Radical Collaboration summary

If you have any experience with relationships, you know that they require a healthy sense of trust, honesty and openness in order to work well.

The same holds true for a successful collaboration, which is why the second essential skill for collaboration is to be truthful. To this end, one strategy, known as the first truth first tool, is especially useful.

A strong and trustworthy collaboration is a two-way street: not only do you need to speak honestly, you need to listen with genuine intent as well.

In fact, being a good listener is beneficial to a relationship in more ways than one.

Are you the kind of person who believes that his fate is predetermined? If so, you might not give the choices you make in life the proper consideration they deserve.

This isn’t the best characteristic to have for a healthy collaboration, since the choices you make can also affect your teammates and the people with whom you maintain relationships.

If you’re looking for insight into team compatibility, there’s no better place to start than the FIRO theory, which stands for Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation.

This theory points to three traits – inclusion, control and openness – as the primary influences over how compatible we are with others.

No matter how flexible you are, there are bound to be conflicts when working together with others.

This brings us to the fifth and final essential skill in forming and maintaining collaborative relationships: managing conflicts.

In the third stage, after you have figured out the interests of all the parties involved in a conflict, it’s time to take a look at your own interests.

Your interests differ from your fixed position. Whereas your fixed position is the outcome you desire from a situation, your interests are flexible and you should focus on them.

Let’s look at the final phase of the interest-based approach to conflict management.

The end result of this approach is to find creative solutions and compromises for your conflict, which you’ll have a better chance of doing once you break your conflict down into smaller and more precise issues.