Business Fit Magazine August 2017 Issue 1 | Page 41

Article 39
The habit to “Listen to understand, not to respond” sounds pretty easy
but is rare to find. Listen to understand means to really fully focus on
the person speaking. This is inevitable to understand the perspectives
of others that are often coming from different cultural or educational
backgrounds. Based on our experience we are automatically looking
at things through our filter. This often prevents us from understanding
ideas in their broader context. If we really focus on the other person
trying to understand, we try to put ourselves into their shoes. We
fully absorb what has been said and will ask the right questions to
completely understand the idea. This also will allow us to step back
and reflect on what has been said. This process will more often lead to
an understanding and challenging rather than a process of feed-back
and objection.
“One Nation, one team,
one dream!”
There is no way around being authentic. What you get is what you see.
We may perform a specific role in the collaboration set-up in order
to be effective and efficient in the project but we are definitely not
actors at a film set. We have to identify ourselves with the objectives
of the goal and with the team. Trying to be the star in a team, trying to
impress others or trying to use a collaboration set-up to outperform
others is defeating the objective, is unsuccessful and will be easily
identified. This is one of the core reasons why good people fail in
assessment centers, where the ability to collaborate is one of the core
aspects monitored.
There are many more aspects to collaboration. In the next edition I will
talk about “The set-up for successful collaboration”. I would want to
leave you with the slogan of the editor “Together is better” – a perfect
slogan reflecting the value collaboration has in her value system.
See you next time – Sylvia Martin.
Sylvia Martin
Business Coach
www.BusinessFitMagazine.com