How To Catch A Lion: An Exercise in Understanding and Collaboration

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Introduction

"Are you wanting to trap a lion? Are you brave enough to trap a lion? If so, read these handy instructions and soon you will be rid of this horrible predator..."

I have always had a passion for driving collaboration across teams and functions, and for making sure people feel valued and able to thrive. I want to grow the individual as much as I want businesses to grow and be profitable.

I share this as one approach I use when trying to help people build better relationships with colleagues, team members, and stakeholders.

Observing Conflict

For many years, I have been fascinated by, and acutely aware of, conflicts in the workplace that do not appear to be the result of anyone actually being 'wrong'.

This problem affects all aspects of working relationships; day-to-day tasks and interactions, specific project activities, and high pressure, high intensity scenarios. Over long periods of time this can - and usually does - lead to a complete breakdown of relationships, trust and productivity.

People leave roles, companies or simply stop trying when the situation meets its critical mass.

People, at times, simply struggle to get on. Not because one or the other is a bad person (although, this can be an ever-present factor in some scenarios!), but quite simply because they don't understand the other person's perspective, objectives and pressures.

If we could take a step back and take the time to talk, to understand, and to consider another viewpoint, we would actually see a significant improvement in morale, collaboration, and the value and quality of outputs.

Understanding others is fundamental to our ability to deliver, deliver well, and to be happy in our jobs.

Most people will be familiar with the various personality and trait assessments; DISC, Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, to name a few. These are all powerful tools that help us better understand ourselves, our colleagues, and how we might better work together.

But I'm coming at this from a slightly less formal, experiential angle - something I've learned through doing. Something that I hope will be thought-provoking, and an exercise you can run time and time again.

I should say at this point that although I focus here on the workplace, the situations and principles are entirely applicable to personal relationships and home life, also.

Lightbulb

10 years ago, I was running a technical support team. We oversaw the telephony estate for a large energy supplier in the UK (contact centres, office-to-office phonelines, call routing, customer call queues etc).

My team were great. Super smart, technically minded problem solvers. Experts at what they did. But there was a worrying theme emerging, and one that I wasn't sure how to fix.

I knew that if I didn't find a solution, it would lead to frustration and, potentially, a break down in working relationships and trust between my team and the rest of the business we were serving.

We would receive requests from all areas of the business to make changes to call routing, add new phone numbers, fix broken telephony equipment, react to outages. Most of the time, those requestors would have their own opinions on how the solution should be achieved, but without the technical knowledge about how things actually worked in practice.

Our change request forms were several pages long. Full of lots of technical detail about how the calls should be routed, which IVR (Interactive Voice Response) prompts should be used, how many seconds before bouncing to another agent or line....it was exhausting, and almost impossible for people without the knowledge to complete.

If the form was incomplete, it would be rejected. Requestors would be asked to go away and complete the information, which was rarely sufficient enough when it came back. Delays in getting solutions delivered, and fractious relationships with the business were growing.

A phrase I heard over and over again from my small, over-worked team was "this person's a fool. They have no idea what they're doing. Why are we being asked to do this?"

The frustration was brewing, and it was leading to problematic interactions with requestors and business owners. Our default response to any request was rapidly becoming "no", instead of "let me try and understand your request in more detail."

My team weren't wrong. But they weren't right, either.

It was reaching a critical stage. Without a solution, the damage to our reputation, relationships and morale would be irreparable.

At the same time, our 7-year-old came home with a piece of homework. A very vague piece of homework that simply said: 'write instructions on how to do something'.

It was an exercise in free-thinking, imagination and structured writing. So we sent her off to have a go, and asked her to come and show us once she'd got something she wanted to share.

30 minutes later, she was back. She'd finished, and was very excited to show us. I asked "so what have you written your instructions on?"

I was expecting something along the lines of baking cupcakes, or maybe sewing. Two things she'd been doing at the time. But instead, she proceeded to tell us that she'd written some instructions on "how to catch a lion."

Taken aback, we listened as she shared her instructions with us. I smiled, and I laughed. This was great. It was thoughtful, considered, and written from the perspective of a 7-year-old - exactly as a 7-year-old saw the world and chose to go about the task.

Her instructions were as follows;

'Introduction

Are you wanting to trap a lion? Are you brave enough to trap a lion?

If so, read these handy instructions and soon you will be rid of this horrible predator.

What You Need

A lion, bow and arrow and some tasty meat.

What You Do

First, go to a zoo.

Next, go to a grassy place in the zoo.

After that, get the lion and put the meat on the ground.

Then, slingshot the lion.'

I loved it. I loved the structure and ambition of it. It was genuine, and sincere. It was through her eyes, as she saw and understood the world, and using the tools she knew about (bow and arrow at a conceptual level only, of course).

And there it was. A lightbulb moment. Something that I immediately tied back to the issues in the office. Everybody was trying to catch a lion (achieve an objective) from their own perspectives, using the knowledge and tools as they understood them.

The instructions we'd been presented with clearly wouldn't work on their own. But there were aspects of it that probably could work, and made sense.

Lions, famously, love meat. That could work. But maybe already being in the zoo meant other, more trained individuals would have been better to call on. And I don't even want to talk about the apparently lax security protocols at the zoo when handling escaped animals!

But what if we pooled everyone's ideas? Everyone clear on the common objective.

What if we took time to understand where everyone else was coming from? No one person's idea completely right, or completely wrong.

We would have a far stronger, more robust solution by bringing the best of each idea together. And, more importantly, everyone would feel like they'd been part of the solution - they would feel valued, and be more invested in its success because they'd contributed.

I needed to get this idea in front of my team.

So here's what I did...

