Finding a standpoint, strengthening collaboration

When working in a team, I prefer to use the term “standpoint” rather than “point of view.” Perspectives arise from the experiences, encounters, and learned interpretations of individual team members. When working together, these orientations collide – usually not completely oppositely, but with different weightings and based on different contexts. The standpoint arises where a team actively decides: Which perspective do we give more importance to – and why? This also explains why forming a standpoint often fails: it requires negotiation, questioning, clarification – in other words, work. For a team to pull together, every member needs to be committed to the jointly defined standpoint. It is worth investing this energy in negotiation to make collaboration sustainable in the long term.

For managers, the ability to define a standpoint is doubly relevant. First, because leadership must justify decisions, explaining why one direction is chosen – and why other orientations are given less consideration in this situation. Second, because they must keep an eye on different orientations: Where is the common course “crumbling”? When does a project become a “zombie project” that only lives on from past investments? Sensitivity to “skin in the game” is helpful here: when people bear real consequences (job risk, responsibility, personal involvement), the pressure to find a viable position increases. If this “skin in the game” is not present, commitment to the position is usually low. Conversely, it can also be helpful if those involved are less affected – such as student teams who can directly reflect unpleasant truths to project partners. Leadership then means assessing the dynamics and shaping responsibility and involvement in such a way that a commonly accepted basis is created and projects move forward sustainably.

The most important lever is a skill that sounds trivial but is rarely mastered: externalizing one's own orientation in such a way that others understand it without it immediately appearing to be an attempt at persuasion. This leads to a second step: enabling negotiation by having team members actively ask questions (“Why?” “What exactly do you mean by that?”) and thus making implicit knowledge visible. The example of driving a car illustrates this: I may not mention looking over my shoulder when turning, I just do it. However, a “newbie” asks, “Why are you looking so far back?” This brings implicit knowledge to the surface. 

In practical terms, the following helps:

• Conversations/interviews, especially with non-experts (“stupid questions” are gold). This reveals blind spots and increases the viability of the point of view.
• Consciously separating gathering and evaluating: first options without judgment, then criteria and decision.

The third and final step, as described above, involves reformulating the initial problem or challenge based on the negotiated orientations.

The following helps here:

Plan iterations: If the point of view crumbles, don't ignore it, but jump back, reformulate, ask further questions, and refine.

Grow personally: Contribute to a common point of view

Design Thinking training not only strengthens methodological knowledge, but also self-awareness. It enables you to consciously use small subtleties with a big impact: When do we collect? When do we experiment – and when is experimentation over? When do we decide? Those who practice this also learn about themselves: Which orientations have I never considered? Where are my blind spots? Am I really “unimaginative” – or was I missing a process that makes ideas visible? The cooking analogy sums it up: it makes a difference whether you throw everything into the pot at once or taste and adjust step by step.

Artificial intelligence brings a new dimension to teams in which a common position is developed. It can accelerate, but also distort. 

Positive: AI provides perspectives beyond the team in a matter of seconds (e.g., suggesting the perspective on a problem “from a craftsman's point of view” or describing contrary arguments and alternative framings) and can inspire research ideas, but it cannot replace negotiations about the weighting and integration of the results.

Risk: Many tools are optimized to please – the answers generated often reflect the question rather than clearly revealing blind spots. This leads to a large block of opinions that are not based on experience: they sound plausible, but have no real reference. For teams, this means that AI can provide input, but the commitment to a point of view must come from within the team. Otherwise, there is a risk of “exhausted consent” – people accept the AI suggestion because no one has the energy for final negotiations. 

The answer to this dimension of an “AI-based team member” is not “taming,” but training the human team members: distinguishing between their own experience, facts, assumptions, and interpretation; formulating semantically precise prompts; and being ready at any time to iteratively develop the point of view. In a world with AI, agility becomes less of an innovation ideal and more of a survival skill: Decisions must also be revisable for managers, without losing face, with the conviction that with each iteration, the quality of the point of view and the basis for cooperation increases.

A point of view is the moment when a team sets a binding focus based on many observations and perspectives – and thus lays the foundation for joint action. The article shows why this ability is particularly crucial in innovation projects, everyday team work, and leadership, for example, in order to identify “zombie projects,” assign responsibility, and justify decisions in a comprehensible manner. It describes concrete ways to achieve agreement: making orientations visible, asking specific questions, separating collection and evaluation, and iteratively refining the point of view. It also highlights how Design Thinking strengthens self-awareness and why AI can quickly provide new perspectives but cannot replace genuine agreement within a team.