In today’s complex and fast-paced work environments, effective communication with teams is paramount for success. When your team understands the communication dynamics occurring during team meetings and even in ad hoc conversations, psychological safety can substantially increase. This in turn creates the condition for productive conflict, team learning, and innovation, which all enable better team performance.
It’s time to discover a useful framework that enhances team communication and ensures everyone’s voice is heard: David Kantor’s Four Player Model. Kantor’s model describes four roles or “stances” that people in conversations naturally fall into. As your team discovers and becomes more adept at assuming the different Kantor roles, they will be able to adopt any one of the four stances in the moment to move any conversation forward productively. Thus, Kantor’s framework gives powerful context to any conversation, which helps to decode communication dynamics and fosters clearer communication.
Kantor’s 4 Players
So, let’s discover the dynamics that typically show up in conversations by looking at each player or stance individually.
Mover. You are stepping into the role of “mover” when you initiate an idea or action, drive progress, or set goals or aspirations for the conversation or your team. Without someone assuming the role of Mover, the conversation will lack direction and actionable follow through on items discussed is less likely to occur.
Follower. In the stance of Follower you typically lend your support to the idea proposed by the Mover. You might do this by aligning yourself with stated goals, adding or expanding on the Mover’s idea, or contributing your ideas and pledging your effort to make the Mover’s idea successful. Without someone in this role, others may not complete or follow through on the proposed or adopted idea.
Opposer. When adopting the Opposer stance, you question assumptions, challenge ideas, and ensure the team has thought through what’s been proposed. This is how the Opposer serves the conversation — by shaping a Mover’s proposed idea or course of action to work from a practical perspective or to align better with team values, resources, and priorities. No one wants others to poke holes into their ideas. But without the Opposer, the team won’t fully explore alternatives or correct flaws in the ideas or actions under discussion.
Bystander. When you act as Bystander, you observe the conversational content and dynamics during the conversation. You remain relatively neutral and take a broader perspective of what’s happening between people during the conversation and what people might not be voicing. In this way, you can provide valuable feedback and insight. For example, as Bystander, you may comment on the interplay of dynamics between the various players or on areas of agreement that other team members might not have noticed. You might also add historical information about the topic or the team’s work in the past. Without a Bystander, the team misses out on having greater perspective on the conversation.
What’s Happening in Your Team?
Think about your team meetings. Are you able to place team members in these roles based on how everyone usually participates? Is there a role from the model that no one on your team usually assumes? Do you have more than one person who fulfill a role?
Having all of Kantor’s four players show up in your conversations is vital to having productive conversations. When your team understands and values the purposes of each of these four stances, conversations become richer. Also, your team will increase its psychological safety because team members will understand what’s happening in the conversation. That is, they will understand the roles others are playing, instead of taking offense, tuning out, or being critical of how others are participating.
In short, when your team understands the characteristics, purposes, and importance of Kantor’s four roles or stances, team members will participate in discussions more effectively and learn to appreciate and leverage the strengths of each team member.
You’ll find that while individuals tend to naturally gravitate to one or two roles. It’s also possible for team members to shift and play multiple roles during the same conversation. Eventually though, each of you can learn to fulfill any of the four stances as needed to make conversation robust and productive. Such versatility will ensure that your team discusses topics more thoroughly and considers various perspectives, while providing direction, support, questioning, and insight.
By discovering Kantor’s 4 Player Model as a framework, you will unlock the power of your team’s communication. Team conversations will become more dynamic, inclusive, and productive with greater participation, creativity, and success.
Here’s another post on team communication: Dialogue: Moving Through Conflict to Creativity and Innovation
🚀Want to discover more about how to enhance team conversations? Or maybe you want to explore team coaching for your whole team to collectively do so. Let’s discuss how I can help you. 💡Book a free strategy session.