Getting real about collaboration with Megan Taylor, Managing Director of Rise Beyond

In this thought-provoking podcast episode, host Yiuwin Tsang discusses the essence of collaboration with special guest Megan Taylor, Managing Director of Rise Beyond. They explore the complex nature of collaboration, shedding light on the misconceptions and challenges often associated with this buzzword.

Megan Taylor emphasizes the importance of revisiting the true meaning of collaboration, highlighting that it's not just about using fancy technologies or working in a harmonious environment. Instead, it's a dynamic, human social process that involves people working together to achieve shared goals. Collaboration can be messy, frustrating, and ever-changing, but it's also immensely rewarding.

The conversation examines the challenges leaders and organisations face when trying to foster effective collaboration. Megan and Yiuwin discuss the need for self-awareness, the impact of power dynamics, and the importance of creating brave spaces for open dialogue. They share insights on how embracing differences, cultivating trust, and navigating conflict are essential for successful collaboration.

Furthermore, the episode explores how these collaboration principles extend beyond internal team dynamics. Megan and Yiuwin discuss how they apply to external collaborations, offering valuable advice for businesses working with clients or partnering with other organisations.

Listeners will gain a deeper understanding of the complexities of collaboration and walk away with practical insights on how to foster a more effective collaborative environment in their workplaces and partnerships. Learn how to unpack the layers of collaboration and discover the keys to navigating the messy, yet creatively fulfilling world of working together.

About Megan Taylor

Megan joined the founding of RISE in 2015 to develop and run the operations of the start-up consultancy alongside working with key initial clients. Since then she has been instrumental in building the growing business and Community of Practice, and in 2023 took over as Managing Director.

Before RISE, Megan was a professional dancer, teacher and choreographer, setting up and growing a personal & professional development community for dancers in London. It was in this "laboratory" she honed her coaching, facilitation and programme design skills, alongside learning all about founding and growing a community.

Megan brings an energy for moving things forwards, helping groups to not only work to understand what is going on in more depth, but guiding them to try and experiment with new ways of doing things in order to make change happen. 

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Transcript

Disclaimer: The following transcript is the output of an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.   Every possible effort has been made to transcribe accurately. However, neither Beautiful Business nor The Wow Company shall be liable for any inaccuracies, errors, or omissions.

Yiuwin Tsang  

Hello and welcome to the Beautiful Business Podcast. Beautiful Business is a community for leaders who believe there's a better way of doing business. We believe beautiful businesses are led with purpose by people who care, guided by a clear strategy, and soulfully grown.

Yiuwin Tsang  

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Beautiful Business Podcast. My name is Yiuwin Tsang, part of the Beautiful Business team. And this week, we are joined by Megan Taylor. Megan's work is in helping people to notice, think and act differently. She's the Managing Director at Rise Beyond, a collaboration consultancy working to enable better collaboration to address the complex challenges we all face, in our organisations. Beyond Rise work alongside organisations from various sectors as well as supporting private and social sector leaders through their programmes and initiatives. And Megan actually started her career as a professional dancer, choreographing and performing around the world, and establishing a learning community for dancers to support their professional and personal development. 

Yiuwin Tsang  

Aside from her work at Ride, she is a founder of Move The World, a skills and education charity based in Ghana, and an angel investor, and people advisor to startups in technology, consumer products and the arts. She has a masters in people and organisational development, and she's a certified coach. 

Yiuwin Tsang  

Let's talk about getting real about collaboration. I'm a big fan of collaboration. I've seen the magic that happens when you get it right. And maybe that's kind of tainted me a little bit because then you get so frustrated when it doesn't work. And you don't get it right. So let's talk about getting real about collaboration. But first of all, Megan, could you give us a bit of background to Rise Beyond? What is it that you do? And who is it that you do it for?

Megan Taylor  

Yeah, cool. Thanks for having me. We are a people and collaboration, consultancy. And what does that really mean? Ultimately, we see our role is helping people get better at working and learning together with the idea that if we can do that we can achieve the things that we want to achieve more effectively, more efficiently, and hopefully in a more enjoyable way. So we kind of worked with leaders, mostly in the private sector, although more recently, we've been kind of doing some really exciting initiatives in the charity and public sector, and supporting kind of social innovators and social founders with some of their kind of startups. So there's some really exciting kind of initiatives that we're working on. But yeah, it's all about kind of how we're in the work with other people, what goes on between us that kind of potentially get so stuck. And helping people get better at talking about the messy interpersonal kind of underlying dynamics, that kind of is just a part of collaborating, working with other people.

