to help the rest of the group, namely, the fear of criticism. When the work environment is one where team members clearly understand the value behind sharing their knowledge, they are more likely to do so. This has been found to be a more affected approach compared to pressuring a team to collaborate. When we see the meaning behind something we desire to capitalize on it.