078 - Building sustainable collaboration skills with Alice Meredith

Culture strategist Alice Meredith discusses how to build a culture of collaboration on your technology team, including being vulnerable and transparent as a leader, setting aside time for structured brainstorming where everyone has a voice, and meeting each member of the team where they are at.

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Seth Merrill:

Welcome to All Hands on Tech, a podcast, featuring the best voices in technology and leadership. I'm Seth Merrill. Today, we are bringing you the audio from a recent talk by Alice Meredith on building a culture of collaboration. As a culture strategist, senior HR professional, and change management leader, Alice Meredith has been leading and supporting high performing teams for over 30 years. Alice has pioneered multiple innovative concepts and techniques that support and enhance leadership effectiveness.

She is a veteran facilitator, speaker, and content creator, and has published over a dozen PluralSight leadership courses based on her own experiences working inside Fortune 100 companies. Alice is passionate and committed to the work she does, helping leaders build diverse and inclusive environments where all individuals and groups are free from prejudice. Environments where no one culture, race, belief system, age, or gender is superior to another.

Alice Meredith:

Thank you for introducing me. So, as a culture strategist any and all leadership concepts that have to do with strengthening the cultures where we and our team's work is what I'm all about. Today, we'll be learning leadership concepts or I like to refer to them as nuggets of leadership learning. Nuggets to help both leaders and individual contributors establish cultures of collaboration. That is a big word. I hope I don't stumble over that throughout our time today. Let's first cover what we'll learn.

We are going to be talking about what collaboration is, why it's crucial to embrace and engage in it, and the when. When is it most needed? After that, we'll get into the meat of our learnings as I deep dive the how. How to become a leader that cultivates, encourages, and invites collaboration into their work environment. Then, how to best guide our teams to become better collaborators. Last but not least, we will talk about some roadblocks that pop up in our journey and a few best practices on how to overcome them.

Yes, we have a lot of material to cover, and yes, we will be flying high. I'll just be sharing a nugget or two of learning in each category due to the time allotted today. So, first is the what. Collaboration, as we all know, is a process through which a group of people, two or more, keep that in mind, two or more, constructively explore ideas to search for solution that extends one's own limited vision. Collaboration occurs when we bring a team together or individual people from other teams to focus their efforts on a common goal.

In a nutshell, collaboration is inviting insights and ideas to create synergy. So, synergy is an old school corporate buzzword. Synergy is when the whole is greater than the simple sum of its parts, or in other words, when two or more individuals, teams, come together and combine, they create an outcome that is greater than the sum of other individual and separate talents. Basically, synergy is one plus one equals three, and that's the purpose of collaboration. Our last, but most important learning to remember about what collaboration is is that it is not a one time event, nor is it easy to implement without practice.

But the good news is that collaboration is a process that continues to get better over time. The more we invite our teams to collaborate, the more remarkable their working relationships become. Now, let's lean into the why. With companies where we work, having to stay relevant in this competitive and always changing global landscape, businesses are having to move at a faster pace than ever before. Collaboration leads to innovative solutions and results that businesses need to succeed. The good news is that teams who collaborate effectively take pride in and thrive on the entire team's success and each other's success.

It's more important now than ever to build cultures of collaboration. I am so excited that PluralSight chose this topic due to the crucial nature of it being needed at this time. I love this quote and it sums up the what and why of collaboration. You as a leader are not a reservoir of limited resources. You're a conduit where diverse perspectives and ideas from your team can flow to help make sustainable change in your culture and in your business. So, when, let's pop over to the when, when is it best to engage in collaboration?

My TPOV or teachable point of view on this question is always, we all can recognize that as an individual contributor or a single leader or a department cannot single handedly achieve success without the help of others, without collaborating with others. So, let's break my always down to be a bit more realistic. Collaboration, it's needed when a team needs to ideate on processes, culture, performance, or business rhythms. Basically, when the how you do what you do gets stagnant and not as effective as maybe it once was.

If your team is questioning, if your how is really the right how, it's time to collaborate. Put heads together. Ideate on what change is needed to help you and your team best accomplish the results you are responsible to achieve. Collaboration is needed when we need to ideate on services and products we produce or create for our clients, or when we need to create that buzz worthy marketing campaign. So, that was a quick review of the what, why, and when, but now we're going to transition to the meat of our learnings. This is the how. How do we build a sustainable, resilient culture of collaboration?

