Unlocking the power of diverse perspectives: 3 strategies to overcome roadblocks to open dialogue

As a team leader, you should empower your team to do their best work by sharing their unique abilities and perspectives. But knowing this and facilitating it are two different things entirely. Sure, you can promote synergy among your team, try to instill confidence, promote inclusive activities, and facilitate icebreakers galore, but how do you know you are actually getting your team’s best ideas? How do you know they’re getting the context and creative exploration they need to come up with good ideas, and better yet, how do you know they’re sharing the ideas they have? 

The answer can’t be found in a checklist, and it can’t even be found in annual evaluations or performance reviews. It takes a truly special leader to empower their team to do their best by making contributions only they can make. Yes, it can be hard—and it may feel overwhelming when you're working with remote teams and different personalities. But we can help.

Lucidspark is a visual collaboration application that offers countless opportunities to promote (and facilitate) your team sharing their perspectives and skills, so they can truly do their best work.

In this article, we’ll explore ways to mitigate the difficulties of perspective-sharing using Lucidspark.

Roadblock #1 to sharing different perspectives: Different collaboration styles

Research shows that most people feel burned out from having to collaborate the same way, when everyone (even those with similar skill sets) actually collaborates differently. To find success, today’s businesses must be able to harness the diversity of their team members to better allocate resources, employ skills, and understand different opinions and viewpoints. They must embrace a variety of collaboration styles and apply them to processes and solutions in order to empower their team members to do their best work. 

Through extensive research, we have identified three distinctive collaboration styles: expressive collaborators, who like visual collaboration and teamwork, relational collaborators, who are primarily motivated by human connection, and introspective collaborators, who prefer a more thoughtful, deliberate approach to collaboration.

In order to bridge the gaps between the different collaboration styles on your team, you’ll need to deliberately discover the differences between team members and facilitate well-rounded opportunities that speak to a maximum number of styles, or you definitely won’t get your team’s best. To read more about each style and discover ideas that work with each, check out our toolkit.

Lucidspark is inherently malleable enough to fit any mix of styles. Need a messy, infinite canvas to brain dump? We’ve got you covered. Looking for a hub or home base for your activities and daily standups? Look no further. What about a place to host highly structured collaborative sessions that generate high-quality ideas? Yup, we can do that too.

Roadblock #2 to sharing different perspectives: Providing the required context 

We’ve all experienced it. You’re sitting in a meeting and a question pops up in your head that you feel is important. But just as quickly as you come up with the idea, you stifle it, fearing the answer may be obvious and you just don’t understand the topic enough—asking could make you look like a less-informed or less-skilled team member. Certainly, if it’s a good question as you think, someone else would ask, it, right? But they don’t. So you say nothing. Or maybe an idea or opinion pops up that you think could be valuable, but you’re worried others won’t agree. So again, you say nothing.

The unfortunate truth in these scenarios is that likely, others are internally experiencing the exact same thing. Valuable questions or insights that could inspire countless ideas are far too often squandered out of fear of embarrassment. 

Reinforcing the “no stupid questions” platitude is always a good idea, but that in and of itself won’t promote the most valuable perspective-sharing from your team. The real truth is that context is vital to this type of empowerment.

Lucidspark is perfect for gaining context quickly. Lucidspark can help you keep track of important project details, create visual project timelines, streamline processes, manage workflows, and collaborate on projects. Share Lucidspark boards to get a new team member up to speed with just a few clicks, or quickly discover what you missed after vacation so that you don't miss a beat. With hundreds of templates for every use case, creating living documentation for your team that’s effortless to maintain and keeps everyone on the same page is attainable and uncomplicated. Empower your team with the needed information to confidently share and provide feedback.

Roadblock #3 to sharing different perspectives: Facilitating a comfortable environment

In-person collaboration can be difficult enough, but asynchronous workplaces require a whole other level of dedication. When you’re working in a hybrid space, you don’t experience the casual day-to-day conversations that organically build rapport required for teams to feel comfortable with each other. It is simply harder to get to know each other and build trust. And while it’s likely you have a few people you likely work with often, it’s unlikely you know everyone on your team equally since you’re not sharing break rooms or engaging in conversation at the water cooler. 

The good news? It’s fully possible to foster powerful workplace relationships—and even friendships—in an era of hybrid work. It may take a little extra dedication and intention to build team morale, but it’s totally doable. 

Visual collaboration platforms like Lucidspark cultivate experiences that mirror in-person interactions through a variety of templates and activities optimized for real-time collaboration, just like if you were physically together in a boardroom. 

Make a habit of (virtually) working together often and sharing opinions so you feel you know each other. Encourage regular team activities to get to know each other and bond as a team.  The Lucidspark template gallery has  a whole section of team-building activities that you can start with (here are a few of our favorites). From tournaments to sticky note races and beyond, it’s not hard to get to know each other when you’re committed to doing so. 

No matter how you approach it, Lucidspark will help you ensure you’re getting your team’s best. Use the infinite canvas to provide context to your team in a way that resonates with them and their collaboration style, facilitating opportunities for team-building along the way. Lucidspark empowers teams with the best tools and resources available so they can confidently do their best work.