Collaboration, a Compelling Business Proposition

At its best, collaboration has a revolutionary impact on dramatically improving business outcomes. Nevertheless, it is poorly leveraged within organizations and frequently not adopted as a business proposition.

Increasing speed and complexity of business, adaptations in how businesses generate value and changing organizational structures have challenged traditional organisational structures. The new currency that drives organisational success is collaboration. Collaboration generates higher profits, inspires greater customer loyalty, helps attract and retain the best talent, and delivers greater innovation.

At the heart of collaborative leadership is the mechanism to shape where the collective mindsets, attributes, emotions, behaviors, skills, and knowledge are all freed and deployed to deliver on what the business needs to succeed. Executed well, collaborative leaders achieve four key outcomes.

• Strong alignment regarding what’s truly important to success at the enterprise, team or individual performance
• Highly engaged members motivated to contribute to collaborative genius.
• Access to the diverse capability mix required to succeed
• A cultural characterized by deep ownership and accountability

Organisations ought to view a collaboration culture as a business proposition and take a strategic approach to building one. I have already described how to do this. In this article I describe the characteristics of collaborative leaders and identify practical ways to demonstrate collaboration at work.

Profile of a Collaborator at Work

To the experienced eye, it is relatively easy to identify the collaborator at work. A myriad of attributes and behaviours come to mind. Collaborators create shared context and meaning. They look for connections, they create openings for collaborative conversations, they are integrators and they seek to generate synergy. Collaborators are dot-connectors and/or dot-creators and are keen to bring the right knowledge and the right people to the same table. Collaborators also keep the focus on a unifying and compelling shared purpose. This shared purpose serves to bring people together and accelerates alignment even across diverse stakeholder groups.

Collaborators Build Trust

Collaborators build trust by expressing their authentic self, including their vulnerabilities. They take genuine interest in others, model empathy, disclosure, vulnerability, transparency, intimacy and integrity and they thereby bridge psychological distance. As such collaborators promote the psychological safety required for risk taking.

Collaborators Build Ecosystems

The collaborator’s energy does not come from dominating or being perceived as all-seeing visionary or leading idea generator. The collaborator’s energy is focused upon building an interdependent ecosystem not a conglomerate of independent entities.

Collaborators Harness Diverse Strengths

Collaborators excel at harnessing the unique and diverse strengths of others and they encourage collective learning. Collaborators tend to see every interaction as a potential opening to facilitate immediate or future collaboration. They typically view complex problems and opportunities requiring more than one brain, however smart, and they successfully solicit the input of others.

Collaborators are Skilled Facilitators

Finally, the successful collaborator has the practical attributes and skills to bring value to collaborative opportunities. For example, they know how to be fully present and how to create the space for collaborative conversations. They have the listening skills to pick up on the truly important elements. Their questioning is organic but also incisive and serves to build insight, objectivity and ownership in others. Their reflecting skills enable them to accurately reflect key themes so everyone can move in alignment. They readily acknowledge the contributions of others. These skills combined create the platform for high-value collaborative dialogue

7 Keys to Collaboration

Despite the importance of collaboration, there is a risk however that the term be misused to describe virtually anything from soliciting a point of view to the socialising of ideas. Some of what currently masquerades as collaboration is of questionable value. Following are suggestions to bolster collaborative impact. Try applying them to see your collaborative value soar.

1. Clarify the why and the how of Collaboration

Link any collaborative piece of work with your overarching goals. Be clear on the purpose of your collaboration and agree the rules of engagement, the roles, responsibilities, and the deliverables. Review all of the above regularly.

2. Be Prudent

True collaboration requires significant investment. Be prudent in using it. As Morten Hansen asserts in his book, Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results asserts: “The goal of collaboration is not collaboration, but far better results.” The only reason to collaborate is to add or create value; to achieve things collectively that you cannot achieve individually. Identify the big opportunities and challenges that will really benefit from a range of diverse thinking and approaches.

3. Distinguish between Collaboration and Consensus

Be clear about the difference between consensus and collaboration. Seeking input doesn’t mean coming to a consensus. Collaboration is about pursuing new ways of working, new ideas, and different perspectives to reach clear goals and gain better solutions.

4. Embed Diversity

Collaboration works best when groups have the complementary skill sets required to complete a collaborative task. It’s crucial to have the right people at hand to access collective intelligence and make informed decisions. Encourage multiple perspectives, diverse viewpoints and creativity.

5. Create an Atmosphere of Safety, Trust and Respect.

Build trust by displaying trustworthiness. Be consistent, credible, candid, open, vulnerable, appreciative and supportive. Those dimensions are critical to engaging in creative tension.

6. Mindsets make a Difference

Keep the shared end goal front of mind. At the same time, hold in mind and empathize with the unique perspectives, pressures and issues of each stakeholder. Let go of attachments and rather than fearing differences seek to understand them. Try to observe rather than judge.

7. Hone Collaboration Skills

Successful collaborators have highly honed collaboration skills. They exhibit authentic presence and they deeply listen. They are curious and ask questions that build deep insight. They accurately reflect key themes and they readily acknowledging the contributions of others. These skills create the platform for high-value collaborative dialogue.