Yiuwin Tsang  

Fantastic. And before we kind of get stuck into the questions that we've prepared, in your mind, when we say collaboration, what does it actually mean? Because you know, there'll be some listeners who maybe think, oh, we have a Trello board, and we chuck some comments in there. And we jump on a zoom call every now and then, in your mind and sitting with the experience that you've had, what is collaboration?

Megan Taylor  

I'm really glad you asked that question because I think something we're super passionate about, it's kind of bringing our attention back to collaboration, because I think it's become such a buzzword to the point actually, that we kind of let it go for a while because we're like, oh, God, everybody's using this word. And using it in ways that we're not that satisfied when does not use it at all. And part of our kind of work this year was about re embracing the word because I think it is a great word to summarise what it is that we're doing. But I think that because it's become a buzzword, the kind of attention that people give it an understanding of what it is, has been lost. And you know, it's been taken over by technologies and the introduction of all these different tools that will enable great collaboration, or even kind of workplace office environments have been designed to enable collaboration. But I think if you scrape all of that away, fundamentally, collaboration is a human social process. It is about people working together. And so all of these extra bits to kind of facilitate us or help catalyse collaboration, but they aren't the process of collaboration, which is people working together to achieve something hopefully great. And so yeah, we really try and focus on that and look at what does it really take and kind of help to get rid of this idea that it's this achievable, harmonious state that, you know, once you've gotten there, it's like you're just like, in this happy land with each other. And it's all great and easy. And it's all, you know, go with the flow. And I think the reality is that things are always shifting and changing, and resources come and go. And new people get added into the mix. And, you know, different tensions arise all the time. And so therefore, collaboration is just messy. It's inherently messy, and therefore fun, but also hugely frustrating. And there will be times where it feels easy, and there'll be lots of times where it feels really hard work. And so a lot of our work with clients is helping them to kind of let go of this need to achieve this like clean outcome and actually just get more skillful at working with the ongoing day to day reality of collaboration, which is all of that stuff that was just sharing.

Yiuwin Tsang  

I think I try interested with you articulate that because I think so many businesses are so focused on process design. And they look at their kind of schedules work and things like this. And I guess from a planning perspective and a resource management perspective, having things neatly fitted inside different boxes is quite pleasing. But from what what you just said, it's almost like a process that we need to unlearn in that sense and accept collaboration as being this. There's no edges to it, I suppose, as a way of saying that it's there. And not only is it hard to find the edges, I guess it does have edges. But not only is it hard to find what the edges are, but they're always moving as well, as you say, I guess there'll be things like outside influences within a team. If a particular team's having a hard time at home, then it may well upset logic

Megan Taylor  

100 percent, we all like to think that what's going on at home doesn't affect how we are at work. Yes, it does. I don't know about you, I've got two toddlers, it certainly affects how I ever work, I think is building on what you were just saying then, organisations are often built. And leadership is often kind of portrayed as this state that we can be in where we can kind of plan predict to control outcomes. We still plan and organise businesses with this idea that we've got full control over the outcomes, right. And I think consultancies kind of play into this paradigm, this kind of way of thinking. So I do think that we've got two inherent challenges, one, that we're a consultancy, that is essentially trying to fix problems, and people are paying you to come in and solve their problems. And we're coming in and saying, Well, we're not going to solve your problems, because your problems are always going to be there. But we can help you get better at working with them and you know, hopefully become more aware of what the actual problems are. So digging under the surface a bit more, and then hopefully more skillful at working with the tricky situation, rather than, you know, pretending there's this kind of end state that is this ideal outcome. So I think consultancies have an interesting role that they play, we have a long conversation about kind of what our responsibilities are, as a consultant and kind of consultancies. And I also think there's a job to do to help people kind of acknowledge the complex reality that we live in working, because I think we, again, kind of get brought up in the education system doesn't huge part of this kind of thinking that if we just acquire more knowledge and throw more expertise at it and more resource at it, then there's a solution, there's an easy way to find an answer. And actually, so much of what we're seeing in the world today, whether it's kind of complex global challenges, like the climate crisis, or, you know, organisational issues like culture and culture change, you can't get your hands on them, you know, they're so interconnected. And so complex, actually, it's not about throwing more resource, throwing kind of more people at it more expertise. And one day we'll find a solution, it's actually just acknowledging that it's messy and complex, and there's going to be so many ways that we could work towards something and we don't know the consequences, or the kind of unravelling kind of events that might happen from an action that we try. 

