Developing Collaborative Relationships

? As organizations face high levels of competition to achieve their sustainable targets in parallel to increasing their profits, people managers are required to help their organizations outperform their competitors through customer centric workforce devoted to creating and sustaining a culture of collaborative relationships, collaborative leadership, and integrity-based practices.??

?????Building a customer centric culture has never been easy to any organization. There is no doubt today that customers’ demands are growing bigger, expecting from the organizations they are dealing with a higher quality of service, a bigger value for less, in addition to undisputed integrity and trust. Companies are now exposed on social media more than before; internal customers or employees are now active to publicly share their customer experience with their employers to millions of global audiences including internal and external stakeholders whose disaffections will grow as a result of negative experiences. This creates a concern of how organizations may invest in their people priorities and develop an atmosphere of customer collaboration that enables top management to gain an insight to their people practices to truly understand the value-creation framework. Defining the way in which we estimate the value created by organizations is well illustrated in the valuation of publicly quoted companies along with those quoted on the S&P market index where tangible assets (that can be rapidly converted into cash) of S&P company’s market capitalisation went down to 83% in 1975, 68% in 1985, 32% in 1995, 20% in 2005, and closed at 16% in 2015. This sets a solid example that companies create and sustain their true value from their non-financial assets which are their human capital (Eugene Burke,2016).

?????People professionals play an important role in preparing leaders to intentionally create and facilitate a culture that promotes teamwork, positive conflict resolution, and effective collaboration between internal and external customers or stakeholders, consequently, the value is captured and measured by the service receiver regardless of the service delivery process perfection by the service giver. Therefore, trainings on effective collaboration techniques are required by talent management departments for middle managers and supervisors who are heavily involved in keeping their teams busy to achieve planned business outcomes. First, modelling a collaborative framework is required to minimize the bureaucratic layers for employees and customers to reach the right decision-making source. Employees and customers are encouraged to express their views and ideas, innovation and creativity are rewarded and leaders who demonstrate high level of collaboration are recognized and appreciated. Second, build strong networks and focus groups that challenge existing values to help reshape, restructure, revitalize and reform existing values which will lead to better off engagement and high level of commitment. Third, globalize collaboration to reach out for external customers and suppliers which will drive sharing of concerns and solving of emerging conflicts. Fourth, effectively manage workloads and burnouts for employees to maintain positive wellbeing and efficient productivity (Dori Meinert,2017). Focusing on customers will reshape the role of people professionals in their alignment of people strategy to their customer strategy, hence, learning programs will be developed by learning and development teams to upscale customer awareness, customer engagement, and measure customers’ satisfaction surveys to enhance future stakeholders value propositions (Dave Ulrich & Wayne Brockbank,2015).?

Although some studies on collaboration as a leadership tool were published to support the measure of justice and ethical conduct on interorganizational and intergroup collaborations levels (Badaracco, 2002; Covey, 1991; Greenleaf, 1977), a wider context of collaboration has been less discussed on the interpersonal and intraorganizational levels. Theorists have defined interorganizational collaboration as a mean to justify the end of winning cooperation (Yukl, Chavez, & Seifert, 2005), and this, in my opinion places collaboration in the wrong hands of leaders trying to use it as an influence strategy to produce commitment. Engagement will be traded-off with compliance, resulting in leadership and followership models instead of having one team’s collaborative model irrespective of hierarchical structure between seniors and subordinates. During the pandemic COVID19, our top management requested our team’s full readiness to workday and night helping other locked down employees to move into another partially curfewed areas, slogans like “one for all and all for one “, “together we prevail”, and “no one to be left behind” were hovering across departments and teams. We felt energized and achieved the target with our sales breaking a record of 300% due to market shortage of imported goods. Disappointment and devastated moral followed sooner when we all received any email claiming that yearly bonuses will be written off due to not achieving desired sales targets. Our employees turnover rate stroke highest levels of 15 % just 15 days following this misleading and appreciating message.????

?????Integrity is not taught or inherited, but rather practiced as part of a group culture that prohibits all types of unethical misconduct and fraud. Such corporate culture requires nurture and openness to customers’ voice and whistle blowing policies and procedures at workplace. The public opinion matters, especially in a world where digital communication and globalization are exposing corporate vice and malpractices to the open (CIPD,2017). Collaboration, hence, shall not be abused to rationalise breaking the rules and exposing any confidential information for the sake of self-gain, favouritism or nepotism. Organizational interests, information, or customer relations shall be safeguarded during any act of collaboration with external stakeholders. Code of conducts and anti-corruption policies and guidelines shall prevail during and after the customer tenure with the organization. Employer brand is never built through advertisements and word coating stories, it is built through workplace practices that are narrated either as success stories or as stories of a failure organization.?

Finally, I think collaboration if synchronized with a common purpose and value for the people in any organization, it will make such organization rise above competition with unbeatable competitive advantage represented in solid customers’ loyalties, and profound partnerships that create true ambassadors of leadership in every department.

References :

Eugene Burke (2016) , available at : people-and-the-creation-of-value_tcm18-19955.pdf (cipd.co.uk), accessed on October 29th , 2022. pp2-3.

Dori Meinert (2017), SHRM: How to Be a Collaborative Leader, available at: How to Be a Collaborative Leader (shrm.org), accessed on October 29th, 2022 .

Dave Ulrich & Wayne Brockbank (2015), SHRM: Focusing on Customers, available at : Focusing on Customers (shrm.org), accessed on October 29th, 2022.?

Badaracco, J. L. (2002): Leading quietly: An unorthodox guide to doing the right thing. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

S.R. Covey (1991): Principle-centered leadership, Free Press 1991.

R.K Greenleaf (1977): Servant leadership: A journey into the nature of legitimate power and greatness. New York, N.Y.: Paulist Press 2002.

G. Yukl, C. Chavez, & C.F. Seifert (2005): Journal of Organizational Behavior, Volume 26, published by: Wiley 2005.?

CIPD (2017): Ethical Behaviour – are CEOs falling short?, available at : Ethical behaviour – are CEOs falling short? | In a nutshell article | CIPD, accessed on October 30th, 2022.