The client I was working with was searching for ways to deal with his different teams.

One of the teams was responsible for the support the organization was providing their customers with, another team was responsible for product development, and yet another team was responsible for selling their product.

Bringing these teams together meant having them discuss their plans and objectives together. However, oftentimes, conflicts appeared and regularly became personal. In these meetings, the leader noticed how those involved focused mainly on their own teams. The people involved didn’t seem to understand one another. Their perception of the situation was different, and their objectives seemed incompatible.

What they were lacking was a common frame of reference they could use to discuss their respective evaluations.

It is typical that different teams perceive customers from a different point of view. They serve them differently. They, for example, see the service they seek to provide based on their respective professions. Their professional training teaches them objectives as well as risk assessments. And while teams often understand how different objectives can be, what they rarely see is how different their perception of risk will be. And as they seek to move forward, be positive, and share objectives, they leave risks aside. They either don’t make themselves aware of the risks involved or decide that it is better to leave them aside so to avoid negative feelings.

What they don’t realize is how their risk assessment impacts their objectives and how they plan to achieve these objectives.

The leader needed to develop a shared context to help his teams. He could use the objectives set for the organization, but he needed to add ways to establish a broader understanding of risks. There are different ways to do so, but they depend on the chosen leadership style. In this case, the leader changed his original approach to decide on his own. Depending on the situation he started to either delegate to those closest to the risk or to seek a shared understanding of the decisions to be made.