Yiuwin Tsang  

So it's a very different mindset and approach, isn't it when you have so many kind of models that people kind of adhere to or subscribe to? And I think the reality is, is that the models and the frameworks and things like this, that we all kind of pick up, I'm a big fan, I'm a massive fan of

Megan Taylor  

me to give me a framework. Yeah, give

Yiuwin Tsang  

me a two by two matrix, I'm all over it.

Megan Taylor  

Give me three to ease my anxiety. Yeah. 

Yiuwin Tsang  

But it's everything you said, makes so much sense. Because as leaders, as business owners, you kind of need to almost kind of embrace the chaos and accept that there is going to be things that are outside of control, things that cannot be controlled. And in order to handle them, you need to best prepare yourself to be able to handle things that aren't easily controlled or unpredictable in that sense, and it's kind of counterintuitive, in many ways to these kinds of models, these frameworks that say no, all these things fit really nicely into these different boxes.

Megan Taylor  

No way of looking at leadership and management, you know, there's so much about, if you just do this, you can kind of control your employees, or you can instil this into them. And it's like, not quite sure that the evidence of history tells us that that's the case.

Yiuwin Tsang  

It's no, but I guess, you know, again, this is my kind of like models and frameworks kind of fanboy coming out, I feel like the framework is probably the best way of putting it, it's almost kind of it's a direction of travel, rather than, you know, the specific points that you need to kind of hit and it's your skill, your ability, your experience as a leader to kind of navigate within those channels, I guess, is what we're doing. And now that you mentioned some of the big kind of problems, or the big kind of challenges that organisations will face when it comes to collaboration. I'd like to explore that a little bit further, very quickly, before we do just to kind of flip the other way around it. Why should we get better collaboration? It sounds like such a kind of obvious question. But again, what are the upsides to working on this? Because we know it's gonna be hard, it's gonna be tricky, and it's gonna be messy. So what's the upside to this?

Megan Taylor  

Yeah, I think it's a good question. I think it's hard and I think it takes a huge amount of energy. So it's not something that we should be saying like in every aspect of our lives, we need to be increasing the way in which we collaborate because I just don't think we've got the capacity as human beings to deal with that. I think sometimes that needs to be much smaller, much more isolated, and you know, we need to rest and kind of gain energy for the things We're super passionate about, but there are times and pursuits where working together is better, right? You know, we know that history tells us that when you convene people that represent kind of massive amounts of diversity and difference, there's huge amount more potential for creativity and innovation and the ability to kind of pull resources to make something happen better. So I think when there's a really clear shared purpose that brings people together, across boundaries across kind of difference that feels the right place to put energy and to kind of let's really work well together here. And we know it's going to be tough because we come from different backgrounds and got different ideas about how we might do this. But yet, we're attached to this shared purpose. And that is the thing that kind of pulls us together, I guess that would be the so many, again, it could be small, it could be local, it could be in your local community, it could be in your home, it could be with your partner and your kids. And it could be in your organization's and kind of more globally on the kind of big issues that we're all facing on a day to day basis. So it can be applied everywhere. I don't think it has to be applied everywhere.

Yiuwin Tsang  

I just want to take a quick minute to say thanks to our trusted partners, Krystal hosting. Krystal is a B Corp powered by 100% renewable energy, and has a goal of planting 1 billion trees by 2030. Crystal services super fast and super reliable. And they're genuinely really nice people. We're super picky over who we work with as partners at Beautiful Business, and we're delighted to count Krystal as one of them.  Back to the podcast..

