Breaking Down Silos: Transforming Workplaces with Peer-to-Peer Connections

What if breaking down organizational silos could be as simple as sharing a 20-minute conversation? Discover how the innovative technique of rotating peer-to-peer meetings is transforming workplaces by fostering meaningful connections across departmental lines. You'll hear firsthand how employees from different backgrounds and roles discovered shared passions, like beach volleyball and gardening, that transformed their work relationships and shattered preconceived notions. This episode promises to equip you with practical strategies to enhance team collaboration and shift from a "me versus we" mindset to a unified, cohesive team environment.

Join us as we recount the touching story of two colleagues in credit and finance who, despite their age and gender differences, found common ground and built a stronger working relationship. By encouraging personal interactions and creating a schedule for regular discussions, companies can break down barriers and enhance productivity. Whether you're a manager, team leader, or simply looking to improve workplace dynamics, this episode offers valuable insights and actionable advice to create a more connected and harmonious work culture.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:37

Coaching team collaboration across departmental lines. We often hear the term silos Silos where we're siloed from each other. We tend to protect our own. We tend to have disagreements with other departments because they don't understand and we tend to take a position of me versus we. Now, often what companies do is they tactically try to address the problem and they say well, we need to collaborate, we need to work together, we're all one team. Great in theory, hard in practice. So when you are coaching across teams, one of the best things that you can do is establish relationships.

Speaker 1: 1:14

There's a concept that we utilize when we work with clients in this situation, called rotating peer-to-peer conversations. Here's the amazing thing. You have to sit down, whether in person or virtually, preferably in person 20 minutes. You create a schedule. You do it with two, three, four, five, 10 departments, how many you want. Create a master schedule where everybody meets somebody over maybe a 10-week period of time and you just share. You become aware of each other.

Speaker 1: 1:41

Tell me a little bit about yourself. Oh, how long have you been at the company? What do you find yourself doing outside of work? We give people literally questions so they can maintain a conversation. Here's the cool thing, and it happens every single time.

Speaker 1: 1:55

Oh, I didn't know you were from that area. What high school did you go? Oh, I didn't know, you loved beach volleyball. And I think one of the greatest stories I can remember is two people credit and finance at a manufacturing company. They sat within 10 feet of each other cubicles and they would only email or call each other. They never talked to each other.

Speaker 1: 2:18

And there was a woman about 57, 58, young guy about 27, 28,. Really tall, really into beach volleyball and he said oh, what do you find yourself doing in the weekend? She goes oh, I'm in a league for volleyball, I just love volleyball. I've gotten so much better. And this young guy later said I had made so many assumptions like age, she's a woman, I'm a young guy, we have nothing in common. And then I shared with her that I loved gardening. And then she goes. You know, I would never have assumed a young man would love gardening. He goes I love it, it relaxes me. See, when we become aware of each other and then ultimately, through awareness, we find some commonality, then guess what happens? The work becomes a little bit easier to work through together. Yet if our only relationship element is the work itself, the relationship will feel like work.