Tracie Reveal Shipman, owner of Many Voices, shared a message about leadership and cooperation at the May Pilot Point Chamber of Commerce luncheon.
She started that discussion with an object lesson and a Hopi proverb, 'One finger cannot lift a pebble.'
'I want you to look at the pebble you chose and I want you to use one finger and try to lift it,' Shipman said.
Although some in the room came up with creative work-arounds, the majority left their pebbles on the table.
She continued on, asking the group what partnership means to them.
The answers revolved around collaboration, compromise, and 'filling those gaps' between strengths and weaknesses, and willingness to work together.
'I just think in some partnerships, one plus one equals three, and that synergy helps kind of build on what we’re doing,' Rooted In's Daniel Cunningham said.
Shipman elaborated why willingness matters.
'If the other party isn't willing, it's like I'm trying to push a rope, so there's really no partnership there,' she said.
She also spoke about members of a team who occupy different roles and ways they can work together to properly delegate responsibility.
'And you can be all three spaces on any given day,' Shipman said of soleproprietorships. 'If somebody walks up into your face that's a customer, you just went from top to bottom real fast.'
Shipman, who helped develop the Pilot Point governance policies, shared Lencioni's Model that can lead to the five dysfunctions of a team: lack of trust, then fear of conflict, followed by lack of commitment to avoidance of accountability and topped with inattention to results.
The handout associated showed the difference between a high-performance team and a dysfunctional one.
'I'm going to watch for the behaviors of a dysfunctional five to see are these behaviors that I see in my system, in my organization, in my community?' Shipman said. 'The behaviors over on the left are how do I overcome or build a functional system. It is grounded in trust.'
She also touched on what is considered the 'ideal conflict point' of 'passionate, unfiltered debate around issues of importance to the team,' according to Lencioni, that is the midpoint between artificial harmony and personal attacks.
Shipman closed by asking people what they plan to start, continue or stop doing.
Eric Francois of Capital Plumbing spoke up for his boss, saying he wants to focus on delegating more, which Shipman built upon.
'Delegation ideally is delegate to develop,' she said. 'I'm not just delegating to push that off.'
