Designing Alliances

Jan 14

When my son was 9 he asked if he could have ‘alliance money’. I wasn’t sure what that was, so when I asked, he said “it’s when I do chores and help around the house and you give me money”. Ah, he meant an ‘allowance’ – but the new name changed my view on it. In this new light, I saw this as an opportunity to form an alliance for mutual benefit, to shift the traditional power over dynamic that usually comes with allowance. Clearly, he must have overheard me talk about designing alliances and came up with this name change – it is one of my favourite tools, and as it turns out, can be applied in a variety of situations and contexts.

We often have to work with other people, in and out of professional settings. The purpose of designing alliances is to create psychological safety, mutuality, strengthening relationships, promote productive communication, and create trust. I think of it as both building bridges and creating boundaries. Unlike some other approaches, designing alliances does this proactively rather than when things hit the fan and everyone’s dysregulated.

It’s similar to ground rules and a code of conduct, and yet it’s distinct in some of the following ways:

It is co-created by all those participating in the relationship
It is not static, it’s revisited and can change and grow
It has what you want to include and what you hope for within the relationship, such as a way forward if the relationship encounters bumps

The foundations of the tool is asking curious, powerful questions and co-designing how you want to work together.

Powerful questions usually start with ‘what’ and ‘how’ – which are open ended questions that tend to be more neutral than ‘why’. Great powerful questions for designing alliances include (more examples at the end):

What builds trust with you?
What are your goals with our relationship/work?
How do you like to receive feedback?
How do we want to be together when things get tough?

Key tips:

Get the full picture – asking what builds trust with someone may yield a simple answer – honesty. But what does honesty mean to that person? Asking follow up questions to get the full picture is helpful. Questions might be:

What does that mean to you?
What’s important about that?
What does it look like/sound like/feel like?
How would I know when it’s (eg. trust) not there?
What helps you repair?

Asking for the ideal – it would be easy to ask ‘how can I be a better manager for you?’, but this question narrows the possibility down to what you can do as a next step. Asking a question that takes you out of it, might yield a more optimal potential, such as ‘thinking about the best manager you’ve had, what did they do that you loved?’ Other examples can be:

What would have you jump out of bed to come to work? (vs. what do you like about your job?)
What’s the optimal relationship you’d like with your manager? How do they communicate with you? Give feedback and/or recognition?
Where would you like to see yourself in 5 years? (vs. what do you want to do this quarter)

Dig for what you want, not what to avoid - similar to #2, people tend to know what they don’t want, and it’s flipping it to get clear on what they do want. It might sound more like “I hear you don’t like lying. What do you want instead?”
It’s not a one-and-done event - it’s ongoing and needs maintenance. Check in to make sure the alliance is still relevant, maybe there needs to be some tweaking. Don’t feel pressure to ask all the questions at once. I recommend asking a few at first, and maybe even design asking more later or in ongoing one-on-ones.

As I teach leaders to use coaching skills and design how to work with their team, I sometimes see two pitfalls:

Taking over-responsibility - the leader/coach uses “I” in the questions such that it creates over reliance on them, such as: “how can I motivate you?” or “how can I support you?” The team member’s primary responsibility is to themselves, and often things like motivation come from within. Like needs, we can seek them for ourselves, and can find them in multiple places. Notice the subtle shifts:

What motivates you? How do you find that? (vs. how can I motivate you?)
What supports do you need (vs. how can I support you?)

It’s a 2-way street - Sometimes in our eagerness to work well together, the leader/coach forgets that they have needs and tendencies too. Only hearing a one way response to designing questions can lead to wanting to people-please, or being a chameleon to someone else’s preferences. What we coaches/leaders need to remember is after hearing people’s responses saying “My tendency is…” or for every question that you ask, you should be answering it for yourself.

This might mean that you’ll need to negotiate. Eg. If one person likes to receive feedback that’s sweet and positive, and the other tends to give it blunt and critical. Asking – how will I know if the feedback didn’t land well? How will I know if the feedback wasn’t clear? How do we repair after? I’ve had a manager designing ‘vibe checks’ after giving feedback where they circle back at the end of the day to make sure no one goes home with less than ‘good vibes’.

I’ve heard of designing alliances being used for first dates, trips with friends, with family members during holidays, and I definitely used it with my son for his allowance.

Q&A

What if you’ve been working with someone for 5 years, isn’t designing alliances now seem awkward?

I suggest phrasing it as a retrospective or reflective practice. Saying, ‘now that the project is over, let’s go over how it went and design how we might work better on the next project’. Maybe starting with what went well – how do we want to celebrate?

What if I ask someone and they don’t know. In fact, they don’t know their answer to a lot of these questions?

The level of people’s self awareness varies. Maybe they’ve not encountered a situation before, or they don’t know their tendencies/preferences. It’s ok. They can take away these questions and think about it, maybe request that they observe themselves over time, or ask for feedback from others. The more self awareness someone has, the better we are at designing.