50 ways to wreck collaboration

www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2021.
50 Ways to Wreck Collaboration
and What to do About it
Mariet Visser
Regina Martins

agile42 | the agile coaching company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2021
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Who is Mariet
Mariet is an experienced agile coach, trainer and
facilitator with a passion for creating
collaborative experiential learning
environments, and believes in combining work
with a good sense of fun.
Based in Cape Town, South Africa.

Who is Regina
Agile Trainer and Coach
Certiﬁed Radical Collaboration® Trainer
Collaboration geek
Multi-lingual
Cat person
Social entrepreneur
Indiana Jones and Star Wars fan
Instagram is my best friend
Based in Johannesburg, South Africa

What we’ll be talking about
What is collaboration?
Why is it important?
How do we collaborate?
So what is the problem with defensiveness?
Now what do we do about it?
Questions

What is collaboration? Why is it important?
You can’t know everything
yourself and do everything
yourself, you need different
skills and perspectives for
solving complex problems.
It almost always leads to a
synergy where the whole is
more than the sum of its
parts and it builds
relationship.
Without it individuals will
move somewhere else and
the risk for chaos will rise.
Collaboration allows for
creating solutions otherwise
impossible to create.
All good work takes place collaboratively. It is essential for
knowledge work especially innovation. Good ideas can be
conceived in a vacuum but bringing those ideas to life requires
the collaborative effort of people.

How do we collaborate?

A cautionary tale about
chickens
Photo credit

Managing your defensiveness
3 main fears that causes defensive behaviour in people:
● Fears about our own Significance
● Fears about our Competence
● Fears about our Likeability

50 signs of defensiveness
Loss of humour
Taking offence
High charge of energy in the body
Sudden drop in IQ
Wanting to be right
Wanting the last word
Flooding with information to prove a point
Playing ‘poor me’
Teaching or preaching
Blaming/shaming others
Rigidity
Denial
Cynicism
Making fun of others
Terminal uniqueness (“I’m so special”)
“It’s just who I am”
Withdrawal into deadly silence
Sarcasm
Not wanting to negotiate
Fast breathing/heartbeat
Cold clammy skin
Tight stomach
Jumping to conclusions
Hot sweaty skin
Speaking too fast
Sudden onset of illness
Confusion
Suddenly tired or sleepy
Intellectualizing
Acting crazy (temporary insanity defense)
Eccentricity
Powered by Radical
Collaboration®

50 ways to wreck collaboration
Being too nice
Selective deafness
Holding a grudge
Trivializing with humor
Inappropriate laughter or giggling
Sour grapes (I didn’t want that anyway)
“I’m aware of that; leave me alone”
(defense of awareness)
Becoming addicted (alcohol, drugs,
shopping, working, gambling, chocolate,
social media, smartphones)
Personalizing everything
All-or-nothing thinking
Catastrophizing
Mind reading (I already know what you’re
thinking)
Magnifying everything
Minimizing everything
Emotional rigidity (I feel it, it must be true)
Becoming physically immobile
Obsessive thinking
Attacking (the best defense is a good
offense)
Powered by Radical
Collaboration®

Let’s do a poll …

Now what to do about it?
Become in tune with your outward behaviour and learn to spot your signs of defensiveness like an alert
system.
Create a personalised defensiveness action plan:
1. Take responsibility – acknowledge that you’re feeling defensive
2. Focus out – breathe and reinvigorate your brain; this helps you to think straight
3. Focus in – find the fear; check your assumptions
4. Check your negative self-talk and reframe into something positive
5. Create an action step
6. Start over – recovery, not perfection
Powered by Radical
Collaboration®

Your homework
1. Create your personalised defensiveness action plan.
2. Practice it so that it becomes second nature.

Acknowledgements
Radical Collaboration® information referenced with permission.
Photographs from Unsplash.

Contact us if you want to build
collaborative skills in your team and
organisation:
int-oﬀice@agile42.com
Thank you!

50 ways to wreck collaboration

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