Yiuwin Tsang  

No, indeed. And yeah, and maybe it's kind of foolhardy to try and apply it everywhere, as you say, there are places where it's more appropriate, but just as you're speaking them, they're gonna make me think of I'm trying to remember what it's called, is it Belbin, this theory of teams, when you've got that kind of bell curve, haven't you and you've got like, you know, pseudo teams, and then you've got real team or you've got like these kind of high performing teams. So I think it sounds like it's that kind of, it's another model. There we go.

Megan Taylor  

I agree. And I think I've got all these models are super useful, right? Because they provide you an angle of looking at something where then it kind of gives you new insight. And yet, it's useful to be super critical of these things. Because they aren't necessarily the truth, you know, so this idea that we've had clients come to us all the time, who bring you in and kind of make us a high performing team. And we're like, Well, you might have the potential to be a high performing team. But it's not as easy as that, right? It's like you are all people that bring all of your baggage and your experience and your ideas, like it's going to ebb and flow over time. And yes, you can kind of each take your own development theoretically, and take the group's development seriously. And yet, there'll be things that mean that at certain periods of time, you're likely not going to be a high performing team. So again, measuring these outcomes and kind of thinking that the state that we can get to and one that will be in Nirvana is we should probably let go of that either. Yeah, as a self confessed control freak, I still find quite difficult. It's ironic for me that I'm in this work, because, you know, I'm still somebody that would love to control everything. And yet, I'm learning a lot about the fact that that's just not the way.

Yiuwin Tsang  

It sounds to me, and perhaps like taking away the kind of empirical measurements, as you say, of these types of models, the concept that, you know, we can work towards a state, as teams as organisations or groups within organisations where we become greater than the sum of our parts as a really worthy and really exciting kind of pieces. And, again, is that I know, it's slightly out of context, when we talk about kind of shared purpose and kind of shared goals, knowing that you're working with other people kind of who share that vision we share that kind of go just raises like everybody's level.

Megan Taylor  

It gives you this when you achieve It's amazing, isn't it, that feeling of like we did that together? Like there's no better feeling and feeling that you perceive something that you absolutely couldn't have done by yourself? 

Yiuwin Tsang  

Yes, indeed. But to your point, it's like the kind of company is to be high, performing all the time, as unsustainable, and also in reality is unrealistic, isn't it? Because things change the parameters change? As you say, all these leave?

Megan Taylor  

Yeah, things happens, budget gets cut, yeah, all of this stuff is gonna happen,

Yiuwin Tsang  

Indeed, and it's been able to flex. And so let's talk about some of the challenges. And so what have you seen as some of the most common challenges in the way that people kind of approach collaboration within their organisations?

Megan Taylor  

Gosh, I think our ability to talk well to power is one of the biggest kind of impeding factors for working well together, you know, in any relationship, there's so many different forms of power at play, whether it's, I don't know, man versus woman or, you know, experience, you know, so many different forms of power. And particularly when you're in a, an organisation, perhaps you're working with the senior leadership team and the executive team or even the CEO, just if they're not aware of the power and the influence that they have on the group and the way in which the group therefore interacts and responds to them in the room. I don't think you can do you've got to be really skillful at talking to the reality of how we're responding or reacting to power. And I think, yeah, it's something that we spent a lot of time talking about with clients. It's kind of, we've got to get better at noticing how it's impacting us, and how we're responding to it. And obviously, a lot of the time that's happening subconsciously, so can we make that more conscious? And then can we get better as a group actually naming it and talking about, you know, this is what's happening. This is what's happening when we had an example last week where we were having a pretty, you know, honest conversation with the senior leadership team and the exec team about what's getting in the way of us working really well together. And their CEO, he didn't realise he did, it went and stood behind the flip chart, where we were kind of capturing some of the themes that were coming up, and people were sharing some really vulnerable stuff that, you know, felt risky and vulnerable and could be quite exposing, hopefully, we've done a good enough job in the rooms create an environment that that was, you know, able to kind of come out and people were feeling quite confident and sharing it. But the way that the CEO was stood, was behind the flip chart, quite imposing kind of as people were walking up to put the sticky note on the flip chart, I just thought I, I don't think he's done this on purpose. But he's stood in a place of real power. And the influence that had and the way in which people responded to it was fairly significant. But we talked about it, we helped him to kind of notice Did you know you did that how might have that have kind of created a an energy in the room that potentially wasn't helpful for the conversation. And he's lovely, and kind of saw what that might have done. And he really didn't do on purpose. But we are always doing things, whether we know it or not, that will shift the way in which people will react and interact with us. So yeah, getting better at talking about some of those underlying dynamics, particularly when they're tricky, and potentially contentious, and potentially kind of can trigger people in various different ways. I think that that feels like one of the hardest things to do.

