Remember what it’s like to be 8-years-old at lunch in a school cafeteria?

Everybody has their lunch bag or box filled with food and a drink. You sit with your friends. Across the table is another group of kids around your age. You see on the other side of the table that one has a home-baked chocolate chip cookie (CCC). More than anything, you want that cookie, so you try to make a trade; your package of Sour Patch Kids for that cookie. The only thing is that the cookie owner doesn’t want to part with his freshly baked cookie; he also doesn’t like Sour Patch Kids. He says in his culture, there is only sweet candy. He doesn’t understand sour candy. Therefore, he doesn’t want to make the trade. You’re 8; you can’t conceive of anybody not liking sour candy. And you want the cookie. You are bewildered. How can you work with someone who does not share your tastes or a desire to exchange?

In the present day, you may find yourself in a similar position at work.

Your Cafeteria

At your job, you’re accustomed to being with people within your department or team. You share similar interests, priorities, and experiences. Speaking with your teammates is easy because you speak “the same language.” Then, one day, you’re uniquely chosen to move a project forward that requires you to work with a different department.  Like you, this group is accustomed to being with people who share

their interests, priorities, and experiences. You don’t speak their language, and they don’t speak yours. You need to progress with your project, but you are confronted with a group whose help you need and who view you as an outsider and do not share your priorities. You need their buy-in. How do you move forward?

Different Languages

During my grad school years, I was again that 8-year-old who wanted to make a trade yet “my trading partners” seemingly had no interest. As a marketing intern, I was brought into an engineering department to make progress that no marketing professional had before. My assignment was to look into alternative uses for a complex and highly technical industrial testing device and service. I quickly gathered I had another unspoken challenge I had to overcome before I could make a dent in my project: how to build a bridge with the electrical engineers and physicist in my department. I needed their knowledge and wisdom to navigate the company and department and an understanding of the device I was working with. (I had not taken an engineering class in my life.)  I was also the only representative of my sex in the department.  Another hurdle. What to do?

I quickly discovered that the engineers did not feel an affinity for the marketing folks, which is why I was hired as an outside resource. They distrusted all marketing specialists and did not want to speak with any of them at all costs. And my area of study deemed me “one of them.” I realized I had to gain their trust by separating myself as a unique stand-alone specimen.

One of my superpowers is my ability to be accepted by people who, at first glance, seem very different from me. I grew this sense of being placed in situations where I was the only one like me, but I could only function successfully by building connections with everybody else. (For instance, I switched high schools in my junior year, traveled/lived abroad alone in my teens, was my sorority’s rep on the Panhellenic Board, etc.)

Getting Somewhere

Speaking to this group of engineers using marketing language or acting like a marketing expert would only backfire; they weren’t members of the marketing coalition and weren’t interested in what I was “selling” (in my assignment). And would resent me even more if I tried any of that. Instead, I asked for a lot of advice and took great interest in their explanations, delving further than perhaps I had to, but it was meaningful for all of us. I was curious about their stories within their careers and time outside of work. And that investment in time and building a personal relationship allowed me to make progress on my project. Slowly, they even started inviting me to their coffee and snack breaks and asking questions about my life in New York and my hobbies. I was given a beloved storybook nickname. We laughed a lot.

I had broken through; I was no longer the dreaded marketing intern; I was Susan, sometimes “Tink.”

The CCC Victory

Are you in a position where you need to work with people who are “not like you” and may not have the same agenda? Perhaps you’re the technical lead to their management skills, the human resources partner to a business leader, or the research and development GM to head of sales. It’s easy to connect with them like you would your specialty area or department, but you won’t make any friends this way or make any headway toward your goal. In addition, your “efforts” won’t come across as sincere or kind. You’re coming from different cultures and languages.

Instead of breaking through the barriers, think of how you would connect with a stranger on a basic everyday level, a human level. You need something from them; they may not necessarily need or want what you have to offer initially.  How you progress depends on developing a relationship as individuals, not roles.  Only then can you start communicating on the same wavelength to establish a framework so everybody sees the benefit of working together and gets something out of the deal. Collaboration starts with building connection.

Box of CCC’s

Are you feeling you’ve made overtures to the partners you need to work with, but you’re not making enough progress?  Perhaps you’re still not connecting the way you should to complete a project, or your colleagues are simply not as interested in good results or as serious about the challenge as you are?  You can benefit from support from someone outside the situation, but have no likely champion within your organization. Email me, we can talk. Together, we can find ways to get your chocolate chip cookie with or without Sour Patch Kids: Susan@SusanGoldbergLeadership.com

My work as a leadership development and collaboration advisor has me go into organizations with an outside, unbiased view to look at potential information and relationship gaps. Using sensitivity along with proprietary and trademarked solutions, including a powerful team mapping tool, Collaboration Beyond Words™, together we identify what your organization and/or its leaders are missing that’s holding everybody back from thriving, learning and working cohesively as a team.  Have practices become too entrenched; are they based too much on prior teams and not current team members? Contact me: Susan@SusanGoldbergLeadership.com . Let’s talk.