Of course, of course, we can gather teams together and hold ideating meetings, town halls and round tables to gather diverse perspectives. Prior to launching that on my own, I spent five years just doing that, spending time with teams all across the United States, facilitating and gathering insights to help leaders identify gaps in their struggling cultures. So, yes, event-based collaboration, it's a thing. But if conditions that supports safe and trusted collaboration are instilled first within your culture, all of those collaboration efforts won't thrive.

You'll miss out on your collaborating growing organically and becoming a part of your everyday culture. So, let's continue on with the how. Good team collaboration relies on open and truthful communication. We know this, we get this, we open ourselves up to those we're close to, to who we trust, to who we feel have our back. But for this to happen, a culture of trust must exist between the leader and each employee and between the employees themselves.

As leaders, it's our responsibility, now employees have a part to play as always, but leaders own that responsibility to create a psychologically safe work environment, so all team members feel safe from judgment. Collaborative cultures that are built on a foundation of trust allows the team to contribute their ideas more freely. So, Dr. Carol [Gorman 00:08:00], she is well known for her research and insights on collaboration. She boldly shares that collaboration is a leadership issue. It requires a change in attitudes and behaviors of leaders and employees throughout the organization.

My work experience as a culture strategist shows that this rings true to me. It all starts with leaders, so much weighs on our shoulders, right? Or, for those individual contributors who are working hard to be a leader, who are working to influence change from their role to support the company's mission. There's a lot of weight on our shoulders. So, this next diagram continues from Dr. Gorman's teachings. It shows that establishing a culture of collaboration takes effort, like I just said. Both from the leader, and effort from the team, and it is founded on trusted relationships.

That's the key to building a sustainable and resilient culture of collaboration, is those trusted relationships. So, as we move forward, I'll be referencing these trusted relationships a culture of trust. So, let's dig deeper into the how by breaking down this diagram. We're going to start first through the leader's lens. Leaders, man, we play a substantial part in creating a culture of trust. We do this by becoming what is referenced a trusted leader. Trusted leaders lead out with these three essential leadership skills. They're influenceable, right?

They're transparent or genuine, right? It's another good word here, and they show vulnerability. Let's unpack or double click on each of these. I plugged two buzzwords to that one sentence. I think I've learned you either like the new corporate buzzwords or they get out of your skin. Double click, I hear often in the tech environments that my husband exists in, and unpack, I hear in the leadership world. Crazy fun words, for some. That was a spur of moment for me. Let's dig deeper. There we go, in each of these three essential leadership traits.

First, trusted leaders are influenceable. We can ideate and collaborate till the cows come home. That one age me. We can ideate and collaborate all day long. But if we ourselves, as a leader of the team, or if the executive leaders aren't open to being influenced, we all know it shuts down the sharing of ideas, no matter how creative we get. It's setting up collaborating events. So, I've been coaching leaders for years to leave the shallow waters. My teams often heard me nagging them to stop hanging out in the shallow end. Okay. I know this isn't swim school.

So, let me explain what I mean by this. To become more influenceable, we must foster deeper work relationships with those on our team. I know, I just said it, build deeper relationships at work. It's the thing, it's the right thing. It's what we do now, and it's okay. But to do that, we must first leave the shallow waters, right? Shallow waters are when we've conducted with our employees or our peer group on that shallow level. It might mean, this is where we're connected to the point, we know their favorite sports team. They're married, not married.

How many kids, their favorite vacation, maybe even their five-year career goal of each employee really. Nothing is wrong with shallow waters. They are a great place to start when building connections with those we work with. It's a safe place. A feeling of comfort exists when we hang out in the shallow end. But trusted relationships, trusted working relationships flourish in the deeper waters. These deeper waters create deeper connections. Connections that forge and sustain our ability as leaders to become more influenceable.

Or, our ability as a peer to become more influenceable, most especially through collaboration, through the collaboration process. Trust from our team grows when we push past the shallow waters of casualness and learn more about each employee. This is where we discover what their worries are, their fears, what motivates them, what's most important to them. What are they most proud of and why. Now, the deeper waters is where we too as leaders open up and allow our team to get to know us just a bit better or a lot better. This ranks true too, right?

