Leadership = Collaboration

Collaboration is the next part of the Social Change Leadership Development Model or SCM.  (For an overview of the model (and an explanation of what is meant by “social change”), please see the previous posts.)  To understand collaboration, it’s helpful to understand its opposite, competition.  Competition can have positive outcomes.  The lessons one can learn from participating in sports, for example, would be much different without it.  Research reveals that individuals, however, learn more if they collaborate than if they compete, because the former allows them to concentrate on the subject rather than having to split their focus between content and the competition.  In terms of motivation:

Competition usually does not motivate people to do the best that they can; it only motivates them to do better than the others.  It actually limits how high one’s goals are set.  It encourages a focus on beating others, rather than focusing on doing well.  Winning…may produce short-term gains, [but] a continued focus on beating others tends to erode one’s intrinsic or internal motivation to strive toward excellence on a task (Kohn, 1986, as cited in Komives, Wagner and Associates, 2009, p. 200).

The goal of collaboration is synergy, in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (Covey, 1989).  But how does this work? How is that synergy attained?  Through a variety of personal competencies, including doing personal work, building trust and communicating effectively.

Personal Work

Effective collaboration starts with you. “Oh no!” I hear you pragmatists saying.  “Here comes the touchy feely navel gazing!”  No navel gazing is required (unless you’re into that -- I don’t judge) but even you hardcore realists must admit that it is difficult to understand others if you don’t know what makes you tick.  So, as Mark McGrath recently advised Gary Busey on Celebrity Apprentice, “Look inward…Take a big swim in Lake You and see what you find.”  In terms of the collaboration that means increasing your awareness of your own perspectives, beliefs, styles and needs. 

Building Trust

I personally believe that the best way to have trust in a group is for all its members to…well, be trustworthy.  Another way to facilitate trust is for team members get to know each other a bit before beginning work together, in order to discover common interests, similar (and different) styles, perspectives and goals.  This process may look different across groups:  Some may go to lunch together, some may do more formal, structured team-building activities and some may just talk for several minutes in their first group meeting.  Trust is also built when power struggles are avoided through shared ownership and control, successes are celebrated and through powerful shared experiences, such as ropes course participation.  For any over-sharers who may be reading, TMI is not a trust-building activity.

Effective Communication

As you remember from your undergraduate speech communication course, communication has two components: receiving and sending.  Most of us probably think of ourselves as good listeners but the research is startling:  “People only grasp about 50 percent of what they hear, even when they believe they are listening attentively” (Lucas, 2004, as cited in Komives, Wagner and Associates, 2009, p. 218). A more thorough summary of effective listening of this topic will have to wait for a later time, but listening can be improved by attending to content and emotion, paraphrasing and asking questions about what you’re hearing to check your understanding, and concentrating fully and patiently on what the other person is saying, without concurrently formulating your response or assuming you know what the speaker is going to say.

In terms of trust-building, the “sending” part of communication can be enhanced by using observations instead of evaluations – “You’ve been late three times this week” as opposed to “You’re never on time!” – and using requests instead of demands (Rosenberg, 1999 as cited in Komives, Wagner and Associates, 2009).

In summary, collaboration is a core value of this leadership model that can be built and strengthened in a variety of ways, starting with an individual’s self-knowledge and creating trust and effective communication.  Positive collaboration experiences feed the other “Cs” – Commitment, Congruence, and so on – as those “Cs” feed collaboration.

References

Covey, S.R. (1989). The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Komives, S. R., Wagner, W. & Associates (2009). Leadership for a better world: Understanding the social change model of leadership development. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.