Want to Help Someone? Don't Give Advice!

A peer or direct report comes to you and wants to discuss an issue they’re having with someone else. Which of the following describes how you would approach this discussion?

A – Ask a lot of questions about the situation so I can get a complete understanding of the issue.

B – Give the peer/direct report advice on how he should proceed.

C – Do both A & B

D – Other

If your answer is C, let me ask another question: Which of the following experiences have you had in applying approaches A & B?

A – I spent most of the discussion trying to understand the issue but still don’t think I quite grasped it.

B – I know I didn’t grasp the issue because the person responded to my advice by saying, “No, I don’t think you quite grasp the issue.”

C – After each piece of advice I gave, the peer/direct report said, “Yeah, I tried that, but it didn’t work.”

D – If the person was a direct report, I sensed he was treating my advice as a directive and only reluctantly agreed to follow it.

E – More than one of the above.

F – None of the above.

If you answered anything other than F, then congratulations! You’ve already discovered the downside of treating coaching as a joint problem-solving exercise in which you try to advise the coachee what to do.

In my previous article, I recommended that the Yes! Leader keep two key points in mind about coaching:

Think of yourself as a facilitator, not as an advisor. Yes, there are times when giving advice might be appropriate – say, when you’re already deeply familiar with the coachee’s specific issue and have a nearly identical experience when something worked for you.  But even if your advice is pure gold, what has the coachee learned from the situation – other than that he should come to you for advice in the future rather than try to work things out on his own? Taking an Asking approach rather than a Telling approach will help stimulate the coachee’s thinking and facilitate his ability to resolve his own issues – the current issue and future issues as well.

Help the coachee focus on future possibilities rather than current barriers. One sure way to stay mired in the Current Reality is to spend a lot of your coaching time in Sergeant Joe Friday, “Just the facts” mode, in which you find yourself grilling the coachee for a detailed description of her dilemma.  This approach goes hand-in-hand with the Advisor orientation, since we feel that, in order to give good advice, we need to have a complete understanding of the coachee’s situation. However, as your quiz answers may have shown, you likely won’t be able to get a good sense of the situation without a lengthy conversation (if even then).  And, by fixating so much on the problems and barriers that block progress, the coachee can start to wallow in a sense of negativity and futility – not a good way for the Yes! Leader to lead off a coaching session.

Remember, coaching isn’t about you understanding the current situation; it’s about the coachee identifying a future path.  You can take a lot of pressure off yourself, and provide more of a positive learning experience for the coachee, if you quickly acknowledge the Current Reality and begin asking future-focused questions to get the coachee to paint a vivid mental picture of the Goal.

Take a YES! Approach to Coaching

In improv, the term side coaching refers to in-the-moment directions called out by a workshop director as performers practice onstage scenes. Side coaching requires the performers to absorb the director’s words while continuing uninterrupted with the scene – a pure multitasking situation if there ever was one.

It seems as if the word “coaching” is used in many different contexts these days - life coaching, business coaching, performance coaching, sports coaching, etc. – each of which carries its own special set of meanings.

For the Yes! Leader who wants to make a positive difference in the lives of his followers, I think it pays to focus on three key aspects of coaching:

1 – The coach’s role is to help the coachee bridge the gap between where he is (the Current Reality) and where he wants to go (the Goal). This is called “Coaching Through the Gap.” Quite simply, coaching is a vehicle to help the coachee on his journey to improved performance.

2 – The coach is more a Facilitator than an Advisor. Coaching proceeds on the presumption that the coachee has the best answers to her own issues. The coach’s primary role is not to advise the coachee what to do but to ask powerful questions to stimulate the coachee’s thinking toward finding those answers. This “teach them to fish” approach builds the coachee’s confidence in her own abilities and leads to sustained performance.

3 – The coach should encourage the coachee not to get bogged down in the Current Reality. Focusing on why things aren’t working can keep the coachee mired in a sense of his own powerlessness to advance through the gap. By contrast, having a clear, well-defined goal will help energize the coachee, inspire him to overcome barriers, and provide a beacon to lead him forward. By asking future-focused questions such as “What will be the benefits to you when you reach your goal?”, the coach can help the coachee paint a vivid mental picture of the goal he wants to attain.