Some of us just share everything and some of us are a little more reserved, right? Maybe we feel there's a barrier between that leader and the employee, and how far do I go, how much do I share? But the more we share, the more we find connections, where our teams can see, "They're just like me. They have teenagers that are spending their lives, or they too went to the same college, had some of these same experiences. They're struggling with this event in their personal life." Or, we as leaders, we have our own fears and worries about work.

This is where we go deep and we open ourselves up and connect and forge deeper relationships in these deeper waters. Relationships are critical to the outcome of any collaborative effort, which is why we're touching on that first from the leadership end. Collaboration is dependent upon well developed work relationships among participants. We all know, today's most successful leaders guide their organizations and their teams, not through command and control, but by guiding their teams with a shared purpose and vision. 

But to do this successfully, that relationship of trust between leader and the employee's imperative. So, some leaders, tenured leaders, as I already looked it up, hesitate with this concept of hanging out in the deep end, but times have changed. In today's world, it's okay and recommended to build deeper work relationships with those we lead. We can't influence other or be open to influence ourselves if we lead from the office or if we lead from a position on a org chart, high above our team, right? Our teams need to get to know us and we them. To trust, they need to trust that we are influenceable.

To trust that we've got their back, that we care about their opinions, their perspectives, their ideas. So, one word of caution, I just have to call this out. The key here is consistency. Most especially, I'm talking to leaders, we need to leave the shallow waters and go a bit deeper with every employee. Not just the ones we might naturally gravitate to outside of work due to our similar likes or personalities. This happens. It happens. We make connections with select people on our team, and these people are more like us. We can talk to them. We can feel comfortable. We talk about the game.

We talk about our kids. We talk about type of diapers. We buy for our kids. They're in the same world we are, and there's an underlying connection there. So, we gravitate that way. But as leaders, caution, caution, caution, as a culture strategist, majority of my time is spent helping leaders with struggling cultures. The common ingredient found in broken cultures is favoritism, and favoritism stems from inconsistency of the leaders leading the team. If you've left the shallow waters with some on your team but not all, odds are you might be dealing with a culture with some distress and favoritism in it.

So, consistency, consistency, consistency is a necessary ingredient in all aspects of leadership. Let's continue on and look next at how transparency plays a role in building cultures of trust. If you ask your employees, which leadership scale they desire the most in their leader, I'm going to bet that transparency or being genuine will most likely be near the top of their list. We want that in our leader. We want real clear direct communication, and we want to know that they're always being genuine with us.

So, in research compiled by American Psychological Association, it shows that 64% of employed adults, they feel the organization treats them fairly, 64%. That's higher than 50, but one in three. So, 33% report that their employer, the organization is not always honest and truthful with them, and 40% of employees don't believe their direct leader is open and upfront with them. So, think of your team. This is just a survey, it represents, I'm not saying it speaks exactly to your teams, but it's a good gauge to go by. What if you looked at your team and thought, "Man, almost 50% of them may feel that I'm not open, upfront, and transparent with them."

These numbers represent roadblocks. These are some of the roadblocks that we come against in building a sustainable culture of collaboration. Transparency is key to building trust with our teams, trust that will foster environments of sustainable collaboration. Transparent leaders work hard to practice what they preach. Leading in today's environment puts us in places where our employees see and evaluate. We know they do, right? They're talking about us all the time. How we show up. It's essential that we lead our teams with integrity. Transparency in leadership means keeping your employees in the loop.

There should be no unpleasant surprises, no concerns around uncertainty, and no wishy washy behavior that may weaken a leader's reputation. Transparent leaders set crystal clear expectations and they communicate effectively with every member on their team. They are open with their employees, even if they feel vulnerable as a result. That's the hard spot. Vulnerability is also a buzzword we're hearing everywhere in our environment. Brené Brown introduced it with all of her books on leadership. It's huge. It's big, and I am so happy it has been called out in the leadership world.

Now, being transparent, over the years, isn't always easy because you don't know, what do I share? What do I not share? What's important to my team? What's not important to my team? During my leadership journey, one thing though ran right and true each time, I found myself not being transparent. In the words of horoscope, something always came up and bit me in the buttocks, in one way or another. Whenever I felt at being transparent, it always circled back in a negative way. I am always coaching leaders to walk there, walk, let your team and others in your circle of influence see you.