Yiuwin Tsang  

I guess, as a leader of a business, or if you're a manager within an organisation, it sounds like it's almost like the first step as a self awareness and knowing how your behaviour behaviour, the right word?

Megan Taylor  

Behaviour kind of traits, like the way you are, you know, even just your tone of voice or you know, your physical preference, if you're a really tall, strong person, that has a different way of kind of landing in a room. So, self awareness, self awareness, self awareness is a huge part of what we do. And we actually don't work with groups where the leader isn't up for doing their own work on themselves, because we don't think much can shift. So it really requires them to kind of be up for looking at how they are helping and potentially impeding their group. Yeah,

Yiuwin Tsang  

I mean, that's pretty big. And it sounds like it starts from there, from a leadership perspective, that kind of self awareness influence, because I guess once you've recognised that in yourself, it perhaps is a bit easier to recognise how the dynamic changes with different behaviours in the room and the example that you said, you know, one individual behaviour might trigger another and things can cascade quite quickly, am I right in thinking that there's possibly ways that that is actually a positive thing, where you have somebody who is maybe, you know, a bit playful, or I forget what the terminology is like, but like, naturally, quite curious, you know, in terms of their approach to sorts of things. And you can almost, if you've got an awareness of how dynamics work between people and the influence, and it hasn't been perhaps you could use it in a constructive way.

Megan Taylor  

Yeah, and that's really the focus of our work is it's not to say that the more aware you are all of this bad stuff, quotation marks kind of comes up, actually, it's about like, shadow side is also our strengths. And though, you know, I look at myself, I mean, I know that part of my leadership trait is I provide quite an inspiring kind of energetic presence in my leadership team. I also know that that can be absolutely exhausting, or really irritating. So you know, it's the same thing that I'm bringing, and yet being able to read the room and kind of know what's required, and kind of how I am in the room takes quite a lot of my self in terms of sensing and listening to what do I need? And what does this group need? And what does the business need? And then therefore, choosing how to kind of be and how to respond to others, I think, yeah, and God, I don't get it right half the time, and lots of us don't get right half the time. But yeah, I think that has to be the starting place. 

Yiuwin Tsang  

Yeah, indeed, we'll this phrase out a lot. I'm not sure if it's even relevant in this case. But when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So if you're, if you're stuck on doing things, your way, for example, you know what God's word is? And I feel like certainly, from listening to what you're saying, there's this level of self awareness to know when the traits that you bring to the table or constructive in this unique circumstance of that time, in that instance, versus when maybe it's not being able to I don't know, I guess, kind of tone it down in these kinds of senses. Or Or perhaps I don't know, if you're a leader of an organisation, and you know, you're the bright the bubbly one and the one that kind of things idea, and I don't know, maybe it's a case where something's happened, as you said, maybe there's been a bit of a budget cut realities kind of kicking in, in terms of, you know, what the situation is like, you need to kind of put your serious pants on, as it were, how would you suggest somebody kind of handles that situation? Would it be on themselves? So do they need kind of self development ahead of time? Or could they bring in, you know, other people or the different roles within the team for certain scenarios? Why would you,

