Our clients sometimes report of a common phenomenon: a certain team meeting ends with apparent agreement and buy-in on how to move a project forward. Yet, in the aftermath, actions show that opinions differ to various degrees on actual implementation steps. Surprise lusually eads to the identification of team members who must have ‘misunderstood’. We look with empathy on such depictions, as we believe that human beings do tend to assume shared understanding, until they find out otherwise through action or inaction of colleagues.

We worked with a four-step model to accompany a client team of middle managers from a European tourist sector organisation to understand the blind spots in their communication: We first elaborated on the team’s shared understanding of the existence of the need for change (the ‘Why’). We then looked at the impact such change would have for the different organisational functions represented in this team. This also included establishing shared awareness for consequences should the proposed change not materialise. Only then did we look at implementation as a holistic change initiative, before shifting focus on how the function behind each team member could contribute individually to the change initiative, which is a vital step towards successful interface managed.

With that, we strengthened the team’s ability to make their inner understandings more explicit and double-check on agreement based on a thorough, multi-perspective exploration process. Despite initial concerns that such process would be too time-consuming, the team ended up saving a lot of time during the change process, as the leaders were notonly aligned toward the same objectives earlier on, but could also communicate into their functions with one voice.