Building better relationships with the personal maps game

During the summer, I participated in online “Future of work” organized by HR professionals from several organizations, covering the topic: “Maintaining employee engagement during the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Almost all HRM’s had prepared some presentation or case study from their organization, but I decide to present the “Personal maps” practice from Management 3.0, as tool suitable for the meetup topic and as proved practice for increasing employee engagement, even in difficult times as now.

I started my talk with the results from the recent Gallup’s survey, “US Employee Engagement”: where nearly two-thirds of the US workforce isn’t engaged at work. But that’s not all. Gallup reports that 16 percent of employees are actively disengaged at work and only 21 percent report feeling fully engaged. On the flip side, almost 60 percent of employees who are led by engaged leaders report being engaged and motivated at work.

This report shows the need for more emphasis on the “people skills” of the team members. I also stressed that there is some increase in the engagement due to the “work from home” model, but since the majority of participant on the webinar were from companies where remote working can be implemented only for small percentage of the workforce, I didn’t dive deeper on this topic.

Then I explain the “Circle of safety” concept from Simon Sinek and the importance of creating cohesive and synergic team from inside the organizations, to be ready to fight with the enemy from the outside world.

I dive deeper on the importance of building connections and better relationships in the teams if we want to build trusted and cohesive teams, which can resist all the challenges caused from Covid-19 and the other forces from the VUCA world we are facing in the recent years.

Finally, I briefly inform them about Management 3.0, it’s principles and agile mindset and how this mindset help us in challenging times.

Then I show them my personal map, explain the concept and the outcome they can expect if they practice it with their teams. I already prepare similar maps in the Miro board, with only few areas as: personal goals, values and beliefs, education, hobby and family.

While the participant started the “Personal maps” experience in Miro, I was observing their response and my findings from the exercise are as follow:

At the start, since only few of them successfully connect on Miro, they were a kind of stressed and uncomfortable, because they didn’t understand the exercise very well, so I was there to help them and support in the drawing. Some of the participants express that it was their first time to discuss personal things with people they meet for first time and it was the reason why they fell uncomfortable at the beginning of the exercise.

Then I decide to put them in pairs and by using the “buddy” effect create engagement in the exercise. I was all the time present to give them instruction about Miro and how to draw the map.

Eventually after 15 minutes, we had several personal maps and I ask the buddies to present their colleagues, not the person from the map. The reaction during presenting was OK and they start liking the exercise.

All participants start asking questions and they laugh on funny ideas about cooking, traveling… Even that the group was uncomforted at the beginning of the game, the final result was great. All participants liked the exercise, get to know each other and promise to test the game with their teams in future.

As facilitator, I find out the following:

1. I noticed, when they answered all the funny and curious questions about their personality, especially about their goals, values, hobbies, family and education, I say the correlation between connections and building trust, noted by Simon Sinek, something that wasn’t obvious at the beginning of the game.
2. The “circle of trust” between teammates started to rice the same moment when they discover new common interest, new touch points and new element that makes possible connection between them.
3. One more finding I discover in the exercise was love, joy, happiness, empathy and compassion participants share during the game.
4. And no matter what company they work in or what position they hold, they were very friendly and the prove that success depends on the ability to build human relationships.
5. At the center of relationship building was empathy — the ability to place them self in the colleagues’ shoes, to understand their point of view, goals and values or, more important, their feelings.

Building connections with others requires empathy, and empathizing requires that you show vulnerability and act with transparency. We say plenty of empathy in the game. It was huge discovery for me and the rest.

We all have doubts about our own capabilities, but when someone we trust encourages us to persist despite our fears and reservations, we can accomplish more than we originally thought was possible. It’s this level of care that makes some teams unstoppable and others just mediocre.

For the next occasion I will experiment and try to change:

1. The design of the maps in Miro in more team manner
2. Install some more personal things to share, as favorite food :)
3. Give them more time for doing the exercise
4. Ask them to connect throw their similarities
5. Make some arrangements for further connections, physical or virtual :)

And that’s exactly what Personal maps are all about — winning people over by connecting with their hearts.

You can find more about this amazing tool on the following link: https://management30.com/practice/personal-maps/

In line with this topic I’ll share one of my favorite quotes from President Abraham Lincoln: “In order to win a man to your cause, you must first reach his heart, the great high road to his reason.”

Take care and stay safe,

U.F.O.