The Seven Norms of Collaborative Work
The seven norms of collaboration are essential capacities and skills for high-performing groups. They operate within several practical frameworks that help groups to develop shared meaning and gracefully reach decisions.
1. Pausing
Pausing before responding or asking a question allows time for thinking and enhances dialogue, discussion, and decision-making.
2. Paraphrasing
Using a paraphrase starter that is comfortable for you – “So…” or “As you are…” or “You’re thinking…” – and following the starter with an efficient paraphrase assists members of the group in hearing and understanding one another as they converse and make decisions.
3. Posing Questions
Two intentions of posing questions are to explore and to specify thinking. Questions may be posed to explore perceptions, assumptions, and interpretations, and to invite others to inquire into their thinking. For example, “What might be some conjectures you are exploring?” Use focusing questions such as, “Which students, specifically?” or “What might be an example of that?” to increase the clarity and precision of group members’ thinking. Inquire into others’ ideas before advocating one’s own.
4. Putting Ideas on the Table
Ideas are the heart of meaningful dialogue and discussion. Label the intention of your comments. For example: “Here is one idea…” or “One thought I have is…” or “Here is a possible approach…” or “Another consideration might be…”.
5. Providing Data
Providing data, both qualitative and quantitative, in a variety of forms supports group members in constructing shared understanding from their work. Data have no meaning beyond that which we make of them; shared meaning develops from collaboratively exploring, analyzing, and interpreting data.
6. Paying Attention to Self and Others
Meaningful dialogue and discussion are facilitated when each group member is conscious of self and of others, and is aware of what (s)he is saying and how it is said as well as how others are responding. This includes paying attention to learning styles when planning, facilitating, and participating in group meetings and conversations.
7. Presuming Positive Intentions
Assuming that others’ intentions are positive promotes and facilitates meaningful dialogue and discussion, and prevents unintentional put-downs. Using positive intentions in speech is one manifestation of this norm.
Additionally:
The collaborative norms of the group have more influence on the possibility of success than do the knowledge and talents of the group facilitator. Thus, our staff development energies must go to groups, not to designated leaders of groups. We have found three components to be helpful in groups that achieve high levels of skills in the challenging talk that is required in professional communities:
1.Overview. Provide groups with a rationale and information about two ways of talking (dialogue and discussion). Add details about the seven norms, the four capabilities of effective group members, the purposes of dialogue and discussion, and approaches to constructive conflict. This overview may create dissatisfaction with the current state of team and working-group performance and provide a glimpse of productive ways of working together.
2.Inventory. Inventorying members’ perceptions of how the group uses the norms reveals beliefs about current operating practices. Groups can select one or two norms to develop and can establish monitoring systems to improve their use of the map and tools. Inventories can be simple rating scales, ranking personal and collective use of each norm, or more detailed questionnaires that explore the subsets of each norm.
3.Monitor. Any group that is too busy to reflect on its work is too busy to improve. Every working group has many more tasks to do than time in which to do them and so is naturally reluctant to spend time monitoring and reflecting on its working processes. Many groups commit themselves to a task-process ratio to overcome this tendency; they budget a protected percentage of each meeting for examining how well the group is working and what it might do to improve.
The seven norms of collaboration are essential capacities and skills for high-performing groups. They operate within several practical frameworks that help groups to develop shared meaning and gracefully reach decisions.
1. Pausing
Pausing before responding or asking a question allows time for thinking and enhances dialogue, discussion, and decision-making.
2. Paraphrasing
Using a paraphrase starter that is comfortable for you – “So…” or “As you are…” or “You’re thinking…” – and following the starter with an efficient paraphrase assists members of the group in hearing and understanding one another as they converse and make decisions.
3. Posing Questions
Two intentions of posing questions are to explore and to specify thinking. Questions may be posed to explore perceptions, assumptions, and interpretations, and to invite others to inquire into their thinking. For example, “What might be some conjectures you are exploring?” Use focusing questions such as, “Which students, specifically?” or “What might be an example of that?” to increase the clarity and precision of group members’ thinking. Inquire into others’ ideas before advocating one’s own.
4. Putting Ideas on the Table
Ideas are the heart of meaningful dialogue and discussion. Label the intention of your comments. For example: “Here is one idea…” or “One thought I have is…” or “Here is a possible approach…” or “Another consideration might be…”.
5. Providing Data
Providing data, both qualitative and quantitative, in a variety of forms supports group members in constructing shared understanding from their work. Data have no meaning beyond that which we make of them; shared meaning develops from collaboratively exploring, analyzing, and interpreting data.
6. Paying Attention to Self and Others
Meaningful dialogue and discussion are facilitated when each group member is conscious of self and of others, and is aware of what (s)he is saying and how it is said as well as how others are responding. This includes paying attention to learning styles when planning, facilitating, and participating in group meetings and conversations.
7. Presuming Positive Intentions
Assuming that others’ intentions are positive promotes and facilitates meaningful dialogue and discussion, and prevents unintentional put-downs. Using positive intentions in speech is one manifestation of this norm.
Additionally:
The collaborative norms of the group have more influence on the possibility of success than do the knowledge and talents of the group facilitator. Thus, our staff development energies must go to groups, not to designated leaders of groups. We have found three components to be helpful in groups that achieve high levels of skills in the challenging talk that is required in professional communities:
1.Overview. Provide groups with a rationale and information about two ways of talking (dialogue and discussion). Add details about the seven norms, the four capabilities of effective group members, the purposes of dialogue and discussion, and approaches to constructive conflict. This overview may create dissatisfaction with the current state of team and working-group performance and provide a glimpse of productive ways of working together.
2.Inventory. Inventorying members’ perceptions of how the group uses the norms reveals beliefs about current operating practices. Groups can select one or two norms to develop and can establish monitoring systems to improve their use of the map and tools. Inventories can be simple rating scales, ranking personal and collective use of each norm, or more detailed questionnaires that explore the subsets of each norm.
3.Monitor. Any group that is too busy to reflect on its work is too busy to improve. Every working group has many more tasks to do than time in which to do them and so is naturally reluctant to spend time monitoring and reflecting on its working processes. Many groups commit themselves to a task-process ratio to overcome this tendency; they budget a protected percentage of each meeting for examining how well the group is working and what it might do to improve.
