Accelerate Team Building and Collaboration
Enlightenment and alliances are on full display in our newest case study based on custom teambuilding we did for VivaKi, a leading digital advertising agency, and part of Publicis Group, one of the world’s largest advertising and public relations companies.
VivaKi’s Center of Excellence (COE) anchored the Emergenetics work—it was a multifaceted leadership and team summit, that brought together several of Publicis’ agency brands. VivaKi is the digital support network for over 16 agencies located around the world and a core component of their work is facilitating knowledge share.
The COE is a regularly held summit bringing together leaders from each of these companies for learning, knowledge sharing, and team building. In this case, many of the COE participants have never worked with each other, come from assorted backgrounds, and encompass a diverse collection of leadership experience.
These demographics make up some of the major challenges for collaboration: differing communication styles, attitudes towards conflict, and approaches to completing tasks and making decisions. According to Talent Management, 86% of employees blame lack of collaboration or ineffective communication for workplace failures. Skills training, like that done at the COE, are crucial to strengthening leader performance, but it is only one part of the puzzle in an effective training program.
Our knowledge of human behavior teaches us that every person communicates and learns in a different way. Each Profile defines and interprets words differently.
While you may think the meaning of words or work is obvious, things resonate in each brain in a different way. Never assume that a word or phrase is uniformly understood. With this in mind, the VivaKi (and all Emergenetics work) training program created a high success rate because the material was tailored to the unique preferences of the group.
In VivaKi’s case, a two hour Meeting of the Minds workshop was held as part of the overall COE program. The workshop facilitated high-level collaboration and cross-functional knowledge share among participants through dynamic exercises utilizing Emergenetics insights and a cognitive diversity approach. VivaKi found that participants left the event with distinct strategies and tactics for recognizing how to best communicate with their colleagues.
An often undervalued element to a program is making participants feel that the program is not only worthwhile but also FUN and different!
Training classes have the opportunity to increase the engagement and motivation of key people. The first level in the Kirkpatrick Model is Reaction: How was the training received by the audience? Did they feel it was a valuable experience, was the facilitator engaging, the topic relevant, the venue conducive to learning, level of effort to identify real life applications?
A training program that does not take engagement into account overlooks a major opportunity to win over key people and make them ambassadors for a company’s top initiatives—this was a major focus for the VivaKi-Emergenetics partnership. Participants in VivaKi’s COE found that people felt it was “very helpful and different” and a “very cool presentation and interesting perspective.”
Action Tools: So what can you do to foster collaboration and engagement in your training programs?
- Think about the filters of your own brain. Are you providing information based on your own Preferences or that of your audience?
- What do you know about the preferences of your audience? Do your homework ahead of time to find out as much as you can about the person or group that you will be training.
- Tap into all senses. Begin with something very right brain to capture the attention of people who are highly Conceptual and Social, then quickly follow with information the Analytical and Structural brains will need in order to feel comfortable. You will meet with greater success if you continue in your audience’s most preferred attribute
Talk with a workplace expert to discuss a custom session for your organization.
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