Marsha Acker

Collaborative Leadership: It’s What’s Up Front that Counts

Collaboration and Leadership

I’ve been fortunate to spend a lot of time lately, pondering and poking at the concept of collaborative leadership. It’s a notion I’ve been drawn to for a long time, because I believe that people will support what they help to create (collaboration), and support is one of the things a leader needs to be effective.

The biggest challenge is this: collaboration and leadership are sometimes at odds with one another, and leaders aren’t always sure what to do with that tension.

Collaboration, on the one hand, is about getting into the mud and playing together. It’s about bringing out the best in all contributors, so that new ideas can emerge from the place where many minds are conversing, converging, diverging, and then converging again.

Leadership, on the other hand, is about, well, leading. Sometimes that means making a tough decision, or choosing among several good ideas. And it’s tough, really tough, to go from collaborating with a team to leading them. In collaboration, there’s an equality that doesn’t always carry over to the place where leadership needs to kick in.

In working with leaders, I’ve come across several common beliefs about collaborative leadership – some true, some false. Let’s take a closer look at seven of those beliefs.

Belief #1: Collaborating Means Giving Up Control

False

Collaborating is about getting people engaged in the exploratory process that creating something new requires. It doesn’t preclude the leader from maintaining control, as long as that’s clear from the start. A lot of heartache can be prevented with a few explicit statements. Here’s an example:

“I’d like to hear your ideas on this, which will help me make a more informed decision.”

Notice there was no negotiating about who would make the final decision in that statement. In collaboration, everyone knows that they are contributors, not decision makers.

Belief #2: Collaborating Means Everyone Must Agree

False

Reaching full agreement in any group of humans is a heavy lift. No two brains are alike, and so we each bring our own hardwiring (based on our unique combination of experiences) to any collaboration. No two people on a team will see a challenge or an idea the same way – and that’s the beauty of teams!

Leaders don’t need to spend a lot of time making sure that everyone is in agreement before moving forward. Establishing early on that a consensus will be reached when everyone can live with a choice, whether they love it or not, will allow for faster, cleaner decision making.

Belief #3: Collaboration is Time-Consuming

True

Collaboration IS time-consuming, but remember that people will support what they help to create. Think about how much more time it takes to move forward when there is no support from the team. Collaborating is an investment in time that it will pay off in the long run, when everyone can live with the conclusion, and time doesn’t need to be spent restating, reselling, or revisiting a decision that was made following a good collaborative process.

Belief #4: Collaborating Means Telling People What the Leader is Thinking, Then Helping Them Understand and Align to That Thinking

True

Collaborating isn’t really about telling, offering statements of fact, and seeking alignment to those facts. It’s more about asking questions: probing, prodding, and exploring together to tease out new ideas, potential obstacles, and building on one another’s creativity.

A leader who asks “what’s the biggest flaw in this logic?” creates a safe space for disagreement and a team that owns accountability for identifying risks, up front, where they can be dealt with.

Belief #5: Collaborating With a Few Smart People is Better Than Collaborating With a Group That Has Different Levels of Understanding of the Issue

Maybe

Remember the old story about the pizza delivery guy? He arrived at a midnight product development session to find the team deadlocked. Asked for his opinion from the frustrated team, he offered his outside perspective. He knew nothing about the endless debates the product development team had been circling around, but he was a potential consumer of the product. His uninformed input broke through the deadlock and had everyone cheering, patting him on the back, and offering to buy him a beer!

An outside perspective can be a great thing because our brain’s thirst for status can keep us from asking the questions that might be perceived as uninformed. Non-experts can bystand the issue and ask those questions, without having them be perceived as “dumb” questions.

Belief #6: Collaborative Leadership is a Process That Leads People to the Same Conclusion, Through a Series of Iterative Conversations

False

Collaborative leadership is a balance. The collaborative leader knows when to push for collaboration and when to lead. It takes practice. It takes skill in questioning, listening, and bystanding. It takes faith that people have meaningful contributions to make. It takes a willingness to be vulnerable.

It isn’t likely that the collaborative leader who knows all the answers is being very collaborative. Questions like “Don’t you think…?” and “Shouldn’t we just…?” aren’t going to elicit much input. In fact, they’ll probably lead you to your predetermined conclusion. While you might think you’ve collaborated, your team will know better. If you know the answers, don’t pretend to seek collaboration. You’ll damage trust and make future collaborations far more difficult.

Belief #7: Collaboration is Almost Always the Best Approach

False

Collaboration IS the best approach for exploring options that need exploring. Informing the team of a decision handed down from above isn’t collaborative, no matter what color glitter you roll it in. Be clear about the need for collaboration, and be even more clear about what you mean when you ask for it.

Therefore, collaborative leadership is also possible, even preferable, for those situations where buy-in is important. In fact, buy-in is most easily created through collaboration. Include planning, know your intention, know your desired outcome, and communicate all of this up front – even if it all seems obvious to you.

