As part of my team coaching, I constantly seek to develop relationships between people. This requires, in particular, a better interpersonal knowledge. A very useful tool to do this is the personal map of Management 3.0.
However, I had the impression that key elements were missing to really create a link. I then developed my own canvas which I called the Individual Map (not super original, I admit). It is not intended to be perfect, but it seemed interesting to me to create good conversations.
I offer a description of it in this article 🙂
Why get to know each other?
The world of work tends to create a separation between our personal life and our role in business. People may then know each other relatively little beyond their label. However, when the pressure is high, automatisms resurface and generate misunderstandings, conflicts and collateral damage.
Knowing others better can help limit the damage. Indeed, by creating an environment conducive to good collaboration, we can more easily anticipate our behavior under stress. We then pull the benefits of diversity by limiting the effects of the chaos of difference.
A good way is speak of it. A good time is before there are problems ! But talk about what? This is what we will see together next 🙂
Description
Here is the canvas above with the different themes proposed. You can download it here.
To better understand its intention, I suggest that you go into its structure in a little more detail.
The structure of the canvas
From a practical point of view, it is important to know who this card belongs to, so registering his first name somewhere seemed obvious. Now the question of location arose. The center was a simple answer in the sense that the Personal Map, based on mind maps, started from the center.
My intention, however, is slightly different. I wanted to separate the canvas into 2 parts with initially the iceberg metaphor at the top: the emerged part corresponding to what is visible and the submerged part corresponding to what is invisible. So the center was a good location for that.
The idea then evolved into a slightly different structure:
The top part then makes it possible to give an image at a moment t of who we are from the context elements that we will want to detail. However, even if it allows us to understand things, it is not always easy to make it actionable. We simply allow others to be curious about us.
This is why the bottom part makes sense. It is made to give information to others on how best to interact with oneself. It is therefore intended to be more practical and lead to more structured exchanges. Indeed, this is where elements of clarification and negotiation can take place on how to meet everyone's needs.
Let's go a little more into the details of each part.
Top part: Context
The themes proposed here are as follows: Leisure, Family, Values, Training and Objectives.
They are 5 in number because it is a number large enough to have a diversity of angles of view and small enough to allow everyone to express themselves. In any case, that was my positioning at that time 😛
The idea here is not to get into people's lives but simply to give them back that hint of humanity that can sometimes be taken away from them! 🙂
Here are some explanations of why these themes:
| Thematic | Why does this seem useful to me |
|---|---|
| Hobbies | These are activities that develop skills used in a different context. This can be useful for connecting with people who practice the same sports, who have similar tastes or even who could introduce us to things. It can be an activity that is currently practiced, that was in the past or that has never been practiced. What matters are the discussions that can be generated about it. |
| Family | The family context is generally the one we leave in the morning and the one we find again in the evening. It is therefore essential in the way we understand our choices. It can be helpful to know that a person has young children and may need to pick them up from school. You can be single or in a couple, be an only child or a member of many siblings. This naturally influences our priorities and the way we interact in groups. |
| Values | Values help us and guide us in our choices. If I know that something is important to you, it will be easier for me to pay attention to it later. Indeed, it is really important here to explain what is meant by such and such a value because it often happens that the same words are used for quite different meanings! A common example is the value Respect 🙂 |
| Training | Trainings are part of our journey and have (normally) been choices on our part in our lives. They have structured our way of understanding work and have been able to develop certain automatisms of thought and culture. The idea here is obviously not to compare with each other but to better understand the background with which people come to do their job. You can often discover unexpected things here 🙂 |
| Goals | Inspired by the Team Canvas, it is the personal objectives that interest me above all. Indeed, role objectives are often superficial: “my objective is that everything goes well in the project”. Not only that doesn't mean much, but it doesn't help the team much. On the other hand, knowing that a person comes to develop an expertise on such technology, or that he comes to have experience in such methodology is important. We thus have leads on what will motivate her and on what will potentially annoy her. We study here the intention of the person within the team. THE Accountability process describes intention as a desire (an urge) + a direction (a focus of attention). |
Now let's move on to the bottom part 😉
Bottom part: Collaboration
The themes proposed here are as follows: Communication, Conflicts, Security and Uniqueness.
There are a few less this time because they can be more difficult for some people to complete. Indeed, it requires some introspection and we are not always used to asking ourselves these questions 🙂
On the other hand, these are themes that seem important to me to address in order to build and nurture good collaboration within a team. Some explanations of why below:
| Thematic | Why does this seem useful to me |
|---|---|
| Communication | Communication is a multi-directional flow of information that is often studied more in the direction of transmission. How to send a message to be understood? What we are looking for here is above all to work on the opposite direction, that of reception. How to send me a message if you want me to understand you well? We generally talk more about the form than the content, even if the whole is interesting. The important thing is to take into account that everyone is different in his way of receiving a message andexplain. |
| Conflicts | Even with all the precautions in the world, conflicts will emerge from time to time. What interests us is how the person reacts to a conflict: is she comfortable? does she tend to run away from them? It is a theme that is too often set aside when it is an integral part of the life of a team. Talking about them before there are any means giving yourself the means to resolve them more easily by defining preliminary rules. Indeed, in the moment, emotions can take over and relying on something we agreed on can help. |
| Security | We are mainly talking here about Psychological Safety. This ability to be able to express oneself freely while remaining oneself without fear of reprisals from one's environment. The idea here is to share the means to implement so that the person feels safe. She can express requests or simply explain the criteria that help her feel more at ease. This is a topic that deserves time. Indeed, it is vital to ensure that the team has the keys to create a environment conducive to serene collaborative work. |
| Uniqueness | Each person is unique in their own way and at a given time. If you had to give one essential piece of information about yourself to your colleagues, what would it be? Maybe something that irritates you enormously? Perhaps a topic not to be discussed? Or on the contrary what makes you happy or what you have facilities on? This is the element that everyone should at least retain from each person because it is a characteristic that makes Delphine Delphine, Loïc Loïc and Jérémie Jérémie. |
Example
Enough explanations, nothing beats an example! So I bent on the exercise that you can find below 😉
Note: It still took me 25 minutes to complete it in a serious way !
As part of a facilitated workshop, keep in mind that we are not trying to be exhaustive but to bring out topics of conversation allowing the team to create a link. The idea here is mostly to give you an idea of what it might look like.
If by browsing the canvas questions have emerged for you, then it is that the magic has operated 🙂
Note: if you want to ask me questions, you can always send me a message in private or in comments, it will be my pleasure to exchange 🙂
Conclusion
I'Individual Map is a canvas that can be used in Team kick-off to be able to lay the foundations for a collaboration within the Seine. It can also be used as part of a retrospective punctual with the theme of knowing oneself and others. Indeed, the use of frameworks in facilitation makes it possible to approach different themes in a simple and structured.
What matters again is not the generated content itself but the conversation which will follow. Facilitation is therefore crucial to help create an atmosphere of curiosity, sharing and security.
Don't hesitate to try it out and give me your feedback!
