In my last post, I shared a story of the consequences that can occur when we aren’t clear on expectations within our work relationships.
Having clarity within any relationship is vital, and it’s something that we all too often leave to chance.
I also encouraged you to use the golden rule of management as a means to create clarity: “If it matters, write it down.”
This is important and powerful—the act of committing things to writing forces clarity.
But, what if you aren’t sure what matters?
A life-changing tool.
Several years ago, I was lucky enough to connect with Christina Boyd-Smith.
Christina is a coach for leaders and teams. I knew I would like her before we even met because her coaching practice is called Corporate Rebel Coaching. What’s not to love about that?
Over the past several years, I’ve gotten to know and admire Christina. One of the things that I love most about her is that she is truly authentic, and she practices what she preaches.
I wish I’d had her as my coach back in my corporate rebel days, but I’m thrilled to know her now.
Christina introduced me to a process she created called a “Designed Alliance.”
The first time I experienced creating a Designed Alliance was when we kicked off a collaborative project together.
It was a structured, step-by-step process of walking through some pointed questions that drove us to real clarity about the work we were about to do. It allowed us to move forward with confidence about how we would work together to ensure a positive outcome.
I was instantly hooked.
In asking her more about this process, she shared how she uses this personally throughout all parts of her life. They use it as a family when planning a trip. She uses it with her spouse when they are undertaking a project together.
And, she teaches and uses it in her coaching all the time so her clients can take it forward and use it in their work and personal lives as well.
In essence, it’s a tool to help you focus on what matters and clarify your expectations around those things in any relationship—work or personal.
This process is essentially a list of questions to discuss to help you clarify your expectations about how you will work together and what success will look and feel like.
Below is a link to download a pdf with instructions and the whole process, so I won’t cover the entire process here.
But, I do want to share a couple of my favorite discussion questions that it includes:
How do you want it to feel between you and around you during this alliance?
This question is so important and one we rarely discuss. If we are going to do something together, how do we want it to feel? Are we both on the same page at this critical level?
If you want it to feel easy and laid back while I want it to feel energized and fast-paced, we probably need to talk it through before we start and find some middle ground.
How do you want to be if things go wrong?
Again, what a great question to discuss before things go wrong. Creating agreements in advance for these situations removes so much angst and tension.
There are a total of eight steps in the process, most of which involve questions to discuss. As you discuss them, you should capture in writing your agreements and shared understanding.
You can download a pdf of the process from Christina’s site here.
It is a powerful process that I’ve used in both my work and personal life many times.
But, not often enough.
When debriefing how the project I described in my last post went wrong, I immediately knew that the outcome would have been entirely different if we’d created a designed alliance.
All of the hurt and misunderstanding would have been eliminated before we even started. And, we would have had agreements in place for how to handle things when they veered off course.
It was a powerful reminder of how potent the designed alliance process is.
I encourage you to download the document and give it a try. It will change your relationships.
Let me know how it goes.
Related Reading:
I Broke My Own Golden Rule—Here’s What Happened
Clear Expectations = Great Relationships