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Meet Paul
Paul is an expert at showing corporate teams how to be more unified and more collaborative. His proven team building program is guaranteed to bust through the silos as he shows your team how to be as unified as the players in a great orchestra.
A-list corporations have been using Paul’s team building program for almost two decades, his audiences include Microsoft, RBC, Goodyear, ING, Heineken, FedEx, PwC and P&G.
10 things you can do to be an amazing collaborator
Warning! I am going to start this post by talking about my kids and their friends.
I know that there is nothing more boring that having someone prattle on about their kids. So I'll be brief.
It’s because kids can teach us about collaboration, the collaboration we all once knew (even you, without the kids).
It struck me that kids (yours, mine and that other guy's) seem to be pretty good at making it happen.
I've been listening to them talk… it’s one idea after another. They can’t wait to get together.
I’ve watched them build something out of spare bits that they find lying around. Or they create some new video with their technology, which is never too far away.
They all seem to know what to do and when. Sometimes, it doesn’t even look like they're collaborating, it’s so seamless.
Sometimes it looks like an argument. There’s one voice trying to get on top of another to share the best idea.
Sometimes one leads, then another. There is a lot of trust - a lot of inclusion.
But no ever walks away upset. Somehow, it all works out. As a matter of fact, this can go on for hours, even days. It depends what it is, I guess. I wasn’t invited to the meeting.
It got me thinking about what it takes (in our grown-up world) to be a great collaborator. And here's what I’ve come up with.
How to use silence to make your work and your life better
I’m fortunate to be able to spend a little time at a cottage during the summer. One of my favourite things to do is to get up just before sunrise and take the canoe out for a slow paddle.
As the sun creeps upward, it’s a time of awe-inspiring silence.
The water is like glass. Only the bow of the canoe and my paddle cut through its smooth shiny surface.
It’s not really silent though. You can hear some birds singing and the odd fish jumping out of water, but it’s as close to silence as I can get without finding a anechoic chamber somewhere.
I know that, very soon, the silence will be overcome by fishing boat motors or the splashes of an early morning swimmer, or worse, by jet skis and skill saws.
I’ll often head over to an old beaver dam and just sit there in the canoe. I’ll let my ears search the forest and water for a chirp, rustle or splash. I hope for a chance encounter with a beaver perhaps. But my paddling has probably tipped them off long before I arrive so that’s never happened.
This is a place where I remind myself how to listen.
And that’s important. Because without an appreciation for silence, we can’t really listen to what others have to say.
How to be comfortable with change before it's too late!
My wife and I recently did a small renovation to our home. We even brought in a couple of designer guys to help us out.
It was surprising how emotional it was.
As the old furniture, travel trinkets and cheap art on the walls got given away to family or sold to strangers, I couldn’t help but look at most of it with some degree of affection. Weird, I know. It's only stuff.
But they were items we had bought together when we got our first house. Some items were even from the apartments we lived in before becoming homeowners.
As attached to that stuff as we were, we knew it was time for a change.
It was time a couple years earlier but we couldn’t see it yet. My thanks go out to our friends and family for not mentioning that.
As time went on, we began feeling that much of what we had accumulated didn’t fit who we were and how we wanted to live.
At that point, changing it became a big priority. We spent every spare moment surfing furniture sites on-line. We looked at catalogues and gathered ideas. I know - we really know how to live!
As each new item entered our home, the older pieces still around became much less attractive. Once we had made all our furniture choices, we couldn’t wait for the new stuff to arrive.
But here’s the thing... Even though we orchestrated this change, we weren’t completely sure we were going to love the new as much as the old.
Well, guess what? This doesn’t only happen with furniture. It happens in many other aspects of our lives.
Why? Because change is fraught with fear, but, as experience has taught me, you just have to go for it anyway.
The trick is to know how to give yourself the confidence to make the big move