Megan Taylor  

I think it's all of those. And there are some people that are what you see is what you get, and there's not much changing them, right? Some people have very, very strong habitual patterns of behaviour and yes, you can become aware of them. Yes, you can kind of dial them back marginally. But really, that's just who they are. And so whereas situation might demand a different way. way of being probably they're not the right person to adapt their style. There are other leaders that are hugely adaptable, and might be the right person to say, actually, you know, to consciously realise that this is probably not how to be right now I should be in something else. I think that takes a huge amount of awareness and huge amount of flexibility and adaptability that not everybody has. And there are cons to being hugely adaptable, right? You know, sometimes the feedback is God, the chameleon, I don't really know how they're going to come across, or which person I'm getting today, because they can be in so many different ways. So it's not saying that being hugely adaptable is also right, per se, because he might show up in the wrong way sometimes. So I think you can obviously work on yourself all the time, and hopefully, you know, get better at showing up in different ways. And there will be situations where you need to be able to draw on other expertise already in your team, you need to be able to bring in other expertise outside external expertise to kind of fill the need or the gap that's in the group. Yeah, and a large part of our work is helping groups become aware of their dynamics and the deficiencies in their dynamics or the gaps that are there so that they can consciously kind of notice stuck patterns and kind of call it out and then say, Hmm, we can adapt ourselves because we've got that somewhere. We're just not calling on it, or we need to bring it in. And yeah, that feels like a real power.

Yiuwin Tsang  

Yeah, 100% it's so interesting as well, this kind of the blurring of the lines between almost managing the dynamics with a team for an outcome towards a positive outcome and culture within an organisation. You've kind of squinted at one way or the other, they look like similar things really don't know, what's your view there? How do we kind of separate? 

Megan Taylor  

I think all of these concepts and probably most people will say that I'm completely wrong, I think that quite a lot. These concepts are like one in the same thing. So a lot of our work touches on leadership. Of course, a lot of leadership touches on culture, a lot of culture touches on collaboration and ways of working and, you know, systems change and transformation and all of this stuff. And, you know, I think fundamentally, if you strip back all those words, it is the way in which we are together as people is culture, forms culture, that's always shifting, always evolving. And again, something you can't predict or control as much as culture change. People might want to kind of say that you can. Yeah, so I think they're all one of the same and interesting, isn't it? It is interesting to step back, we're just people trying to work well together. 

Yiuwin Tsang  

Yeah, that's exactly it. And there's similar sort of things, you know, like the whole kind of, you know, cool people in the common rooms and, you know, funky carpets and uncomfortable check. These things, aren't they are not, you're not the

Megan Taylor  

They're not the answer. Yeah. That tools to enable something, and maybe they disabled something, too, right. We've plenty of stories of how those types of things. I've also disabled culture. But yeah, that tool is just like a Trello is or a Slack is or, you know, all these technologies are for collaboration, I think they both enable and constrain the way that we work together.

Yiuwin Tsang  

Again, it's interesting, because again, in terms of similarities, that whole piece where people talk about culture, and they talk about so much that it loses its meaning and loses its value. And that has been that kind of loop around again, where people are rediscovering the power of collaboration. So the next question I've got on my list here, Megan is around. As you kind of start, this journey has become more conscious about how your team collaborates. It's not all rainbows and butterflies, there are gonna be some challenges. What can you expect if you're a leader who's kind of trying to get better at collaborating all bring better collaboration within their teams? Yeah,

Megan Taylor  

I think it is pretty well understood that conflict is just natural. Now, you know, I think 10 years ago, when I was first starting this work, I think there was still like, the doctrine that like we could just get rid of conflict or manage conflict, do away with it. Right. I do think for the most part, most workplaces realise that conflict is just a natural part of people being together. And actually, yes, it's conflict might cause friction and tension and pain in some parts. It's also the birthplace of creativity and innovation and joy, right, when you work with it well, so yeah, I think tensions and difference, I think, learning to kind of embrace those in and it's so easy to say just love difference, embrace difference, it's really hard when you're confronted by it, it really is, you know, it calls on all of our beings to kind of shut it down or kind of run a mile where we feel like, you know, we're really confronted by something that feels quite different and kind of alien to us. And yet, what does it really take to kind of step into that, and I think that that's the stuff that we really kind of try and work on with with clients is this idea of like courage and compassion, and one of our main things are just creating reflective spaces to learn more about each other added in the busy day to day workplaces. Reflected spaces are the first thing to get squeezed out. And we are putting our hands to the fire and saying this is the last thing to squeeze out. This is the one place where you are going to maintain a level of trust and connection that is absolutely required in times of immense pressure and tension. So yeah, in those spaces where you can kind of help to draw out challenge and difference and explore them in a slower time. I think we can then work more creatively with what kind of emerges from When you're in a pressure cooker, and you've got people firing ideas across the table, and the leader is just gets frustrated and shuts it down, not very collaborative atmosphere. So I think really paying attention to the environment that you're creating. And the way in which you're soliciting difference to emerge can make a huge difference to the quality in which you're collaborating. If you're squashing out difference, yeah, a lot is lost, right? wellbeing, people feeling like they're able to be themselves, diversity, inclusion, all of those kind of cultural aspects that we know are super important, but also innovation and strategy and business performance. You know, some people might call all that other stuff, like the fluffy stuff, oh, my god, people still use that word. It's kind of crazy. But actually, the numbers are impacted to the performance and the bottom line is impacted. So it's not fluffy stuff. It's really important. And, yeah, I think it's becoming more common.

