Explore Relationship Design and Inclusive Collaboration Practices
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Explain how relationships can strengthen collaboration.
- List the four relationship design mindsets.
- Define inclusive collaboration.
- Use key practices to strengthen relationships.
Strong Relationships Are Essential to Good Collaboration
Relationships are a key component for cross-disciplinary teams. When team members cultivate connections and relationships with each other within the organization and community, they strengthen their ability to collaborate successfully.
At Salesforce, when we design engaging experiences, we use relationship design mindsets to strengthen our connections with people, companies, and communities over time. These mindsets start with understanding ourselves and our own actions and behaviors.
The four mindsets of relationship design are:
- Compassion to lead with strengthening connection.
- Courage to push ourselves to be vulnerable.
- Intention to engage with a clear purpose.
- Reciprocity to exchange value in service of longevity.
When we actively use these mindsets, collaborative behavior emerges.
- Compassion: The team seeks to understand each others’ perspectives and expertise.
- Courage: The team is open and vulnerable, even when they want to be safe.
- Intention: The team not only commits to goals but is aware of how their actions influence others.
- Reciprocity: The team is accountable to each other through listening openly and sharing candidly while strengthening each other's ideas.
Inclusive Collaboration
In addition to the relationship design mindsets, to strengthen team relationships and dynamics during cross-disciplinary collaboration, teams practice inclusive collaboration.
When teams practice inclusive collaboration, they create a sense of belonging by ensuring that all team members feel valued and heard. This establishes an environment where everyone can do the best work of their careers. Regardless of race, ethnicity, gender identity, age, religion, ability, or sexual orientation, everyone can show up fully as themselves.
Key drivers of inclusive collaboration include:
- Trust: Teams build trust to deepen connections, create belonging, learn from tensions, and endure tough times together.
- A commitment to business experimentation: Teams commit to experimentation to take quick action to learn, make, solve, and improve together.
- A shared purpose: Teams create a common vision and values, a shared understanding of success, and how to achieve it together.
- A predictable process: Teams find clarity and calmness throughout the cross-disciplinary collaboration process through key practices like consistent check-in meetings and critique sessions.
- Effective decision-making: Teams bring a project to life by creating a blueprint to influence the decisions of their sponsors and stakeholders and achieve success criteria and the company’s strategic goals and vision.
Learn about each of these key drivers of inclusive collaboration by completing the Create Inclusive Collaboration Experiences During the Design Process trail.
To set a solid foundation for inclusive, cross-disciplinary collaboration and build strong team bonds, teams need empathy and dedicated team development meetings to cultivate and reflect on team dynamics.
Empathy
Empathy is important for cross-disciplinary teams, where tensions are inherent. When teams are empathetic—practicing curiosity, considering each other’s perspectives, and honoring that difference—they can weather stress and tension when it arises and use that friction to learn from each other and truly innovate together.
Use the key phrases and questions below, grounded in the relationship design mindsets, to strengthen your relationships and set the conditions for better collaboration on cross-disciplinary teams.
- Compassion: Hey, what’s going on?
- Courage: I need help. and I’m Sorry.
- Intentional: Wow!
- Reciprocal: Thank you!
Team Development Meetings
Cross-disciplinary teams need dedicated time to work on their relationships. We recommend using three team development meetings during the project to plan, adapt, and reflect on your collaboration. Set aside time for the meetings in your scope of work to develop relationships and alleviate miscommunications and misunderstandings. Team development meetings are foundational and enable teams to navigate the tensions of ambiguity, stress, and uncertainty that inevitably occur in project work together.
The three meetings are:
- Pre-project kickoff: This meeting is the first time the team comes together. The focus is on creating a shared purpose, uniting on project success, and setting practices for how to collaborate to get there.
- Mid-project check-in: This is the midway checkpoint where the team shares ideas for how they can adapt and better support each other. The focus is on developing a culture of trust and creating a safe space for team members to be vulnerable and candid in sharing constructive feedback.
- Post-project reflection: This is the planned meeting after the project wraps. The focus is on reflecting on project success and collaboration as a team. The teams learn from each other and discuss what worked and why. They can use those insights to continuously improve future cross-disciplinary collaboration.
To better understand how you can use empathy-building prompts and team development meetings to strengthen cross-disciplinary collaboration, let’s see how the core project team at Cloud Kicks kicked off their project.
Ready, Set, Kickoff
Mary, Vijay, and Erica were excited to kick off their project, which focused on converting their users into fans. For their pre-project kickoff meeting, using the compassion mindset, they begin building a shared purpose, including discussing what project success looked like for each of them and establishing practices for how to work together to get there.
One significant point in their discussion was how to work best as a hybrid team. Though Mary and Erica work remotely on select days through the week, they also work in-office at the Cloud Kicks headquarters. Vijay, based in Chicago, is entirely remote.
To express this concern, Mary, as the team lead, called for the team to consider ways they could make Vijay feel included in all vital discussions as a remote team member. As a team, they decided to:
- Set weekly virtual collaboration time to keep Vijay in the loop on all important discussions and project development.
- Hold virtual stand-up meetings midmorning as a middle ground for early risers Mary and Erica, and Vijay’s preference to begin work later in the day, sharing key project progress and updates and their work agenda for the day.
- Establish a weekly async day to give Mary and the rest of the team much-needed heads-down and focus time.
- Arrange an in-person, midproject check-in for an in-depth discussion of project progress and to share thoughts on how collaboration is going, including any adaptations they can make to better support one another.
When you act with empathy and a desire to understand each team member’s perspectives, you set yourself and your team up for cross-disciplinary success.
Now, follow the Cloud Kicks core project team to learn about shared purpose for project success in the next module.