The Active Questioning method I described in my previous article can be particularly helpful to the Yes! Leader who wants to realize this positive, empowering approach to coaching. For example, in a coaching conversation, it’s very common for a coachee to start listing all of the barriers (usually external to the coachee) that are causing the Current Reality and keeping him from working through the gap. This tendency can quickly lead to griping, finger-pointing, and shirking of personal responsibility for changing the situation. 


To keep the coachee from getting stuck in this negative, disempowering spiral, the coach can counter each supposed barrier by asking Active Questions such as, “What are you doing to overcome that barrier? What can you do to overcome it?” Such a challenge can remind the coachee of his accountability (and capacity) for making change happen.

Be an Active Questioner!

Yesterday I listened to an excellent one-hour web conversation hosted by the leadership experts Marshall Goldsmith and Kevin Eikenberry on the topic of Coaching in organizations.  In the course of their freewheeling talk, Goldsmith shared an intriguing concept that nicely expands on the YES! Leader concept of accountability that I described in my previous article.

As I mentioned last time, many of us prefer to rail against the way things are rather than to ask ourselves, “What can I do to make the situation better?”  Goldsmith touched on a similar thought when he described a concept called Active Questioning.

As Goldsmith described it, in the context of an employee engagement survey, a Passive Question might take the form of: How engaged are you? By contrast, an Active Question would be: What are you doing to engage yourself? Passive Question: How happy are you? Active Question: What are you doing to increase your happiness?

I understood Goldsmith’s point to be this: By asking Passive Questions, we set a subtle expectation with employees that engagement is all about something that someone else needs to do in order to engage them. On the other hand, when we ask Active Questions, we plant the seed with employees that engagement is a two-way street.  More than a two-way street, in fact, because Goldsmith also makes the point that the individual needs to be the primary driver of any change he truly wants to see. As the saying goes, "If it's going to be, it's up to me!"  

We can also apply the Active Questioning approach to our own self-reflection. So, rather than ask ourselves Am I happy?, ask How am I increasing my happiness? By doing this, we can remind ourselves of our own accountability for making change happen.

  

Goldsmith mentioned that the concept of Active Questioning (and the employee-engagement research he’s conducted to demonstrate it) will be included in his new book, aptly titled Ask What You Can Do. I can’t wait!  (er, I mean, What can I do to get the book asap?)

Becoming a YES! Leader

A former manager of mine once told a story about taking a walk in a state park with a mentor of hers. During the walk, my manager said she noticed a large amount of litter scattered in the woods by previous hikers and campers and started to complain at length about the inconsiderateness of other people. After several minutes of kvetching, she finally said, “Why can’t other people pick up their mess?” – whereupon her mentor stopped, looked her in the eye, and said, “Instead of complaining, why don’t you pick it up?”

I often think of this story whenever I find myself grousing about a situation that doesn’t meet with my approval – and then I realize exactly what is meant by the old saying “If you aren’t part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” Instead of pitching and moaning about what “they” did to cause the problem, or what "they" should do (but aren’t doing) to make it better, I remind myself of the intended moral of my manager’s story and ask: “What can I do to change things?”

When we ask this question of ourselves, we start to see the truth in the statement: Anyone can be a leader! We don’t have to wait for someone else in a position of formal leadership to see the issue and mobilize resources to address it. We can seize the initiative by:

·         Recognizing a gap between the current reality and future possibilities;

·         Exploring different strategies we might pursue to influence the desired outcome;

·         Flexing our approach in the moment to meet the needs of each influencing encounter; and

·         Supporting others (and seeking support from others) so that we can collaboratively work toward the best solution for everyone with a stake in the outcome.

The Daily Improviser – wherever he may be situated on the (real or imagined) hierarchy – can apply this ExploreFlexSupport model to become what I call a YES! Leader. Saying YES! means approaching the world with a positive attitude, expecting the best from each situation, encouraging the best from each person, and applying each element of the ExploreFlexSupport model in every current or anticipated encounter with the world.

Using "Yes And" to Overcome Idea Chillers

From Day One of their training, performance improvisers are taught to say “Yes And” to onstage offers as a way to build interesting scenes and work collaboratively with their fellow players. For the Daily Improviser, taking a “Yes And” approach to life can go a long way toward keeping possibilities open while also maintaining positive relationships. By contrast, adopting a “No” attitude can keep us grounded in the status quo while blocking teamwork right out of the gate.