Show confidence by rocking who you are, being true to you. Don't try to mimic someone else's communication style or behaviors. Don't act in a way you think others or your team might want you to. As leaders, we need to show confidence in ourselves and in our abilities. Now, to truly own you and walk your walk, we have to embrace vulnerability. There's that word again. This is where two of our three key skills work, vulnerability requires us to fully own and take personal accountability for our actions and our choices. The good and the bad.

We have all had, I hope I'm not the only one, so I'm just bringing everyone else in the audience along on the journey with me, we've all had those moments where we we've had the thought, "Did I really just say that?" Or, "Why in the world did I send that email? When will I ever think before I speak?" We've all given or will give direction that wasn't clearly thought through, and we have or will respond emotionally when we shouldn't. These are common and natural blunders every human makes. Blunders every leader makes, blunders every individual at work makes, and it's okay.

The key is to recognize the mistake, show vulnerability to your team, ask them for grace. As you're learning, I'm learning every day and growing in my role, we're not the same leader as we were 20 years ago, 10 years ago, five years ago, heck pre-pandemic, right? We've all pivot and have to adjust and grow and learn. We have a brand new workforce, a different workforce. It has been changing and evolving so quick and fast. We have to adapt to our leadership styles. As we do that, we're going to be making mistakes. We're going to have to get out of our comfort zone, and when we do that, mistakes happen and which is why we fear that.

We fear getting out of our comfort zone, but it's okay. We've all been there. We will be there again. Leaders are always learning no matter matter how tenured we are in our role. Vulnerability, this is where it comes into play, is asking for grace, correcting mistake. The big piece I think that many of us struggle with is giving grace to ourselves, saying it's okay and then move forward and not let it weigh us down. Well, I'm too heavy on this, right? Now, for some leaders this process is easy peasy. For others, it can be quite challenging. A lot of it is based on our personality style.

I had a big conversation with one of my adult sons just last night challenging him to own up, to take responsibility for an action he made that hurt a relationship. It was such a struggle for him to see the other side. I coached him through how he could show up, words he can say, it's tough. It's tough for some. For me, as I, in the work environment, started embracing vulnerability, talking to my team about mistakes I made and became more transparent and genuine, it got easier over time. I still remember the first conversation that when I sat down, I was talking to a district manager who reported to me.

I had made a poor judgment call and it really impacted her and her family. I hadn't looked at the whole situation. I didn't understand all the dynamics that were behind the decision I made, but as I talked to that situation with her after the fact and apologized for not really getting all the facts before I made a quick decision, it was tough. I still remember that uncomfortable feeling, but our relationship changed on a dime. It was such a life learning experience for me of the vulnerability piece. When we pull down all of those barriers, sometimes we put on our, we surround ourselves with as leaders, it flips that relationship.

We open ourselves up, we're all human. We all make mistakes. As we embrace those mistakes, own up for them and ask for grace, relationships change. Now, another place, leaders can lean in with vulnerability to become a more trusted leader is in our listening skills. So, hang with me. I may sound a little bit odd, but let's explore this real fast. A very common opportunity for most all leaders is to become better listeners. I followed the same path after so many years of leading others and coming up against the same concerns or same situations. I, like many other leaders, felt I had the answers.

Then, there again, I've already dealt with this before with another employees. So, I would catch myself truly not listen to the conversation in the way I should. My thoughts would wander to another topic or another work situation I was dealing with, or I find myself preparing my thoughts as to how I would respond, right? Rather than truly listening. Now, to break my bad habits, I had to be intentional. I did some on purpose work to ensure I showed up with the mindset to listen to learn. Let me deep dive in this.

Showing up with vulnerability means that you approach each conversation recognizing that your point of view, your game plan, your strategy may be wrong or off course, or just missing something. When we approach each conversation with this mindset, we show up more intentional about really seeking to learn from others' opinions. You'll find yourself approaching each conversation with curiosity, asking questions, and genuinely seeking for a new point of view, a new perspective, or a new idea that you hadn't considered before.

If you too struggle with maybe interrupting others during a conversation or staying focused with what is being shared, try taking notes, ask the person in advance, "Hey, I'd like to take notes. It helps my memory or helps me keep focused." Inviting vulnerability into our conversations dials up our listening skills, which in turn helps us become more of that trusted leader. So, wrapping up, the leadership segment of our diagram, the stars align as we connect these three leadership sweet skills. We start to see cultures of trust flourish.

