Collaborate or not?
Nivedita Saxena
OD Consultant | Trauma Informed Coach | Leadership Development Consultant and Warrior
Collaboration! Fancy word right?
So let me ask you, what it means for you to Collaborate in a professional context? You might say it is working with someone to achieve something or being an effective team player etc.
Now, depending on your perception and organisation’s culture, most probably Collaboration is a positive state to be in. But have you ever thought that Collaboration can also lead to negative results and feelings, if not done in a thoughtful way - (Powerful statement isn’t)?
Let’s see how smart people can fall in to the trap of bad Collaboration:
· Collaborating in hostile territory - Should we be surprised that Collaboration fails in environments that are designed for the opposite practice (Competition and Independence)? Of course not. The trap is to believe that competing units can Collaborate and then launch projects in an unreceptive environment.
· Over Collaborating - Sometimes, people just share ideas and information in those back to back meetings without having strong focus on the bottom line. The trap is when leaders promote Collaboration in their companies; they get more than they bargain for.
· Misdiagnosing the problem - We may fall into the trap of misdiagnosing the reasons people don’t Collaborate. Is it the difficulty in finding knowledge and people in the organization or it is people’s unwillingness to Collaborate? We must identify which factors are at play leading to no Collaboration.
· Implementing the wrong solution – The misdiagnosis trap is often followed by the wrong-intervention trap.
So what is the solution? How do we effectively collaborate and not get in to the trap of bad one?
The answer lies in Disciplined Collaboration – it is a practice of carefully determining when to Collaborate and when not to and instilling both the willingness and the ability to collaborate when required. (Morten T. Hansen)
The Three steps of Disciplined Collaboration
Step 1 – Evaluate opportunities for Collaboration
Step 2 – Spot barriers to Collaborate
Step 3 – Tailor solutions to remove barriers
Do you experience any of these traps in your organization? How do you resolve and implement right Collaborative interventions?
Make the Growth Choice !!!
7 年From an evolutionary perspective, our motivations to act in a certain way is driven by the need to optimize our survival and growth. Such being the case, people would be driven by the need to compete rather than collaborate. If you scratch under the surface, the competitive spirit would be thinly veiled and always evident under the collaborating act. However, people/teams would overcome these instincts and genuinely collaborate when they realise that the synergistic behaviour is beneficial for all concerned. This can be driven by proper training – or when teams have gained each other’s’ trust having collaborated in the past. In current times, things are dynamic and you cannot have such a luxury of teams who have worked together in the past. A training in EI, which emphasise on values and helps people know and express their authentic selves would always work for genuine collaboration – notwithstanding the undercurrents. And I suppose you make a similar point under the last para “Disciplined collaboration”
Make the Growth Choice !!!
7 年Very interesting perspectives.
Figuring out one day at a time
7 年I didn't look at collaboration in a negative connotation. I like " Disciplined Collaboration". This re-emphasiszes for me that nothing is sacrosanct.. Everything is contextual and audience based. Would love to learn more about it