There are many subtle ways for people to say “No” without actually using the word. Listed below are some phrases and reactions people often use in meetings to immediately pour cold water on new ideas. These are usually used as a substitute for open-minded discussion of the idea, consideration of ways to make it work, and brainstorming of other ideas it might prompt. Chronic use of these Idea Chillers – especially when accompanied by dismissive laughter and sarcasm -  is guaranteed to stop innovation in its tracks, perpetuate Groupthink, and belittle and disrespect people. (To counteract the effect of Idea Chillers, try the responses in parentheses.)

"We tried that before and it failed miserably." (Let’s look at why it didn’t work and do it differently this time.) 
"It's too expensive." (How much do you think it will cost? What are the costs of standing still?)
"It isn't our responsibility." (Who is responsible? How can we work with them?)
"It’ll never work." (How can we make it work?)
"Management will never go for it." (How do we know unless we ask? How can we influence them to accept it?)

"We've never done it that way." (The old way may have worked fine in the past – but maybe it’s time for a change.)

"Great idea, but not for us." (Why aren’t great ideas for us?)
"That’s too much change, too quickly." (How much change is enough? How can we adapt the idea so it addresses the need?)
“People just aren’t ready for that.” (How can we gain acceptance for it?)

“Here’s why that won’t work …” (How can we address those challenges?)
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." (If we’re not moving ahead, we’re falling behind.)

”That won’t fly in our culture.” (Let’s consider if it will help us meet our strategic objectives and live our organizational values.)
“I don’t like it at all.” (What are your concerns, and how can we address them?)

"You have got to be kidding." (It might sound a little “out there” – a lot of new ideas do.)
"It's all right in theory, but..." (How can we turn theory into reality?)

Keep in mind that the process of innovation doesn’t usually start with a fully formed, practical idea. If that’s what we’re looking for, few breakthrough initiatives will ever get off the ground. Instead, most creative changes grow from the seed of an idea that might not work exactly as expressed but that are nurtured and shaped through open-minded, freewheeling discussion. For example, there can never literally be a “Beatles reunion,” but failure to capture the idea during a brainstorming session can prevent a company entertainment committee from identifying a related idea (e.g., a Beatles tribute band) that could work. (And if the idea is shot down with an Idea Chiller, you can bet that no similar “out there” ideas will ever come up again.)

Do You Want Your Experience Filtered or Non-Filtered?

Has it really been almost three years since I began The Daily Improviser blog?  As we approach the end of another year, I thought that it might be time for a summary of some of the improvisational “truths” – for both the performance improviser and the Daily Improviser – that I’ve been discovering in my blog journey:

1.      Improvisation is all about finding the connections among (seeming) incongruities.

2.      Improvisation involves holding multiple (seeming) incongruities in one’s mind at the same time and still being able to function.

3.      Improvisation does not involve directly experiencing one’s environment. Instead, the improviser uses various filters and useful structures (which I collectively call “The Layer”) to help make sense of his environment and guide his response.

4.      Improvisation involves supporting others as we work together to create a result. Support means saying “Yes and” to others – and “Yes and” means, not Agreeing with the Position, but Accepting the Person, Acknowledging the Possibilities, and Advancing with Positive Purpose.

In my reading on different topics – including history, politics, economics, science, performing arts, popular culture, and (yes) leadership – I’ve been finding examples of these truths time and again as they thread through the narrative. I admit I’m still struggling to resolve a few (seeming) incongruities (such as finding the right mixture of “Yes” and “No” in our daily thought and action), but I suppose those truths will emerge over time.

Today I’ll focus on another example of #3 above from the book Sway: The Irresistable Pull of Irrational Behavior, by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman. Now, you might assume that behaving in an “irrational” way is a bad thing, a conclusion that the book’s jacket reinforces when it describes the book as “revealing the dynamic forces that derail our logical thinking and sabotage our decision-making.” In fact, though, the Brafman brothers echo much of what I’ve observed elsewhere about the utility of the filters through which we view the world.

The Brafmans cite a number of psychology experiments that show how difficult it can be for us to overcome the “diagnosis bias,” which they define as “our propensity to label people, ideas, or things based on our initial opinions of them.” In one study,  a group of MIT economics students - a population you’d expect to be paragons of rational thinking - were given a bio of a new professor who was about to conduct one of their class sessions. Unknown to the students, however, half of them received one version of the bio, while the other half received another version. The first version concluded with the following sentence.

"People who know him consider him to be a very warm person, industrious, critical, practical, and determined."

The second version was exactly the same except for two words (italics added) in the final sentence:

"People who know him consider him to be a rather cold person, industrious, critical, practical, and determined."

