Supercharging Collaboration: Working together whilst being apart

A Magic Circle law firm took part in our Mastering Collaboration programme. Find out how they overcame their challenges and the impact the programme has had on team dynamics.

The Challenges

During the COVID 19 pandemic we noticed that our teams started to work more in silos than ever before. Whereas before global lockdowns were introduced people were working in person in the same place and could build strong collaborative relationships learning, observing, and communicating with each other with ease.
Therefore, we were looking to find a solution that would encourage and enable people to work together whilst being apart and give them a strong framework to supercharge collaboration by strengthening online and in-person relationships.

You cannot tell people to collaborate, but
what you can
do is create the
conditions to
enable collaboration to
happen

The Solution

There didn't seem to be any off the shelf solutions that would solve the problem for a law firm like ours. So we decided to approach New Wave Learning as they are one of our preferred suppliers and we love their innovative approach to blended learning, which was ideal considering the times we were going through.

Working collaboratively we co-designed a bespoke solution called ‘Mastering Collaboration’ creating a 2 week blended learning journey focusing on 4 main areas: Safety, Trust, Autonomy and Resilience.

The Impact

100% of the participants surveyed agreed that they fully understood how to practically apply all of the elements of STAR in order to collaborate. 100% of participants feel confident to create more collaboration with their teams. We have seen many participants reference the BRAVING framework in order to build trust within their teams and will therefore be monitoring this moving forward.

Firstly I think we needed something that colleagues could lock into. When you think about great collaborative teams working in harmony together, they just seem to work! There is no real particular formula. What ‘Mastering Collaboration' has done is to enable people to understand the conditions needed and what to focus on in terms of creating a collaborative environment.

The reality of collaboration is in fact this. You cannot tell people to collaborate, but what you can do is create the conditions to enable collaboration to happen and the programme has exceeded expectations with how to do this.