Cultures of trust between leader and employee, between employee and employee is the foundation we need to launch our sustainable cultures of collaboration. We have explored nuggets of learning from the leader's lens. Now, let's reference our diagram and explore what we need from our teams to help build cultures of collaboration. Of course, leaders, we're heavily engaged in this work, right? We guide and lead and coach our teams through their responsibilities. But, of course, the first one is effective communication.

Certainly, a must have for successful collaboration, the team collaborating will need to be able to express themselves to each other. The problem we all know is that people communicate differently. So, we're going to touch on a few roadblocks, common communication roadblocks that occur during collaboration sessions. Okay, let's tackle the over talkers first. Yup, it's a thing. We all know it's a thing, and some of us have been that person at one time or another. We all recognize that effective communication requires a substantial level of self-awareness, but not everyone on the team has the self-awareness needed.

This is why over talkers seem to dominate conversations. They fail to notice that they might be the one keeping others from feeling their opinions matter or their voices heard. While it might be easier to just let the situation continue, it is a leader's role to privately coach the team member and encourage them to watch the room and assure everyone has an opportunity to share their point of view. My youngest child was that kid in his elementary classroom, where before the teacher had the question even asked he had his hand raised and literally jumping out of his chair to answer.

Many times having no idea what he was going to say as a question hadn't been asked yet. So, along with the teacher during a parent student session, we had to be very specific and clear that he couldn't not raise his hand a second time during the entire school day, until every other kid had an opportunity to speak. It was seriously the hardest thing for him to do. His personality is such that he wants to be heard. So many times the over talkers just need someone to call out to them. Help them see how their voice dominates the room.

Most have positive intention. They just lack the self-awareness to notice. Our second common communication gap we come across in collaborating sessions is that they are always one or two or more who aren't great communicators. You know they have great value and perspectives to add. If you come across this situation and you're having trouble making sense of their idea or point of view, we need to slow down, ask questions and make the attempt to try to understand them. If need, then a private conversation afterwards can be had.

But be careful not to discount or allow someone else to discount someone's idea simply because they have trouble articulating them. The last roadblock that is common and relevant in today's world is engaging the remote attendees. Hosting a meeting or a collaborating session over Zoom has certainly changed the dynamics of how we do what we do. So, to ensure everyone has an opportunity to share their insights, you might need to introduce a formal process. So, brainstorm with me a minute. I was thinking of this last night. How about a symbolic talking stick?

We've all heard of a talking stick, used in therapy, or even referenced in many movies. As the stick or some object moves around the room, everyone knows that that's the person's time to share. For remote attendees, the leader could lob or toss an imaginary ball around the team. The leader might say, "John, I'm throwing it in your direction." This calls out to John that it's his turn to share. Then, after sharing, John will choose who to send the imaginary ball to next. The ball gets tossed between attendees until everyone has it.

This symbolically lets everyone know that everyone is expected to share without formally calling someone out. Our second trait needed from the collaborating team is open-mindedness, a critical aspect of collaboration is being open to and accepting new ideas. Often, collaborating sessions will include people from different departments. Because of this, each will come with a different expertise and perspective. For some, the idea to share will be unfamiliar and possibly difficult to understand. A common roadblock that comes with so many diverse perspectives when merging people from different departments is that the team conversation might stagnate or it will break into silos as often they just don't know how best to proceed.

So, one solution to this if this occurs for you is to assign a leader who has a natural sense of curiosity. They thrive in this kind of an environment. Another way to encourage acceptance to new ideas with attendees from different departments is to set up parameters on what will be discussed. For example, the guidelines, when we all come together we build up, what are the guidelines? What do we want to have as our boundaries for our time together? But make it clear that all ideas are on the table before any one idea can be turned down. This allows equal opportunity for all ideas to be heard.

Now, over formalizing a collaboration process can also curb innovation. So, there's little sweet spots there, a little balance, you got to read the room, you got to figure out what's going to work and what's not going to work, but we all know open mindedness and curiosity go hand in hand. So, to build the collaborative cultures we desire, leaders will need to find ways to encourage both in their team members. The third key team trait needed for successful collaboration is adaptability. Collaborative projects often don't go as planned. Priorities change up, barriers outside of the team's control delay progress, and many other problems occur.

Now, to persevere through all the barriers that will come up, the team will need to be able to adapt at a moment's notice. Now, adaptability is one of those crucial collaboration skills, but it's one of those that are real difficult to teach. Adapting well to change comes with practice and experience. I've authored and facilitated a PluralSight course titled embracing change for the individual contributor that gives just a few little key nuggets that helps us become more adaptable. Key skill needed in collaboration. But the best advice here that I can give is to lead by example.