Your Turn

Which of these common beliefs do you agree or disagree with? Share your effective leadership insights with us in the comments.

What Successful Agile Team Facilitators Know

Successful Collaborative Leadership

In some cultures, it’s a badge of honor to be participating in three virtual calls at the same time, or be multitasking during a meeting, or even be running between meetings.

Yet, behaviors such as these are a reflection of organizational flaws in the way we meet. When you’re trying to collaborate on a project, but you don’t quite have the time to be fully present, it can disrupt the whole group process and cost the team time.

There are many ways we can prevent and correct bad meeting habits, while simultaneously making effective use in the way we come together in an organization. It starts with setting the intention to collaborate. And the good news is that collaboration doesn’t have to take all that much time – it simply requires a little forethought by the Facilitator.

So what does successful collaborative leadership look like, exactly? Here are five things that a facilitator should know before going into a meeting.

Who Does The Meeting Serve?

A meeting should have at least one sponsor (a person or group of people who will be the primary beneficiaries of the outputs of the meeting). Sometimes, this may be the person who asked for the meeting. In a retrospective, the team is often the group who will benefit the most from the output, so they become the “sponsor” of the meeting.

What Does “Success” Look Like?

Before the meeting, interview the sponsor and ask them: What will we have accomplished at the end of this meeting that would make it successful? It’s hard to be successful if there isn’t an agreed upon definition about what success will look like.

In the case of a retrospective, talk with the team or survey them prior to the meeting to find out what they would like to achieve in the meeting. It can help focus your retrospectives and give you different topics to talk about, aside from the typical “what worked” and “what do we want to keep/change.”

Who is Needed At The Meeting?

Not everyone who attends each meeting needs to be there, and not everyone who needs to be there is always there. This can be a source of great frustration for meeting participants and facilitators, and it’s often a source of dysfunctional behavior in the meeting.

Get clear on who needs to attend and confirm their commitment to attend in advance. If these critical people can’t make it, then reschedule the meeting for a time when they can. If others are showing up just to hang out, politely ask them to go because they’re not needed.

How Will We Accomplish The Outcomes?

Successful group meetings don’t just happen. They require some level of process design, depending on the desired purpose and outcomes. If the meeting is a daily standup, then little to no design may be required because it’s a quickly facilitated dialogue.

However, a retrospective to address some challenging team dynamics during the last iteration may require 4-6 hours of planning and design time, on average. It includes:

interviewing the team
crafting an agenda (a series of questions that will be asked of the group)
designing the facilitator script
deciding the group process (brainstorming, mind mapping, facilitating dialogue, etc.) that you will use to reach each desired outcome

This level of planning gives the facilitator and the participants a clear focus on the purpose of the meeting and keeps everyone on track. Without a clear plan, meetings can quickly start to spin into details or unrelated topics and never reach an outcome or decision.

How Will The Plan Adapt to Change?

As Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

The facilitator’s guide is an excellent tool, but oftentimes, the most valuable part is in the creation. Don’t be so tied to your plan that you can’t adapt to what’s happening real time with your team!

How do you create intentional collaborations? What are some ways you that would help you begin with an end in mind?

Who is a Leader of Collaboration?

The Value of Collaboration for Leaders

Last week, I had the honor of sitting in a room with 22 leaders who inspired me.

These leaders have taken on a challenge few of us would be willing to attempt: increasing collaboration in an organization that does not reward it.

The fact is, many organizations have structures and systems that value the right answers over collaboration. But in an age of increasing business and market complexity, agile and lean management practices, and flatter organizational structures, collaboration is essential.

While I’m quite certain that no one leader in that organization would disagree with the values of collaboration, many don’t realize that, because their systems don’t reward it, it’s currently not safe to practice it.

What Does It Take To Be a Leader of Collaboration?

Here are some of the traits I observed while sitting with this remarkable group of leaders:

Collaboration Takes Courage

Courage to acknowledge the fear of trying to lead this work. Courage to step out and create their own vision for what this could be. Courage to be closer to their hopeful vision rather than letting the fear win out.

Collaboration Takes Vision

They had vision! Vision for the kind of leaders they wanted to be and the impact they wanted to have on others. Wow was it powerful!

Collaboration Takes Humility

Leaders of collaboration have powerful questions, not powerful answers. They let go of needing to lead from the front and find power in leading from behind. It comes from a belief that others are capable of creating their own solutions. If we take up too much space in the room we don’t leave room for others.

Collaboration Takes Humanness

They were human! This was tough work! They were wrestling with the challenge of what Peter Senge calls ‘creative tension’ – the gap between our vision and current reality. Importantly, they acknowledged it! That’s half the battle right there.

Collaborative Leadership

They built their own colleague network to support this journey. It will be tough and they will need each other to help pave the way.

Aren’t you excited for them? I know I am!

Where are you at in your journey of leading collaboration?

Leadership Lessons To Remember

Remember:

Leaders exist at ALL levels.
Leaders are made not born.
Leaders create the weather and create new value from difference.