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How to Supercharge Collaboration: Leverage the 3 Types of Connectors, with Erica Dhawan, Collaboration Consultant and Co-Author, Get Big Things Done
The most under-leveraged assets are often sitting inside the intelligence of our own organizations, but we need to build a skillset, which is truly a leadership skill set of cultivating and tapping into that informal knowledge. We have to be willing to have curiosity, to ask different questions, to break down silos, to build communities outside of traditional bureaucracies, and to allow these communities, not just to share ideas, but to allow them to mobilize, to solve problems together outside of their traditional role or team.
Understanding the Connector Types
There are actually three types of connectors. First, the Thinkers, the thinkers are the people that are great at combining ideas and bringing in new types of curiosity to problems. These are the people that are always asking, how might we solve this differently? Or let’s take a devil’s advocate view, or let’s bring this approach from an outside industry or a different team in a way that allows us to solve this problem differently. So you may think of thinkers on your team as the ones that are always bringing in that different perspective or that different approach that will allow you to transform your mindset of how you solve a problem.
The second type of connector are the Enablers. These are your traditional people connectors. These are those that are really good at bringing together all the right people that need to come together to solve a problem. You can think about these people as the community-builders. They’re often those that understand, not just, you know, how might we solve this problem, but here are the five people we need to engage that could allow us to combine a different perspective or give us a different approach to allow us to mobilize this effort forward.
The third type of connector are the Connection Executors. These are the people that love to just get things done. They know how to amplify. They know how to mobilize. They’re often not those that are bringing in the new big idea or bringing the community together. They are those that love to get things done when the community is already built. They’re the combustors.
So as you think about your own role in your, are you more of a thinker? Are you more of an enabler or are you more of a connection executer and how might you design your team to make sure that you’re leveraging these three types of connector skill sets to really maximize the power of the networks on your own team?
The other thing is that it’s really important to be careful of connector bias. If we’re thinkers, we often love to connect with other thinkers on our team, and we end up spending lots of time in meetings, talking about ideas, but leading into analysis paralysis. The third type of connector are the connection executors. These are the people that love to just get things done. They know how to amplify. They know how to mobilize. They’re often not those that are bringing in the new big idea or bringing the community together. They are those that love to get things done when the community is already built. They’re the combustors.
So as you think about your own role, are you more of a thinker? Are you more of an enabler? Or are you more of a connection executer, and how might you design your team to make sure that you’re leveraging these three types of connector skillsets to really maximize the power of the networks on your own team?
The other thing is that it’s really important to be careful of connector bias. If we’re thinkers, we often love to connect with other thinkers on our team, and we end up spending lots of time in meetings, talking about ideas, but leading into analysis paralysis. If we’re enablers, we may love to bring people together, but that could lead to too many meetings all the time that lead to inefficiencies and delays. And if we’re connection executors, we may love to be around other executors who love to implement project plans, but we may be losing sight of how we might be engaging other functions in our company, other businesses, other networks that could help us really amplify that effort.
So the power of connectional intelligence is not only understanding your own connector type but making sure that you’re building a network that allows you to leverage those that are different from you.
Building a Team of the Right Connector Types
When you’re building a team, there are a few things you should think about in how you leverage the different connector types to amplify your efforts. The first question you must ask yourself is what phase and what type of function am I really in? And what types of skill sets do I need? The key is that you don’t need to have the perfect combination of thinkers, enablers, and connection executors. You need to first analyze what skills you need most now.
So if you’re at the beginning of a project and you’re trying to drive a big strategy forward, or you’re in a function that’s really focused on high-level corporate strategy, you may really need a lot of thinkers. A lot of researchers, a lot of those that can help think big and drive a different type of vision for the company. But if you are in change management or HR, you may need a lot of enablers people, people that can help drive a culture, change forward, bring communities together, facilitate discussions, and be willing to forge those communities that may not exist. Lastly, if you’re in implementation phase, if you’re trying to drive or execute, or maybe in a sales role, you may really need more connection executors, people that have and understand the vision that’s already been created and can go out and deliver it in the field.
So every time you’re building a team, you’re hiring, you’re reformatting or restructuring a team, always ask yourself first, what type of connector skill sets do I need at this phase in this function? What type of diversity of those skillsets do I really need over time? And how will I make sure that I not only ask the right questions but engage and align those on my teams that have different connector strengths to those specific roles?