As a leader, your key role is to stay calm and focused on the next steps. Keep the team from going to the freak out stage and transition them quickly to ideating a solution to the problem. As a leader, be the one to always keep your cool. Our last key team trait we'll review is the importance of encouraging innovative thinking. Creating a space for innovation fosters a culture of collaboration. We all know that we are all trying to make that happen, but for some team members, we need to keep in mind that brainstorming sessions can be unnerving, especially if it sprung on them without warning.

Now, a good workaround for this is to give your team time to prepare their thoughts in advance. Not all of us can come up with ideas off the cuff. I'm one of the ones I'll be lying in bed the night after the brainstorming session and think, "Dang, girl, I should have shared this idea." So, to ensure all on the team have adequate time to come up with innovative ideas, keep your team informed and aware of the intent of the collaborating session. This way, all will feel more empowered to contribute on an even playing field. While there are many areas teams can show up to support a positive culture of collaboration, these four help get your team moving in the right direction.

They're a good place to start. One last essential reminder to look up is that conflict can and will rare its ugly head in collaborating sessions. Conflict happens in every company, organization, and family unit in our nation, within our social networks, political arena, sports teams, classrooms, clubs, wherever people with different backgrounds, priorities, and beliefs come together conflict exists. When it presents itself during collaborating sessions, leaders need to help manage the team through that process.

For those interested, I've authored two courses on this topic, understanding workplace conflict and managing workplace conflict, with some additional nuggets that help correlate the work you do with managing and building a culture of collaboration. So far, in our journey today, we've covered nuggets of learning on the what, why, when, and how, how from the leader's lens and a few nuggets of how from the team's responsibility, where I'm going to transition to the where. I'm going to talk real fast through this because this is pretty basic. I think we all get this point. I just want to make sure it gets covered.

So, business meetings for sure, right? Virtually and in person, kick each one off with group breakouts, use the virtual breakout groups. Yes, they're a thing, and they work. Don't give up on them. Give each group a problem or obstacle the company or team faces and have them spend 10 minutes just brainstorming, a solve may come up or might not. But the fact is that the conversations start to flow. Stop building towers out of spaghetti noodles and marshmallows, and use that same energy and team building opportunity to find real life business solves. It can be just as fun, I promise.

Create insight gathering events. We've already talked about it, round tables, town halls, no matter the name you use, the key point is to bring the teams together. If you're an executive leader and you travel to visit different teams you support, don't miss opportunity to pull a small team together and just chat. Chat about the good, bad, and ugly of the work experience. Create opportunities to always be learning from your team, both your direct and indirect reports. So, I'm going to put on my HR hat here and lift up how important it is to invite collaboration into performance reviews and one-on-one.

I know, I know some of you might be saying that, but remember how we define collaboration. It's a process which a group of two or more people constructively explore ideas. If you feel your performance reviews, your one-on-ones, your check-ins are all one sided, just take it up a notch. Invite collaboration and problem solving conversation. Then, as things open up again, business retreats and sales conferences, I've been to so many offsite retreats where we are celebrating the top performers on the team. We engage in activities like deep sea fishing and lū'aus, all that fun stuff.

The companies used, well used to, hopefully will again, hold together to reward and celebrate their team at these events. We have the best of the best right there, pull them together, have a collaborating session. Problem solve. Have the team ideate on ways leaders of the company can help others on the team become top performers as well. Now, here's the kicker, as companies and leaders engage in and prioritize time for planned collaboration, and they make it a part of their regular business rhythms, team collaboration will organically morph.

This is where the culture starts to just shake up and become a culture of collaboration. Lunch conversations between peers start to happen. Let's see, employees will start engaging and ideating while carpooling and ride share vans, or in text, Slacks, IM venues. This is the organic process of collaboration that helps us sustain the culture. Leaders are working on building trusted relationships with their teams. Team members have been trained and are being guided to becoming more effective communicators, innovating, becoming more adaptable. The stage is set. As we put these nuggets into play, the foundation is ready to support and sustain resilient cultures of collaboration.

Seth Merrill:

That's all the time we have for today. Listen to previous and future episodes of All Hands on Tech, please visit pluralsight.com/podcast.