This is how to build a Shared understanding in your teams …

By just externalizing our thinking around any topic. By Thinking “Tangible beats abstract”.

Shared understanding is when we both understand what the other person is imaging and why.

I am sure if you were involved in product development or a workshop for a while, you don’t have to reach back far in your memory to recall a situation where two people believed they were in agreement on a feature they wanted to add to the product / idea, but later found out that the way one imagined it was widely different from other.

Discussion goes better if we can externalize our thinking by drawing pictures or organizing our ideas using index cards or sticky notes.

If we give each other time to explain our thoughts with words and pictures, we build shared understanding.

That’s why externalizing our ideas is so important. We can redraw sketches or move sticky notes around and the cool thing is that we are really moving ideas around.

Doing that, we feel aligned and confident we are moving forward together.

The real goal of using tangible artifacts is to build a shared understanding.

It’s important that we describe every idea or contribution as clearly as possible. Otherwise, people will have trouble interpreting what it is about. So, when formulating your idea, be as specific as you can, and make it tangible, so it can be judged on its own merit.

Takeaways

Start discussions always around something tangible to guide that discussion. Try to refer to something that anyone can see.

It is about removing different interpretations that the people might have.

When you’re just describing something using only words, a people might have a different interpretations, understanding and pictures in their minds about what you’re actually talking about.

But when you have something to show, you all saying the same thing. That’s why visualization of every artifact in a Wall or in whatever physical support, will help the people see and understand the same thing.

Through combining and refining our different ideas, we end up with a common understanding that include all our best ideas.