Taking The Lion To Work

I set up a meeting with my team the following day. Told them I needed everyone to attend, and that we would close the office for the next hour. It was important everyone would take part together.

Another important factor was cake. If I didn't bring cake to team meetings, we were off to a bad start. An absence of cake usually signified the presence of bad news.

I made sure there was cake. And I made sure I ate plenty of it, too. For quality purposes.

The Activity

I started with the usual intro...."How's everyone doing? Where are we with the various live activities? What's the backlog looking like?"

As well as that being the type of welcome I might normally give, those specific questions were intended to get the team thinking about the challenges and frustrations they were facing. I wanted them in that headspace, so that the exercise would be relevant.

Then I flashed up a picture of a lion on the screen. A scary lion, teeth bared, slightly intimidating.

And I asked everyone to take 5 minutes, on their own, to write me some instructions on how they would catch a lion. I hadn't shown them the instructions from our 7-year-old at this stage.

The obvious questions rang out..."A lion?", "why a lion?", "where is the lion?", "what can we use?"

I told them I wasn't giving them any more information. The task was set.

After 5 minutes, I went around the room and asked everyone to read out their instructions. As you would expect, there were some interesting and varied strategies, environments and tools on offer.

People laughed. People said "Oh, I hadn't thought of that!" Cogs were starting to turn but, mostly, people wanted to know what on earth I was doing asking them to catch a lion in the office at 10am on a Wednesday morning.

I asked the team whose idea was best. Whose idea was the right one to get the job done.

Then something interesting happened. Something I hoped would happen, but wasn't sure would. Maybe I had completely messed it up.

One of the team spoke up. They didn't say theirs was the best. Instead, they said that they liked some of the ideas from the other team members, there were parts from each of the suggestions that would work better than their own.

And everyone else did the same thing. Everyone saw value in the other team members' ideas and approach.

I shared our 7-year-old's hand-written instructions. I read them out to the group. They all had the same reaction as I had the night before - they laughed, they smiled and they saw the request through her eyes.

I brought the conversation back to the room. Back to the office. Back to the conversations we were having with business owners. I pointed out that everyone approaches a task based on their own experiences, their own knowledge, and with the information they have to hand at the time.

The initially proposed steps in a solution really weren't the starting point for a conversation; it was the purpose. Aligning on the objective, and understanding why it was required, were the most important first steps. Building a relationship and mutual respect had to come first.

The design comes afterwards. It's done in partnership. Everyone sharing their own thoughts and expertise to develop the most effective solution.

The Output

Our own perceptions were changing. Some of us felt an element of guilt about how we'd handled interactions. We wanted to fix it.

I asked everyone to go back to the office and take a look at the requests with fresh eyes, understanding that they were the experts in their field, and that the requestors were simply trying to achieve something.

It was our job to understand the objective - it's purpose, it's perceived value - and then to work with the business to help develop a solution that was technically sound, effective and designed in co-ordination with the requestors.

In some instances, the business weren't aware that the solution already existed. Sometimes the idea was too narrow - they had potential to work for areas of business other than their own, so we helped expand these to benefit more customers, more business areas.

And sometimes we identified opportunities to improve solutions we'd already deployed.

We worked with requestors, not against them. We built a reputation as a team that would help; the experts in our field, committed to finding the best solutions.

We updated our change request forms to make them easier and quicker for requestors to complete; we removed all the technical aspects that they weren't experienced enough to answer, and instead focussed on giving the business an opportunity to describe what they were trying to achieve and why.

Those multi-page, confusing request forms became single page documents that kick started a conversation. Because it was the conversation that was important; the listening, the understanding and the collaboration.

We delivered more, delivered more effectively. There was more enjoyment in our work. The business was happier. And we got more recognition for the work we delivered.

This was the starting point - not the end - of a transformation in the way we thought, in the way we approached our stakeholders, and the type of interactions we had.

We returned to the concept regularly. Sometimes, when the proverbial was flying towards the fan and frustration was brewing, I'd simply say "how to catch a lion", and people knew what that meant. It served as an immediate jolt; a reset.

Final Thoughts

I recommend you try this out with your teams. Or, at the very least, apply the thinking to the way you approach others. With any luck, it will help with navigating conflict, relationships, and team building.

This shouldn't be a reactionary measure. When the heat is on, taking time to pause and learn a new concept is often not an option. Build this into your training, team building exercises, build it into your DNA.

And it's not a silver bullet. It's a tool in your armoury. An opportunity to reflect and develop a strategy for building better working relationships - with everybody taking a degree of responsibility and accountability.

You will still need to address poor, enduring behaviours. You will still have problematic stakeholders who aren't prepared to wait in line. But, at the very least, this will help you modify the way you approach those situations for the better.

As a parent, I'm often blown away by how children see the world, and how exciting and new it all seems. It's mesmerising to watch them play, watch them figure things out. Much of what they do seems completely illogical or ill-considered at times, but it's the complete opposite for them.

We can learn just as much from them as they can from us. They serve as a reminder of the importance of learning, of patience, and of trying things out until you get it right.

A 7-year-old helped me figure out how to communicate a message to grown adults. Not because she'd actually solved the problem, but because I was present enough to listen and to value her experiences enough to relate them back to my own world.

Take the time to be present with your children. Take the time to be truly present with your colleagues. See what you can learn from them, and let it change you for the better.

And remember; bad people are rarely bad people. They're just coming at it from a different perspective.

If you want to discuss this in more detail, or are interested in me delivering this session to your teams, please feel free to reach out.

Thanks,

Joe O'Mahoney

If you want to discuss how we can deliver this session to your team, book some time with us today HERE.