Yiuwin Tsang  

I fully agree with you. And that's a really good thing. And it's interesting, I guess, that concept of safe spaces and safe environments where people feel like they can speak up. Yeah, you won't be in it. 

Megan Taylor  

We'll call it brave spaces rather than safe spaces. Yes. I was gonna say, Yeah, to think that we can ever be in a fully safe space, it's probably not quite realistic. I think we can do work to help create that environment. But perhaps it's about being courageous and brave. Yes, I think yes. Rather than thinking that it's completely safe. It's not it's not there's always stuff that's risky.

Yiuwin Tsang  

And this is it, and I guess it kind of come back culture, again, as the C word. But you know, if you have a culture where people feel like they can speak their ideas speak the most, because the thoughts that worries, the concerns, what they're excited about what they're not, it's one of those environments where you can feel things moving forward in a kind of positive way. Even if you said, Look, I don't feel comfortable with this. I'm worried about that. I don't think it's going to work. We had a team meeting the other day about what are wildly important goals often next year, or weeks, as we call it, when you're running a business, whether it's impostor syndrome or not. But you're always kind of worried, like, is this a good idea? Or am I just being a bit silly about this, and you want a team, we want an environment where your team can say, Look, you That sounds a bit nuts, I don't think it's going to work. And that is, in my mind, ideal. What I don't need and what we don't want is somebody who's just nodding along. Okay, yeah. Okay. So as you say, yeah, it does translate into the numbers does it because it will be in terms of positive moves forward, or indeed, avoiding negative moves back. It's such an important thing.

Megan Taylor  

I know. So getting rid of people that oppose us just creates dictatorships, right, we can see that in the political environment around the world. It's quite a few of those were actually they probably had teams around them that whether it's been healthy opposed energy, we call it kind of devil's advocate people, yes. Over the period of their terms, they get cut. They're the first people to leave, and then they've got these Yes, men around them, and they just become this kind of a touchable kind of dogmatic character. That's kind of quite dangerous. Yeah.

Yiuwin Tsang  

Yeah, indeed. And there's lots of examples in the political world, plenty of examples in business business world as well. Yeah. And becomes this whole kind of this groupthink piece where there's nobody actually say, and as you say, it's from leaders perspective, you haven't created that brave space where somebody can put a hand up and just say, this is a bit crazy, we shouldn't do this.

Megan Taylor  

I think back to the power dynamic we were just talking about earlier, you know, if you're a leader, you have power, whether you like it or not, and it's not about getting rid of power, it's about knowing that just given that reality, people are going to find it much harder to challenge and question you. So you've got to work extra hard to create the space for people to challenge your questioning, because you know that that's important. And I think that's really, really hard to do.

Yiuwin Tsang  

It's really hard, but the potential that could unlock if you can get it right, or if you can do it and enable those conversations. Yeah. And And last question on the section please. Like, how does this collaboration, this awareness, understand the dynamics? How does it translate into external kind of collaborations? Because, again, I guess a lot of businesses that are out there, service businesses, particularly, there's a degree of tooing, and froing, there was collaboration, if you want to call it between client and service provider, hundreds of all through to external collaborations.

