Collaborative Thinking: 4 supporting team roles
Stumble It!In his unique book Dialogue and the art of thinking together William Issacs introduces the Four-Player System originally developed by David Kantor. This is a very important technique for supporting real collaborative thinking in teams.
In any productive group thinking dialogue all four of the following roles should be in play:
- Mover
Without Movers there is no direction - Opposer
Without Opposers there is no correction - Follower
Without Followers there is no completion - Bystander
Without Bystanders there is no perspective
The roles do not all need to be in play at the same time but need to have been played before the thinking concludes
This also fits very well with the idea of a personal ecosystem of thinking partners (Kitchen Cabinet, Advisors and Agents) as exemplified by Jim Henson of the Muppets fame and described in How is your personal ecosystem of relationships
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Bioteams Books Reviews
Animal Instincts in the office
Just because we might have selfish genes it does not mean we have to behave selfishly; nature knows when to be nice as well as nasty and nepotism occurs in the biological world too with equal destructiveness as our world. This is according to Richard Conniff author of The Ape in the Corner Office and reviewed in the UK Guardian Newspaper (27 May).
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