Reflections

As those of you who read my occasional postings will know, my thing is relationship. That wonderful, messy, enjoyable part of business that we all know is critically important and yet too frequently we neglect.

You are all probably familiar with this quote from Omar Suleiman: "What you see in other people is a reflection of yourself. A person of goodness sees goodness in others and a person of evil sees evil in others." It is an idea that is promulgated in NLP with a lot of success in situations where greater personal responsibility is needed. It goes back at least as far as Freud. I personally have found it incredibly useful in dealing with situations where I have needed to count to ten because of some perceived stupidity or sleight inflicted on me by a colleague. By asking the simple question "what could it be about me that means my view of their behaviour is not helpful?"

As my company, Relationship Capital Strategies, begins to gain traction I am drawn again and again to other organisations and consultancies that move and act in my space. We have the most powerful way of working with clients and the relational perspective but it will never be the only way and must always be evolving and growing as we learn more about the way relationships play out in business situations. That's one of the many things that's so exciting about work for me.

One such organisation I have now been talking to for about six months is Mirror Mirror and I would like to invite you, dear reader, to check out their website and maybe speak to them or comment on what you see. You can find their website here: http://mirrormirrorhub.com/ or on LinkedIn here: https://www.garudax.id/company-beta/17939670/.

Mirror Mirror is focused directly on the performance of teams and there are a number of features in the approach that I really like. As with the Relationship Capital approach to team working the emphasis is fully on the team rather than using valuable time dwelling on individual performance which can be better dealt with on a one to one basis. In my experience so many team events fail to deliver long term change because they either reinforce individuals' perceptions of the role they 'should' fulfil or because they fix individuals' roles to a personality type. The inevitable consequence seems to be some members who over inflate their own importance and others left feeling they have nothing to contribute.

Mirror Mirror avoids this, concentrating on common understanding, shared perspectives and quality feedback.

So in your team, how you feel about progress, whether you are team leader, or the most junior member of the team, may well be a reflection of you. A reflection of what you are feeling, thinking and wishing for. This doesn't make you a bad person. In fact, it just makes you a person.

We have all been in teams where progress is slow, relationships can be fractious and even if consensus can be found it doesn't appear to be reflected in individual actions outside the team meetings.

Now, when I am in a fractious team I ask myself what it is that I am doing or not doing that is causing the friction. Higher performance is inevitable when team members are all asking themselves this question together. I think one of the beauties of Mirror Mirror is that it helps us to do this.