Megan Taylor  

Well, fundamentally, I think the concepts are the same. So things like trust, courage, compassion, connection, experimentation, reflection, all of that stuff that we've been talking about, which are what we would say the kind of skills and conditions that collaboration are, I think they're the same when you're trying to get people to work together, those things are vitally important. And of course, with some form of purpose driving you forward, I think when you start to do cross organisation, collaboration, that kind of cross sector collaboration, it just gets a lot more complex, you know, even just from the way it's funded, or the way it's, you know, you're contracted together, the time constraints, resource constraints, likely difference gets expanded, because you've got people representing Dan of different fields or different viewpoints and different backgrounds. So I think you're just adding to the complexity, and so therefore, it just gets even harder. And of course, that's why often things don't go the way we want them to go. And, you know, people might have the best of intention, but you just don't have the energy or the corralling kind of spirit to kind of really step into those spaces where you can work on those things together. So yeah, that's something we're super passionate about trying to kind of figure out how we can better support beyond The kind of boundaries of an organisation where, you know, you have marginally more kind of idea of what's going on.

Yiuwin Tsang  

Yeah, it is interesting. But again, it comes back to there'll be examples for our listeners or for me where you work with particular clients, and you just click, as your team's click, there's a chemistry there, there's the communication is there, I'm just trying to think of this on my head, the boundaries are there as well. So you kind of know where you're kind of remit begins and where it ends, there's clarity, and things are there. So I guess there are kind of hygiene points that you could look to establish. But I guess that starts again, with that awareness and understand the dynamic. 

Megan Taylor  

And I do think it's really important when you're first getting into a collaboration, or you first kind of start working with a new partner, or get involved in a new group, that you actually create space, even a new relationship, you know, oh, my God, if more of us did that, in our relationships, we probably have healthier relationships, actually creating space at the forefront at the beginning to talk about how are we going to work together? What are the things that I know tripped me up? What am I patterns of behaviour, one of the environments that triggered me or make me kind of potentially unhelpful? And so really having those really frank conversations at the beginning can help to kind of lay out the groundwork. And then Okay, so let's do this, because this will help you thrive, but these environments are probably not going to be as useful for you. And yeah, I think we love to just rush into action, right? Like, yes, we've got this kind of thing that we want to do together, it's just get on with it. And it's like, whoa, slow down, hold your horses, let's just talk about how we're going to do it together. And, you know, it's so much of our work in that seat, just bringing the How to the watch, you know, people are quite clear on the what, they're often very clear on the why they haven't ever spoken about how and yeah, that's the kind of summary of what we bring. 

Yiuwin Tsang  

I can hear all the Simon Sinek fanboys rising up for around us the Start With Why you start with love. But in reality, you're right, we've often forget about the how and little bits that we do. So for example, in our business rules kind of set out a this is how we work kind of thing, and a lot of stuff about, you know, the collaboration that we want to try and do, the tools that we use, and the check ins and all the rest of it. And it's surprising how useful that is just in terms of almost kind of setting the stall out. It's not set in stone, but it's just means that it's on the agenda straight off the bat, that's probably something useful just to do with these meetings, because you're right, you can get carried away with it. We're going to change the world. And we've got this amazing product.

Megan Taylor  

And also coming back to is this still working for us, you know, quite a lot of people do that as an activity or they have a facilitator or consultant come in to help them have that conversation. And then they get all excited by it. And they've got these new rhythms of working, and then they kind of put it on a shelf, and then they do it for a bit and then they're like, it's like creating the check in points to reassess like, is this still the way we want to work? It's still working for us. And actually, we need new rhythms often, you know, we just stay in the same meeting rhythms, they get tired, they get stale, they just kind of lose their pzazz. And actually, it's keeping them fresh and exciting. And changing them up is a really easy tip for kind of keeping ways of working more energetic, even things at the end of meetings. I mean, these are really easy, quick tips. It's like just have a conversation before you're rushed out to your next meeting. Was this meeting useful for us? And what did we learn that we can apply to next meeting? And what could we do differently next time to make it even better? And it just asking some really simple questions and having a quick checkout round can make a huge difference to the quality of teamwork or collaboration. That's my tip of the day.

Yiuwin Tsang  

Love it. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Beautiful Business Podcast and a massive thank you to Megan Taylor from Rise Beyond for sharing her stories, her advice and her insights. 

Yiuwin Tsang  

Thank you for joining us for this week's Beautiful Business Podcast. Beautiful Business is a community for leaders who believe there's a better way to do business. Join us next time for more interesting discussion on how businesses can bring about change, helping communities, building a fairer society and safeguarding the planet. You can also join in the discussion at www.beautifulbusiness.uk