The Agile Business Innovation‘s Podcast

Cooperation in teams: Contracting Level 2: Professional Contract

So what we're talking about today is contracting. We already talked about the first level of contracting, which is how to create a very good administrative contract, which creates the foundation or the structure of your cooperative relationship.

Contracting Level 2: Professional Contract - The second level of contracting, so how do I make good bilateral agreement, is what we call the professional contract. And the professional contract really tells you about what objectives are we going to realize together and under what conditions, what methods are we going to use for that? It's much more about how do I define the problem? How do you define the problem? What are we going for and how are we going to tackle it? So the conditions for a professional contract is it really has to comply to the SMART.

Cooperation in teams: Contracting Level 1: Administrative Contract

One of the things we know is that contracting is very important to create a cooperative relationship. And in the past, we've explained what is actually a contract.

Now, we're going to talk about the three levels of contracting and specifically this time.

Cooperation in teams: What skills do you need to create cooperative teams?

One of the questions I'm often asked is, "What skills do you need for cooperation and especially to create cooperative teams?" Well, we just said, the first skill is contracting. The second is communication and the third is consequence management. And we're going to talk about first one, contract.

So what do we mean by a contract? A contract is really a very good bilateral agreement about what we're going to do together and what results we want to achieve together. The key word in this is bilateral. So, I often find that leaders tell people what to do, but they don't actually ask people what they want done and they don't actually wait for an answer. So when we say contracting, we really mean, I ask you a question and you give me an answer, whatever that may be. Yes, no, under these conditions. And then we talk about it and when we agree what we're going to achieve together, we call that a contract.

Cooperation in teams: How do you know people are not cooperating?

One of the questions I often get is, "When do we know that a team is not in a cooperative mood?" Actually there's four types of behaviors we look at to check if people are in cooperation or not.

Cooperation in teams: Cross-functional cooperation breeds innovation

Sometimes what I come up against is teams that are not willing to cooperate.

Cooperation is really, really important for innovation because the cross-functional cooperation actually breeds innovation. So it's one of the essential things we focus on when we create individual businesses.

What do we mean by cooperation? Well, cooperation means that you accept interdependence, so you accept that if you win, I win. If you lose, I lose. And together we're there to create a new and innovative team.

Team Coaching: Four competencies needed to avoid a team break-up

There are four behaviors that lead to relational breakup, both in couples and in teams. If I see this type of behavior, I know this team is, not moments away but, on the way to self-destruct. If I see this then we need to stop and focus on the process. There are four skills that I teach teams so that they stay out of those behaviors.

Team Coaching: The six norm issues that come up in group development

In group development we often talk of the norming stage of group development. Based on research we can actually predict which norm issues come up time and again from respecting time to respectful listening and consequence management.

Team Coaching: Imago and post crisis leadership

It's a reparative experience to be in a group where the boundaries are clear, where the leadership holds their task, where the members have their place, where people work together for a common purpose. This is especially important now that we are coming out of crisis.

Team Coaching: Creating reparative relationships

Each of us takes a little rucksack with assumptions, hopes and fears and fantasies into groups. As we adjust these imagos to the reality of the group as is, more energy is available to doing the real work with the group. In this blog you will learn about the stages of imago development.

Team Coaching: Why you can‘t skip development stages

As you develop from a very simple team to a fully developed team, you add complexity, you add layers, you add specialization. Each development stage allows the team to develop specific competencies. Each stage solves one problem and causes the next problem. If the team skips a stage they are limited in their ability to conquer the next stage of development.

In this episode I will talk about the development stages of teams, and the competencies the team needs to learn at each stage.