
By : Jay Otto, Managing Partner, Banyan Collaborative
Growing treatment courts is an effective way to improve outcomes for those involved in the judicial system. However, the task of growing treatment courts can be complex and sometimes frustrating.
Starting (or improving) a treatment court involves overcoming technical and adaptive challenges. Technical challenges are challenges where we know the problem and solutions exist. This may include developing skills on best practices and navigating state laws. Technical expertise from existing treatment courts and technical assistance providers can help address these issues.
Adaptive challenges are challenges where the exact problem and solution are not clear. In this case, they are challenges specific to your community, court system, and network of stakeholders, partners, and providers. There are no off-the-shelf templates that address the personalities, histories, and unique aspects of your community. These challenges require collaborating with new and often diverse stakeholders. Collaboration may be an over-used word which has lost its nuance. Collaboration is different from cooperation – which is a more common form of working together.
In cooperation:
We work alongside others to achieve a shared goal or purpose.
We may share resources and may interact with the same people (stakeholders, clients, providers, etc.).
We do “our thing” while others do “their thing.” For example, one organization may conduct an assessment of a client while another provides services based on that assessment. The organizations have to “cooperate” around timing and scheduling with the client, but each performs separate tasks.
Collaboration is different:
We actually have to work together.
We need to have a deeper shared understanding of not only the desired outcomes, but also details of the actions.
There are more opportunities for conflict – especially when addressing an adaptive challenge when we may not know the “right” answer and are trying to determine what works best.
We can create a culture of effectiveness within our teams that supports successful collaboration. This culture includes aligning around a shared understanding of our purpose and the current context, growing healthy working relationships between team members, and recognizing the need to sustain energy and efforts.
We can grow a shared understanding of our purpose and the current context by engaging in authentic dialogue. The dialogue needs to allow new ideas and thinking to emerge. Engaging in authentic dialogue requires me to really listen to you – not just let you speak while I mentally prepare my response. I am not engaging in dialogue with you to convince you of my position, but rather to truly listen, understand, and allow a new shared understanding to emerge. When this occurs amongst a group, the group begins to develop shared meaning and the beginning of a shared culture. This shared culture (and the trust that is a byproduct of creating this shared meaning) creates a space for how we will best move forward to address the adaptive challenge – in this case, starting a new (or enhancing a current) treatment court.
Conflict is inherent in adaptive challenges as we don’t know the “right” answer to a complex issue. Often, conflict can reveal opportunities to approach challenges in new and more effective ways. However, in order to shift a conflict into an opportunity, we need to have ways of interrelating that allow for constructive interactions. This kind of healthy interrelating is grounded in strong individual and collective emotional intelligence – an understanding of and appreciation for how our emotions impact our actions. Emotions are important sources of information, and when used wisely, support better interrelating.
We must also recognize that adaptive challenges often take more time than technical challenges. Attending to and sustaining our energy (and the energy of the team) are critical. Acknowledging effort, celebrating successes, gathering wisdom from challenges overcome, and reconnecting with our individual and collective purpose are all ways to sustain energy.
While growing a shared purpose, growing healthy working relationships, and sustaining energy may seem daunting, it is important to recognize that these are skills that can be grown. Often, we focus on the technical skills in addressing a challenge and overlook the adaptive skills. This is why we started our organization. At Banyan Collaborative, we work alongside our clients to create cultures where new ideas and actions emerge and take root, creating effective and lasting positive outcomes.
Interested in learning more about this topic? Jay Otto will be a Plenary speaker at the MATCP 25th Annual Conference, February 25-26, 2025 at DeVos Place in Grand Rapids, MI. More information can be found at matcpconference.org
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