(295) Thinking Partners

On this week’s show Chris and Lisa talk with Tina Lee Odinsky-Zec and Simon Carcagno from True Advance about the concept of “Thinking Partners” and how we need get more intentional about our collaboration.

Lisa mentioned an article questioning the validity of Extroversion and Introversion – that can be found here.

Machine-Generated transcript

Chris: Hello and welcome to episode 295 of WB40, the weekly podcast with me, Chris Weston, Lisa Riemers, Simon Carcagno and Tina Lee Odinsky-Zec.

 Let’s start with you, Simon. We’re talking about how we, how we get into the business of working with people and how we get, what we’d call sort of genuine Engagement from the people who work with when, when they come to us and they say, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re in a role where we’re trying to help them make change or to improve something or to understand their organization or whatever.

 When, when does that conversation even start?

Simon: I think it’s important to have that conversation. , very early. So if you can set the norms for a good collaboration early, , you are building a foundation that will endure throughout that relationship. And that’s why it is, you know, critically important to have, , a good vocabulary and self awareness.

So you have a vocabulary to describe how you collaborate, the foundation you want to build, and you have the self awareness to know what it is you need, you know, where, what are your strengths, where can you use support and how you can partner with someone to get there. 

Chris: And when you talk about vocabulary, often when you talk to somebody who’s a leader, they will say, okay, here I am.

I’ve got these things to achieve, but I am struggling to communicate that to these people. Or sometimes I’ll say I am communicating it perfectly, but those people don’t appear to be hearing me. What are the, what are the techniques that you might use to understand where the gaps in that vocabulary are?

 Because often when we work with organizations, what we find is that we have some learning to do about, about how particular business talks, whether it’s the industry they’re in, whether it’s the, whether it’s the history of that organization and the way the culture has, evolved. Often as a consultant or an advisor, you will start to find yourself using the terminology of the business, for example, in order to be better understood. So from a, from a point of view of a, of a thinking partner or somebody going in to be a lever to, to improve an organization. Who do you talk to in order to make sure that you are using that the right language for the business, but also being able to give them better vocabulary and more effective vocabulary and collaboration?

Simon: I think the most important way to get those terms from a business is really to listen, to really carefully listen to how they describe their business, how they describe the challenges. To your point, , when they’re describing a business. Relationship or, something they’re trying to get across to their team.

That’s just not landing, you know, really listening to the words they’re using to describe that challenge and then reflecting those words back to them, , is, is a great way in. But once you’ve, once you’ve done that, , the ability to go in and work with a team, , and share some frameworks, for understanding these challenges.

That’s where you start to really be able to make some, some big, big strides.