How do you get a team to collaborate more effectively and empathetically?

Today we want to share a simple but very impactful exercise with you that we enjoy a lot these days – but let's start with some context first:

We all observe the world based on a ton of different assumptions and generalisations. To a certain degree that’s a hardwired, necessary and quite helpful function of our brain – we’re basically clustering all the time and put things into boxes: That’s how we know that a car is a car, a tree is a tree – without having to actively dissect and analyse each individual car we encounter (and this is where neurodiversity and inclusive design come into play, but that's a separate story).

The thing is, what works great for cars and trees, quickly becomes tricky when it comes to humans: While yes, sometimes it’s helpful when our brain starts clustering (e.g., it might help us recognise aggression and act accordingly), it also means that we constantly judge others without even realising. Even if you’re a very conscious person and try to be aware of your own biases and prejudices, it constantly happens: You hear a certain dialect, you see a specific clothing style, you observe a certain behaviour – and you think you know something about this person, which might obviously be completely wrong.

As you can imagine – and probably experienced yourself multiple times – this phenomenon can lead to plenty of misunderstandings in the work environment, especially when new teams form – and that’s where our exercise comes into play!

Here’s how the exercise works

You need:

• 2 facilitators
• A new team you haven’t worked with before
• A flipchart

How to run it:

One of you facilitators acts as the test subject: Your job is to silently stand in the centre of the room. The second facilitator is moderating the discussion and takes notes. Everyone is now asked to share their assumptions about the test subject: How old might they be? What might be their occupation? What are their hobbies, what’s their character like? Where do they come from? What’s their favourite dish? After agreeing on their shared best guesses, it’s time to reveal the truth – you will probably be surprised that some assumptions are quite close to reality, but others are obviously wildly off. That fact in itself is probably not surprising to anyone, but that simple exercise can be quite the eye-opener to make people aware how wrong our first assumptions usually are – and that we all have very different assumptions about the same test subject. Especially when new teams form, this little reminder can make a huge difference.

We recently used this exercise in a workshop for 10.000 Tage, an initiative by ProjectTogether, funded by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) that aims to close the gap in skilled workers needed to work towards our climate goals (that’s over 750.000 positions, just in Germany 🤯).

The collaborative action alliances that received funding through 10.000 Tage are mostly just coming together to start working on their projects. So we took the opportunity to share some insights and tools about team dynamics to make starting their collaboration as smooth as possible, including the exercise mentioned above.

Caro acted as our test subject, and it is my special honour and privilege to share the participants’ wild assumptions about her with you today:

PerceivedCaro™ lives in Prenzlauer Berg (wrong), she’s vegan (wrong), likes dogs (true) comes from a mid-sized south-german town (very generous for Weiden in der Oberpfalz, but we’ll let it pass), plays the Saxophone (wrong, but intriguing), studied Social Science (wrong) and has big feet (I will neither confirm nor deny 🤐).

Working with 10.000 Tage and ProjectTogether was a great experience and we’re looking forward to share more soon!

Facilitation in the middle of nature: Electrive Offsite

Let’s stick with team collaboration theme for a bit longer: Some days ago Moritz took off to coconat in Brandenburg to facilitate a full day offsite with our long-term partner electrive (this is what we built with them).

They brought together their whole team to align on company-wide goals, metrics and (tadaa) team collaboration – topics we’re always happy to help with!

This offsite was part of a series of regular retrospectives and workshops we facilitate for electrive. We very much enjoy these longer term collaborations as they allow us to really dive into a specific business domain and understand team dynamics at a much deeper level. Thanks for your continued trust 💚

📚 In guter Gesellschaft – fighting fascism through reading events

Josephine Apraku, author and trainer for intersectional anti-racism, is currently launching “In guter Gesellschaft”, a reading event series which aims to raise funds for initiatives opposing the emerging fascism in Germany. As strong supporters of this cause we were happy to contribute some of our time and provide the visual identity and social media design for the event series.

Parts are already online with the first announcement posts, more will follow over the next weeks. The events will take place in Berlin, the first one is scheduled for August 22nd, with Linus Giese und Lydia Meyer reading. We’ll probably be around, if you’re in Berlin come join us!

Shoutout to Adèle who contributed a ton to this project during her internship at Ponder — we miss you! 🤩🇫🇷

🔔 What else?

What else was happening in July? Here’s some quick updates:

• 🌻 Ponder in motion: We’re continuing to work with Bundestagsfraktion Bündnis 90/Die Grünen — currently on their motion design. Stay tuned!
  
  
• 🏘️ In case you’re working in the Design industry yourself: Our friends at Village One are currently hiring a Digital Designer – and at the same time a new co-owner, as Village One is a 100% worker owned cooperative.
  
  
• 🎧 One of the side effects of summer: Most podcasts have a summer break. But consider yourself lucky: We compiled a list with the best podcast recommendations from the Ponder team. Part 1 covers shows around Sustainability, Politics and Inclusion – go grab something new for your summer listening!
  

And with this we say tschüssssi until next month!

We have some vacation upcoming in our team and we hope you do to!

Have a good summer, stay hydrated! ☀️

Peter