What design thinking can teach us  about teamwork in a world on pause

How might we create trust and psychological safety in teams when  some of the assumptions of being and working together are  challenged? The truth is that every challenge creates opportunity if  we take the time and make the effort to ask the right questions and  build for tomorrow.

Design thinking, or human-centered design, can help us do that. By  focusing on the human needs, we can navigate ambiguity through  empathy, expansive thinking, and experimentation. We as leaders,  innovators, and designers, can use the following three mindsets and  tools to help navigate the future in these times of crisis and change.

Embrace empathy

In times like these, we need to listen more than usual. Designers  focus on understanding human needs and shift their perspective  using techniques borrowed from cultural anthropology and  psychology. Empathy helps you take inspiration from people’s needs,  feelings, and motivations, so you can start creating meaningful  solutions to actual problems.

Listening deeply to understand what people actually need is a skill  that can be learned and practiced. You might find that you’ve made  some assumptions about others based on your own needs.  Challenging those assumptions helps to create a solution that is  essential and useful.

We believe that empathy is one of the most  important skills of the future.

At Google, we believe that empathy is one of the most important skills  of the future. We provide our leaders and Googlers chances to  practice empathy with small acts, such as virtual meetings in the  morning and evening to check in with each other on a personal level.  My team’s weekly meeting starts with a mindful ritual to simply “breath  together.” We’re also doing an experiment in which a team member  shares an artifact important to them and the emotion it evokes, giving  the rest of us a chance to put ourselves in their shoes.

Ask the question, “How might we…?”

Most people think that innovation starts with a great idea, but the truth  is that it starts with a great question — a problem to solve. Most of us  are great at having ideas. We are also good at noticing problems,  especially when we try something new. A key skill we all can improve  on is expansive thinking by framing problems and turning them into  questions — good questions — which we then can solve for.

Let’s frame good questions using a design- thinking tool called the  “How might we” (HMW) question. For example:

 Problem: We are required to work from home and training

sessions might not establish that crucial human connection.  HMW: How might we make training via video conference even  more useful than those delivered in person?

 Problem: Working from home is tough for me. I struggle to stay

focused and I’m distracted by family. HMW: How might we help  people at home accommodate a range of working styles?

Once we turned a problem into a question, creative ideas to  solve this problem began to flow.

I recently led a “questionstorm” with The Google School for Leaders  to be able to surface all the questions on people’s mind. The same  rules as with brainstorming apply: Go for quantity, defer judgment, be  visual, build on ideas, write headlines, go wild. After that we were  able to select the most important questions to focus on moving  forward. Once we turned a problem into a question, creative ideas to  solve this problem began to flow.

Cultivate your experimental mindset

After exploring what’s possible, it’s time to tap into your  experimentation mindset. Experimentation hearkens back to that old  mantra: “Fail fast.” But it’s not about failure — it’s about learning from  failure. By failing, you quickly find out what works and what doesn’t  work so you can build toward a solution.

Experimentation can be hard; our brains want to save energy, so we  pursue the ideas and solutions that we know worked in the past and  shy away from trying something new. That’s why we need to establish  an environment where people and teams feel safe enough to take  risks and experiment with new things — even virtually.

This means encouraging teams and leaders to push the boundaries  and be vulnerable with each other, and invest in psychological safety.  When that happens you can better evaluate ideas, truly understand  your users, identify your strengths as a leader or team, and  experiment toward a desired future, faster.

