5 Vital Skills to Every Collaborator Needs

Collaboration happens when people get together to work towards a common goal. It could be at school, work, or even a creative partnership from different firms or parties. Collaboration should happen at every level, and not just when it comes to money making deals. It can help to boost the overall productivity within a company, cultivate great partnerships at school or at work, and help one another to grow in ways conventional educations and work can't teach.

What does it take to make a collaboration happen? What is needed from each member to ensure the collaboration turns out well? It takes more than a brilliant idea and hard work to make it a success. Even if you had a team of all-star players, it may not necessarily turn out well. We are collaborators and we are accountable to the team's success. Instead of waiting for others to do their part, we should be the change and show the results that we wish to see in others. Here are 5 vital skills every collaborator needs:

1. Ask questions to connect deeper

Everyone has a point of view and some information that we don't know yet. Also, it's wise not to assume anything, and to seek clarification. Asking questions helps us to understand each other better, whether team members or clients.

As we learn of expectations, concerns, values and gain more clarity, it helps us to connect better the others. When the connection is strong, a trust is formed. Thereafter, not only the collaboration can be smoother, but the work environment becomes healthier and more things can be achieved together.

My personal favourites are questions those help to identify the pains, pleasures, consequences and values from the other person. I've learned them from my mentors whom I've been consistently applying in my daily life and seen vast improvement in my working relationship with colleagues.

2. Listen for understanding, not for reaction

This goes hand in hand with the first point – asking questions. There isn't any value to you if you are not hearing their stories with intent to understand at all. I know many professionals are just waiting for the keywords to come from their clients so that they can immediately jump in with solutions. Many of us do that in our day to day conversations too, with friends and family. We hear what we want and then we conclude on something without firstly understanding the whole situation.

Based on my experience, most people provide a very shallow or surface level answers at first. It goes like "I want to be rich", "I want to be able to save more time and money", or "I want to be free". These are not even enough to develop a problem statement, let alone to suggest a solution. So wouldn't it make sense to dig a little deeper and find out what's right? You can develop questions around the areas of pains, pleasures, consequences and values.

What worries them so much that it keeps them awake at night?

What are the results that will make them happy?

What happens if the problem is not resolved? 

What are the values they cannot live without?

As you listen to understand, you'll begin to uncover the real concerns, desires and expectations of your team members or clients. With that information at hand, wouldn't life thereafter be so much easier?

3. Serve to lead, not to dictate

Be a servant leader instead of a dictator or tyrannical leader. Being a servant leader means to be humble, putting people first and empowering them by supporting and encouraging them to grow. This also means everyone gets to be involved and contribute in key decision making process. The truth is everyone wants to feel acknowledged and able to contribute, and if they don't feel that way or as part of the team, they will start breaking away and will definitely not be able deliver work at the highest quality.

It took me a while to understand what it meant to be a servant leader, until a colleague showed me how she did it. I have mad respect for her, and have learned so much from her. She showed me that patience with people and genuine intention to have everyone on the same page can go a long way to ensuring the thriving and survivability of the team. Although she was not the lead in the project, however her actions to ensure she heard everyone out and assisted in resolving conflicts and rectifying issues, others including myself saw her as a leader.

Incorporating servant leadership into my daily life has help me tremendously in not only achieving business milestones together with my teams, with much ease as compared to before, but it also grows me as a person and a leader I aspired to be when I was much younger.

4. Give appreciation

Always give credit where it is due. We should be generous about it, but don't over compliment someone over something trivial or without being specific about it. You have to be specific if you are going to show appreciation, and it has to be genuine. Otherwise it'll have a reverse effect on you. For example, while it's nice to receive a compliment, it wouldn't mean much to a person just to hear "You did a good job" without knowing which job you were referring to. Additionally, if you said "Wow, your powerpoint is amazing!" while the person barely did anything on the slides besides using a generic template, you might just come across to the other person as either sarcastic or insincere – both way doesn't look good on you and it potentially ruins the working relationship.

Giving appreciation is indeed one of the most valuable and must-have skills for any professional, and even more so for friends and family. It is fundamentally a human need to have appreciation. It is so empowering! It builds our self-esteem, self-image, boosts our energy level and gives us satisfaction feeling too. When a person is acknowledged for his or her contributions, there is a sense of purpose within and they feel strengthened allowing them to outperform their own expectations.

I've had the pleasure of working with several teams locally and internationally, and I made close observations of the different teams and how appreciation affects the performance and group morale in each team. Individuals that were thanked for their contribution are more motivated at work, bringing good vibes and are more likely to produce better quality deliverable. In one of the teams I joined in, the team members were much reserved at first, a little gloomy if I might add. When I started the ball rolling on expressing gratitude for specific contributions from each team member, things changed for the better. I wish you can see the glimmer of happiness on their faces especially in their eyes. Thereafter, we bonded much closer, more open to expressing critics, concerns and appreciation, and we were much in sync producing work results that are well received than expected. I even heard of other teams being envious of our team spirit and collaboration.

P/s: A good read and my personal recommendation for you is the "5 Languages of Appreciation at Workplace" by Gary Chapman and Paul White.

5. Have an open and growing mindset

The most toxic mindset is "I already know this." When a person has this thought, he or she is not keen to learning. If a person is not learning, then a person's growth is stagnant or stunted. No new ideas, no new approach, no innovation. As collaborators, we're not solely contributing effort or labour, but we're learners and teachers at the same time. As technology advances and more complex issues arise, it is essential that we constantly learn from one another. Therefore, we need to keep an open and growing mindset. What better way there is learn than to teach, coach and support others?

You learn best when you teach what you learned to someone else. This is because you'll have to ensure what you teach is correct, and when you teach you'll bound to discover new things on your own, or through questions from others. When others throw us a difficult question or critic, don't take it personally and immediately shut the person off. Instead, firstly understand further how such a question or opinion came about before replying with an answer. Still remember the first point I wrote earlier? People know things that we don't.

When I taught on value investing concepts, I realised that there were still some valuation techniques that I've not learned or heard of yet. It was one of my students, a considerably experienced trader, who asked me about the 'new' valuation methods. Turned out, it wasn't new but a variation of a similar technique that I was teaching about. I have my fellow coaches and students to thank for, on their sharing.

It is undoubtedly important to have collaboration happening at every level. I have so many stories to share on how magical collaboration can happen just by applying the 5 skills above. I know that anyone who becomes an expert practitioner in these areas will become not just any collaborator, but also a master in communications and an outstanding leader altogether. Start being a better collaborator today!

Feel free to reach out to me at [email protected], if you wish to discuss more about this topic.

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