Eiffel Over

Tag: DesignCollaboration

  • Dealing with competition in design

    • “I don’t care what you think; you’re wrong because…”
    • “They didn’t ask what I thought; they just told me what to do.”
    • “I raised objections, but I was told we’re sticking to the schedule regardless.”

    In this series of posts, I’m exploring conflict in design, which, for these purposes, is what happens when two people have different views on a subject.

    In each of the scenarios above, two people disagree. And in each case, one person asserts their view without showing interest in the other person’s perspective.

    This is the definition of competition in the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Instrument model: high levels of assertion, paired with low levels of interest in the other person’s view.

    In my experience, competition is a very common mode of operation in construction.

    Some people thrive on competition. Others prefer to steer clear of it entirely.

    How we deal with conflict depends on both our preferences and our goals. But first, we need to explore the other modes of conflict. More on that tomorrow.

  • Approaching conflict in design

    Some people like conflict. Other people stay away from it.
    Some people attempt to engage constructively in conflict. The opposite is also true.

    For me, conflict is simply when two people discover they have different views on a subject. The key is what happens next. How do they engage with one another?

    It’s important to think about how we engage in conflict in design because disagreeing is a crucial part of the design process. It’s part of taking an idea from ‘mine’—an idea in my head—to an idea that exists in the world and fits well within the ecosystem it inhabits.

    Without conflict, the ideas we have risk only serving our own needs.

    In his excellent ‘Leading and Influencing’ course, Nick Zienau teaches four modes of conflict, based on a model called the ‘Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Instrument.’ I now teach these modes to engineers (and other humans) as part of managing a design process. The modes are: competition, avoidance, acceptance, and collaboration. These will be the subjects of my next four posts.

  • Mindset leverage

    Are you excited about the possibilities of your next project? Or worried about the unknowns? Do you see the possibility for competition or collaboration?

    There is not a part of design that mindset does not affect. That is because design is an interaction between the outer world of reality and the inner world of perception, imagination and choice.

    For me, our mindset is how we see the world – how it shows up for us. Our mindset affects what we look for and what we see when we gather data. It affects the sort of ideas we have. It affects what we hold important when we evaluate options. 

    So if we want to change the outcomes of our work as designers, there is merit in considering mindsets. Both the mindsets we bring and the mindsets we create through the processes we set up. 

    We shape our individual mindsets through reflective practice. We shape our collective mindsets through changing the working culture. These are invisible tools with huge leverage.