At the end of the class session, the students were asked to complete an evaluation of the professor – and, as the Brafmans observed, “Upon seeing the results, you’d think the students were responding to two completely different instructors.” Apparently, changing just two key words in the bio predisposed the first group of students to see the professor in a favorable, appealing light, whereas the second group saw him in a negative, off-putting light – even though both groups of students had experienced the same lecture!

But even though the Brafmans use this story to emphasize the dangers of putting filters on our perception of our environment, they also make the following statement that echoes the observations of Nassim Taleb in his book The Black Swan:

“Each day we’re bombarded with so much information that if we had no way to filter it, we’d be unable to function. Psychologist Franz Epting, an expert in understanding how people construct meaning in their experiences, explained, ‘We use diagnostic labels to organize and simplify.’”

Like Taleb, then, even the Brafmans recognize that filters such as diagnostic labels are essential to humans’ ability to comprehend the world around them. The goal is not to get rid of diagnostic labels. Instead, we need to be continually aware of the labels we’re using and be ready to challenge them in the moment to incorporate new information that might give the lie to them. 

In terms of the ExploreFlexSupport model I’ve previously described, this is one aspect of the “flexing” that the Daily Improviser needs to engage in: Continually reframing the useful structures he uses to make sense of his world when those structures are no longer useful.

The Personal Improvement Journey: It Starts with Feedback

In my leadership-development sessions, I like to illustrate a point about feedback by rotating my finger in front of me and asking the class participants, “Which way is my finger going, clockwise or counterclockwise?”

Invariably, someone will say, “It depends – to us it’s going counterclockwise, to you it’s going clockwise.” Quite correct, but I like to drive the point home (and, I admit, ham it up a bit) by marveling at my finger as it whips through the air and asserting, “No, no, it’s going clockwise! A perfect circle, if I do say so myself! Yep, I am doing one tremendous job of communicating clockwiseness!”

My intent, of course, is to show how misguided and even absurd it is to be so wrapped up in our own perceptions of our actions that we become oblivious to the people whose perceptions really matter: Our audience. Only by tuning in to the feedback from our environment can we answer the question: Are you receiving me?

Now, each of us probably knows at an intellectual level that feedback is good for us – that we need to see ourselves as others see us in order to identify areas for improvement. If we “know” about the benefits of feedback, though, why do so many of us still resist it? Why do we argue with it, rationalize it, minimize it, or – worse – question the motives or perceptions of the feedback-giver?

I’ve come to believe that the reason starts with a basic self-limiting belief: Because we don’t think we can do anything about it!

Certainly when it comes to simple matters (“You’ve got a burnt-out headlight”), we’re more open to feedback because the issue is easily corrected. But when we hear feedback about behaviors that we feel are hard-wired deep within us, we commonly treat the feedback as an attack on who we are. In response, we tend to circle the wagons, revert to defensive mode, and block ourselves even further from feedback that could help us improve.

So how can we reverse this downward spiral? First, we need to question the belief that our behavior is unchangeable. As I pointed out in my article on Carol Dweck, we need to cast off a fixed mindset and adopt a growth mindset in its place.

But just believing that we can change doesn’t tell us how to change a particular behavior. And this is where another barrier to our development presents itself: The belief that mastery of the behavior is somehow innate and natural and can’t really be learned.

As we’ve seen with Dan Klein’s work, however, even an “innate” performance of a task can be analyzed and broken down into its component behaviors. And if the task’s component parts can be identified, they can be taught.

But even if you believe Dweck and Klein, you might still say: Yes, I can change, and the skill can be learned – but there’s a big difference between knowing the steps of a task and actually performing them.

I’ve addressed this issue in a number of articles – mostly focused on the themes of engaging in targeted practice (as developed by Matthew Syed in his book Bounce), unlearning of old behaviors, and implementing strategies such as stealth learning that make the new behaviors a natural part of one’s everyday life.

In very simple terms, then, what I've described above is the journey to self-improvement. And, as with any journey, it starts with a single step – called feedback!


----------------------------------------
POSTSCRIPT: Many if not most of the pictures I use in The Daily Improviser are just random shots intended to lend a little visual appeal and break up the text. Rarely do they actually illustrate any of the content in the article. However, the day after I wrote this article, I realized that the picture I posted - a shot I snapped of the Neil Armstrong Air & Space Museum in Wapakoneta, Ohio - actually echoed the last paragraph. So, I guess you can also think of feedback as "one small step for a person, one giant leap toward what the person can be."

