Interactions
Toolkit
A guide to creating positive, equal and productive relationships
October 2019
Authors: Matt, Nat, Emma & Noam
How to use this slide deck
Just make a copy of the deck to your own Google Drive, and start personalising it (for instance you might like to add your own organisation’s values into slide 7 and 8).
Alternatively, download as PowerPoint to edit locally.
Contents
1. Introduction
Introduction
This guide aims to help you have great interactions, more of the time.
An interaction could be a conversation, a design or planning session, a workshop or catch-up. A point of connection we want to be positive, equal and productive.
Through research with the team, we know you share aspirations to create clarity and impact; have all voices heard; to support each other as individuals and in making your work the best it can be, for a cause you all believe in.
So this guide builds on what we do at CAST at our best. It sets out values and golden rules that embed this, and offers tested and iterated resources to make it easier to bring clarity and human connection into any interaction.
2. Living our values
Living our values
The following four statements, co-created by the team and partners, sum up the way we want to work together at CAST and with others. This guide supports you to live these values.
Living our values
We’ll work in service to the Catalyst mission, beyond organisations. We’ll seek and expect learning and challenge from all sources. We’ll be transparent and honest. We’ll share our thinking, our methods and our learning:
We’ll be wide open
We’ll show the courage to create, to stretch our thinking, to be wrong, to look beyond, to speak up, to take risks and to be uncomfortable as we deliver constant improvement. We’ll do this as we are impatient for radical change:
We’ll go all out
We’ll absolutely embrace our connectedness and value our differences. We’ll actively work to understand, support and care for the needs and experience of each one of us at every level. We’ll recognise each other as equals, working to shared goals and together, we hold power:
We’ll act as one team
Together, in our distinct roles, we’ll lead this mission with ambition. We’ll meet our challenges with confidence and a smile. We’ll hold each other in the highest esteem. We're doing this. In short:
We’ll be optimists
3. Golden rules
Golden rules
If you take one page from the guide, make it this.
These micro behaviours are about creating habits that will help us live each of our values, every day. They draw on best practice research into healthy, productive, collaborative cultures and on what CAST does to create this and bring it to others.
Why? To open up to more connection, transparency and learning.
Why? To make space for all voices, seek first to understand and be generative.
in someone every day
Why? To make appreciation visible, build confidence and trust.
4. Interactions tools
Interactions tools
These tools help you increase clarity and connection at each stage of an interaction.
The following checklists, guidance and agenda template are designed to support each of us to get confident leading and participating in positive, equal and productive interactions.
Who are the tools for?
Interactions tools
These four steps take you through a whole interaction, from beginning to end.
You can also use each step independently. For example, bring the Check-in card to
a quick ad hoc meeting
to connect and agree aims.
Print as a poster or cards.
Set up
Make the most of your time together.
How to use: guidance for interaction host
Check-in
Build trust and a shared purpose.
How to use: guidance for interaction host
Share
Explore and make progress on aims.
How to use: guidance for interaction host
Wrap up
End well and know what’s next.
How to use: guidance for interaction host
Agenda template
This takes you through the four steps in a format you can share with others and use for note-taking.
Make a copy to populate or copy and paste sections into your own templates.
Find it here or in the template folder.
Video call tips
How to encourage equal participation when connecting via video call.
Many of our interactions are carried out remotely. Here are 7 tips that we’ve learned help bridge the distance. Use these together with the four steps.
5. What next?
What next?
This is a living guide for us to test, iterate and develop.
We’ve focused on creating more clarity and connection. Next is to embed and build on this so we support each other to make our work the best it can be.
Use the resources in this guide, adapt them so they work for you, and share your feedback so we can keep iterating this together.
Next we’ll test ways to give more feedback to each other, and explore frameworks and techniques for difficult conversations.
For any questions or feedback please contact ‘enter name’ who leads on interactions.
This practical, relational guide fits with other internal projects at CAST to develop how we work together and with others.
Thank you
October 2019
Authors: Matt, Nat, Emma & Noam