Innovationviareciprocity

The reciprocal relationships based on interconnectivity, interdependence or healthy competitions enable teams or organizations to build win-win situations, and increase the probability to accomplish inspiring shared goals more effortlessly.

Contemporary organizations are the open system that keeps evolving, with all sorts of cognitions, emotions, information, and relations; some are current, others are outdated; it’s important to foster a healthy working environment in which invaluable feedback and vital communication are based on quality data, trust, and reality. The reciprocal awareness implies the empathetic understanding of each other; the reciprocal relationship describes a situation in which two parties promote each other in order to gain a mutual benefit.

Reciprocity is an important part of building trust and allows predictability and stability in the relationship: The organization we work at and the world we live in become increasingly complex and contextual, reciprocity helps two or more parties to respond to each other and build trustful relationships in a more interactive way. Creating and nurturing that trust is one of those precious things that takes out of our diminishing currency of time in the world of work. Trust cannot be forced, we all know beyond any shadow of the doubt that mutual trust is paramount for our personal and organizational effectiveness. Thus, reciprocal communications or actions enhance mutual understanding, nurturing equal relationships and harness collaboration.

With high velocity and hyperconnectivity, people and organizations are becoming more interdependent with each other. It’s important to build a working environment in which different stakeholders can find their role in initiating empathetic communications, engaging in creative activities proactively; providing and giving feedback with mutual respect, negotiating back and forth professionally; coaching and learning interactively, etc. It’s the reciprocity that sets the tone of culture of trust; it's trust that is the key determinant of any collaborative effort; and conversely, the lack of it that can accurately predict the demise of any collaborative effort.

Reciprocity works because of shared goals, which create less stress on the relationship by incorporating competing and collaborating harmoniously: Either driving changes or harnessing innovation is complex, it’s rarely a top-down maneuver, or one individual or team’s effort in the organizational setting. More often than not, reciprocal relationships between people or between teams are important to push the same button or pull in the same direction for achieving common goals. Highly collaborative organizations develop complementary teams in which every team members can learn from each other, listening and telling; giving and receiving, building reciprocal relationships to accelerate collective performance

Organizational hierarchy has flatten out nowadays as companies across vertical sectors are leveraging social platforms to team up and enhance cross-domain reciprocal collaboration for achieving shared goals. Business agility is the reciprocal of the lag time between recognizing an emerging business opportunity and being able to act on that opportunity. Thus, to improve strategic flexibility and changeability, the physical organizational structure and virtual setting can be wrapped around each other to lubricate business processes and keep relationships fluid in order to achieve the state of equilibrium.

The reciprocal divergence-convergence cycle enables the individuals or organizations to search for the path to make a difference: Management is both art and science. The science of management is to keep things under control via rule setting and standardization; the art of management is to keep mind open and let things flow. To build people centric organizations, it’s a strategic imperative to shift the management style from command and control to become more reciprocal, collaborative, and holistic.Asking questions, besides telling, is an important tool to practice reciprocal management, and make a positive change. Encouraging people to speak, actively listening to diverse viewpoints, engaging in candid “give and take” communication, and ensuring that there is no retaliation for raising difficult issues, is a powerful way to develop reciprocal relationships, build trust and loyalty.

Being customer-centric is in every business’s agenda nowadays. To drive customer centric innovation, customers should always be involved. Building the reciprocal relationship between business and customers can take different propositions and approaches to a problem or a new interpretation to the circumstances. it is more of whether you are truly and proactively listening to their needs and gaining a deep understanding of the motivational construct of the customer through empathy. Communication is complicated because there are differences in goals and contexts. These contexts can shift. Reciprocal communication is critical to deal with conflicts or even constructively advocate the fresh point of view.

Continuous and consistent open dialogues should replace the 'business as usual,” and “command-control” management style to develop an open atmosphere and fortify cross-functional coordination based on information, expertise, and responsibility. The reciprocal relationships based on interconnectivity, interdependence or healthy competitions enable teams or organizations to build win-win situations, and increase the probability to accomplish inspiring shared goals more effortlessly.

Posted in: C-Level Collaboration,Communication,Keywords in 21st Century,Leading by Questioning