The Daily Improviser Keeps on Smiling through the Changes

The name Art Clokey might not ring a bell with most people, but I’m sure the smiling, pliable green character he created would.

Yes, I’m speaking of Gumby, the subject of a series of film shorts produced by Clokey (rhymes with "Pokey") starting in the early 1950s. Using a painstaking process called Claymation, Clokey would bend Gumby and other plastic figures to form a series of poses and then capture each pose in a single movie frame. When the frames were spliced together and played back on a movie reel, Gumby and his pals would magically come to life on the screen.

These days I’m sure there are many times when the Daily Improviser feels like Gumby – bending, stretching, being pulled this way and that, either of his own volition (out of necessity or preemptive choice) or at the hands of an unseen animator called Continuous Change. And as Dan Ariely points out in his book The Upside of Irrationality, we humans have a remarkable capacity for adapting to change – more so, perhaps, than we often recognize. 

As Ariely demonstrates, our ability to go with the flow is not a matter of our acting as human supercomputers, inputting and processing all of the data that surround us and spontaneously kicking out the right response. Rather, our internal “change machines” operate in a very different way:

"We only have a limited amount of attention with which to observe and learn about the world around us – and adaptation is a very important novelty filter that helps us focus our limited attention on things that are changing and might therefore pose either opportunities or danger.  Adaptation allows us to attend to the important changes among the millions that occur around us all the time and ignore the unimportant ones. If the air smells the same as it has for the past five hours, you don’t notice it. But if you start smelling gas as you read on the couch, you quickly notice it, get out of the house, and call the gas company."

Ariely’s example provides yet another instance of a useful structure that the Daily Improviser employs to come between him and his environment in order to make sense of the world and deal with it appropriately. As I’ve pointed out in earlier articles, just as the performance improviser doesn’t sketch in his performances on a totally blank slate, neither does – or should – the Daily Improviser interact directly with the raw stuff of his environment, process the millions of changes that occur every second, and make up a new response on the spot every time. Rather, as Ariely, Steven Pinker (in his book The Blank Slate), and several other recent researchers have demonstrated, we humans are hard-wired to utilize intervening structures (or “novelty filters,” as Ariely calls them) to come between us and our world to help focus our attention and guide our actions.

In fact, as Ariely’s example illustrates, if we didn’t use these intervening structures (which I’ve previously described as The Layer), we would be incapable of making in-the-moment adaptations to changes in our environment. Instead – like the performance improviser who tries to run through all possible scene options in his head before making his next move – we would be frozen in place by Analysis Paralysis. 

Unlike Art Clokey, we don’t have the luxury of freezing reality second by second so we can sculpt each moment as we might like it to unfold. Fortunately, we can draw on The Layer as a short-cut to help us get in touch with our Gumby Nature.

What's My Motivation? Behavioral Economics and the Daily Improviser

In his book Born Standing Up, Steve Martin refers to several occasions during his early performing days when he gave a show for an audience of exactly … zero.

Having had the experience of performing to particularly loud crickets myself, I’ve been reflecting lately on how the lack of immediate payoff impacts a performer in such situations. What sustains him and keeps him going?

And how can the answer provide insight into the age-old question for the Daily Improviser: What’s my motivation, man? That is, what prompts the Daily Improviser to engage in sustained effort on certain tasks and endeavors – and to persevere in the face of challenges?

All of these questions are addressed by Dan Ariely in his book The Upside of Irrationality. A researcher in the area of behaviorial economics, Ariely describes a series of experiments he conducted that uncovered some intriguing answers to the question: “What is it aside from a paycheck that confers meaning on work?”

Ariely’s experimental design was simple and elegant. He gave each research subject the task of building a robot figure out of Lego blocks and paid him a diminishing amount of money for each robot he built, until the subject decided that he didn’t want to continue. For half of the subjects, Ariely’s researcher put each completed robot into a box underneath a desk. However, for the other half, the researcher immediately disassembled the completed robot right before the subject’s eyes.

Notice that the monetary payoff for each subject was based wholly on the number of robots he chose to build. If you’re a person who believes that people act in a strictly rational (and mercenary) way, you would probably predict that the researcher’s action with respect to the completed robots would have no impact on the number of robots the subjects chose to build.

And you would be wrong.

