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Generative relationships

Generative relationships

Generative Relationships helps participants strengthen relationships that enable creativity, learning, and forward movement. The structure shifts attention from fixing problems or people to amplifying conditions that allow people to do their best work together.
It is especially useful when:
  • Collaboration feels stuck or transactional
  • Trust needs to be rebuilt or deepened
  • Groups want to move from “working together” to “creating together”
  • Leadership wants to model relational intelligence
  • What Makes a Relationship “Generative”?
Generative relationships are characterized by:
  • Mutual respect and curiosity
  • Psychological safety
  • Shared purpose
  • Freedom to experiment and learn
  • Energy rather than drain
This Liberating structure helps participants name, recognize, and intentionally cultivate those qualities.

  • Time needed

    25 minutes

  • Preparation

    Offline format Online format
    Prepare pieces of paper for participants Prepare virtual whiteboard template to collect ideas (for example Miro Board Template)
    Arrange tables for people to sit in pairs and in groups of four Prepare split into smaller groups (first pairs then 4 people)
    Prepare STAR compass graphic for each group and one for whole group Prepare STAR compass graphic for each group and one for whole group

  • Set the stage

    1. Open by reminding participants that this is not about blame or performance review - it’s about learning what makes collaboration come alive
    2. Clarify the context. Ask participants to assess their team on four attributes:
      • S (Separateness): Diversity of perspectives and expertise.
      • T (Tuning): Depth of listening and sense-making together.
      • A (Action): Opportunities to act and innovate.
      • R (Reason to work together): Shared purpose and benefits

  • Step-by-step and timing

    1. Individual reflection (5 min)
      • Work on  STAR compass and try to analyze your team or group in terms of four attributes
      • As a facilitator: Help with additional questions if needed: "What made this relationship generative? What behaviors, conditions, or mindsets were present?"
    2. Paired Conversation (5 minutes)
      • Identify and agree common patterns and differences
      • As a facilitator: Encourage listening deeply, not problem-solving.
    3. Small Group Synthesis (5 minutes)
      • Capture key ingredients of generative relationships
      • Place dots on the STAR compass 
      • Check highs and lows and see what types of results you see (e.g. high Tuning + high Separateness + high Action + low Reason = many false starts)
      • Prepare actions that can support improvements
      • As a facilitator: Ask "What conditions and behaviors consistently enable generative relationships across your stories?"
    4. Whole Group Harvest (10 minutes)
      • Combine all the actions and steps from all groups and agree on the priorities. Choose first steps to take. 

  • Hints

    1. If participants focus only on "what is wrong", try to redirect them to focus on "what works"
    2. If conversations become abstract, ask for concrete behaviors
    3. Use time limits and structured turns if needed
    4. End with explicit commitments

  • Examples of use

    1. Team Rebuilding Trust After Conflict

    • Scenario:  Recent restructuring in the team created power struggles, meetings were efficient but tense, team members are avoiding difficult conversations
    • Outcome: Create more space for disagreement and open conversation that led to higher engagements and fewer escalations

    2. Product Innovation Team Unlocking Creativity Context

    • Scenario: High output, low innovation. Fear of failure
    • Outcome: Each team committed to one behavior that increases safety (e.g., celebrating failed experiments). Short-term: it has increased idea sharing, but long-term it helped with more innovative product features and higher team retention

    3. DevOps / Platform Engineering Environment

    • Scenario: Company is experiencing frequent production incidents. Dev teams are blaming platform team for “slow pipelines” , where platform team is blaming dev teams for “poor-quality code”. Meetings are technical, defensive, and emotionally flat
    • Outcome: Tone in discussions has softened, Dev and platform teams began using “we” language. Previously silent engineers participated. Examples of chosen actions: 

      • Add platform engineers to early design reviews

      • Rotate devs into on-call shadowing

      • Start postmortems with “What made sense at the time?”

      • Publish pipeline changes before enforcement

  • Link with other Liberating Structures

    String together with Liberating Structures:

    For next steps you can use:

  • Link to Liberating Structures page

    Generative relationships

  • Link to virtual whiteboard template (Miro)

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