The experiments showed that those subjects whose robots were destroyed in their presence produced 32% fewer robots and made almost three dollars less than those whose creations were carefully stowed in the box.  Even though there was nothing stopping them from building more robots, the subjects who saw their work immediately broken up generally felt that the extra effort to make three more dollars just wasn’t worth it.

Ariely personifies this group by referring to Chad, the first subject in the group, and concludes as follows:

"Chad … witnessed the piece-by-piece destruction of his work, forcing him to realize that his labor was meaningless…. For those in Chad’s condition, watching their creations being deconstructed in front of their eyes was hugely demotivating."

To further emphasize how powerfully people crave meaning – even with a small “m” – in their work, Ariely next designed an experiment in which subjects solved simple word puzzles on successive pieces of paper and were again paid a diminishing amount for each puzzle solved. For one group, the researcher looked at each completed paper and nodded approvingly before giving the subject the next puzzle. For a second group, the researcher shredded the completed paper in front of the subject’s eyes. For a third group, the researcher simply put the paper aside without looking at the subject’s work at all.

As in the Lego exercise, the subjects whose work was acknowledged persevered in the task longer (and made more money) than the group whose work was summarily torn up. Incredibly, though, the group whose work was totally unacknowledged gave up the task about as early as the group whose work was destroyed!

So what does this mean for the Daily Improviser? As Ariely observes:

"The experiment taught us that sucking the meaning out of work is surprisingly easy. If you’re a manager who really wants to demotivate your employees, destroy their work in front of their eyes. Or, if you want to be a little subtler about it, just ignore them and their efforts."

To Ariely’s conclusion, I would add that there are even lots of subtle ways to “destroy” an employee’s work, if only in a figurative sense:

• Minimize their best efforts
• Pour cold water on their aspirations
• Discount their ideas 
• Punish them for taking calculated risks that don't work out

On the other hand, perhaps the good news about Ariely’s research is: A little recognition, used consistently and genuinely, can go a long way toward creating engagement, satisfaction, and meaningfulness for an employee as he applies his best efforts.

Building Agreement - One Game at a Time

I've been focusing recently on the topic of building agreement - and the challenges and best practices involved in finding common ground with others, especially those who seem to be a world apart from you. Improv, by the very nature of its major tenet ("Say 'Yes And'"), provides concepts and practical activities that can instill a cooperative attitude in the mind of the performance improviser as well as that of the Daily Improviser.

In addition to a cooperative mindset, anyone wanting to build his agreement-building capabilities through negotiation and solution-finding must become skilled at navigating the seeming contradictions and incompatibilities of the parties' positions. I say "seeming" because, as I've pointed out before, improv as a form proceeds on the notion that everything can ultimately be connected and resolved - even such apparently incongruous notions as, say, "a Sumo wrestler performing Swan Lake."

Listed below are a few activities drawn from the world of improv that can help build negotiating and solution-finding skills. (By the way, I don't claim that any of these is original with me - I've derived them from existing sources.)

YES BUT
The "Yes But" game brings into awareness the downsides of contradicting others' perspectives. You can then contrast that approach by following up with a round of "Yes And," thus showing how taking a more positive, agreement-based direction can open up possibilities between the parties.

PAIRED DRAWING
Partner up. Partner #1 starts drawing a picture on a piece of paper. After 30 seconds, Partner #1 stops drawing and Partner #2 continues the drawing that Partner #1 started. The partners continue to alternate making additions to the drawing, without talking, until one partner feels that the drawing is finished, whereupon he starts captioning the drawing by writing a single letter at the bottom of the page. The other partner then adds the second letter. Partners alternate writing a letter until the caption is complete.

This game encourages cooperative action on the part of the players and teaches them to take into account and build upon the contributions of the other rather than trying to force through an outcome on their own.

QUIT YOUR DAY JOB!
(Works best with 3-4 players.) Each player lists three things that he likes to do in his spare time - or would do if he had any spare time. The players then brainstorm a possible business the three of them could create that would incorporate an element from each of their lists. For example, Partner #1 lists "Surfing," Partner #2 lists "Collect vintage gas pumps," and Partner #3 lists "Record collecting." Their brainstorming leads to an idea: Self-guided tour maps of Southern California surfing spots, illustrated with road memorabilia and lyric excerpts from surf-music songs.

This game encourages the parties to use their combined creative abilities to find commonalities that might not be apparent at first.