HOW COLLABORATIVE ARE YOU REALLY?

Collaboration is the Ultimate Leadership Challenge

Collaboration is the key that shifts leaders away from silo thinking towards co-creating solutions that solve collective business challenges. In the book ‘An Everyone Culture’, Robert Keagan states that “Most Managers have two jobs. The job they are hired for and the job of protecting that job. Guess which one they spend more time on?”.

Collaborative leadership is learning how to co-lead. When heads of departments compete with each other and treat each other like enemies when things go wrong, it is easier to look for who to blame and defend their position than stepping back to reflect on the bigger vision. This is when leaders get stuck in problems and spend time correcting the problem instead of collaborating 'ego-free’ to find winning solutions. Leadership teams are led by leaders who are often so passionate and dedicated to their job that they spend a good deal of the time defending their decisions and ideas and blaming other business units when things go wrong! In Neuro-Semantics we say: “Every behaviour has a positive intention.” So even when leaders become defensive and blame others for mistakes, the intention is most likely out of loyalty for their team members or departments. However, this prevents them from acting out their true intention of working towards common organisational goals to achieve the bigger vision. Sound familiar? What is often agreed in the boardroom is not delivered out of the boardroom. This is why collaboration is the ultimate leadership challenge.

The Days of the ‘Sole Leader’ are over! Collaboration happens when teams accomplish together what they cannot achieve individually. “High achieving Leaders no longer operate as ‘Lone Rangers’ or by demanding and controlling. Today organizations are led by leadership teams. These are teams of Managers and Leaders, of different departments coming together to achieve the organization goals. Leaders who operate in silo’s will simply not succeed in today's business world.” ~ Dr Michael Hall

Collaboration is more than coordinating activities, it is about becoming partners who work together, towards a shared outcome. Collaborating together to find collective solutions to systemic business challenges. “Collaboration will be the point of differentiation between the companies that grow successfully into the next decade and those that don’t” ~ Neil Mcphail, CEO of Best Buys (Quoted in the book 'The Collaborative Leader' by Michael Hall.

• How would better collaboration improve things in your organisation? 
• Would you like to measure yourself against specific criteria to find out how collaborate you really are?
• Would you like to find out what the stages of collaboration are?
• Would you like to learn more about the Collaborative Quadrants developed by Dr Michael Hall? This includes the qualities about yourself and others to be embraced for creating successful collaborations.
• Would you like to know the key secrets to become a competent collaborative leader and fully embrace the 8 collaborative states that will help you fully embody a collaborative spirit?
• What you like to better understand the collaborative process and be better equipped to plan highly effective collaborations?
• Would you like to know what are the secrets to successful collaboration?
• Would you like an opportunity to work on a collaborative project with a group of participants to make your learning real and experiential?

Attend the two-day Neuro-Semantic workshop below, to learn, grow and explore your collaborative best self.

Thursday 4 April and Friday 5 April at Voila

Two days with Aldem Salvana and myself, learning, discussing, sharing and applying the learning with practical activities!

This is what Aldem Slavana, the lead trainer delivering this training, had to say about collaborative leadership:

Collaboration is one of those deceptively common words like communication. In the same way that it is easier to miscommunicate than to effectively communicate, I learned that most collaboration efforts fail. After all, Scott peck observed that “we are all born narcissists."

I just watched a documentary of Techpreneur Elizabeth Holmes whose mesmerizing vision of a ground-breaking medical breakthrough drew in billions of support and investment from big names like the Google founders, Elon Musk, Walgreens, the Walmart Founders, Clinton, originators of Oracle and apple, heads of government, among others, drawing billions of investment, and attracting some of the best experts to collaborate. Then in four years, from being anointed as the next Steve jobs, her company collapsed to less than zero. And hers is not an isolated story. 

For every successful collaboration, 9 collaborative ventures either never take off or crash and burn down the road. And more who eventually succeed waste too much on avoidable relationship challenges and changes as people and partners come and go, stalling project and causing detours brought about by avoidable misunderstanding.

The field of Neuro-Semantics has found that there is a science and art to collaboration, which has been modeled after successful exemplars of collaboration. What excites me about the science is that it can be learned and coached on those who want to develop collaborative skills, states, processes, and qualities. 

This is the key focus of the workshop on the collaborative leader. The program covers the clear benefits of collaboration, the levels of collaboration, clarifying what many mistakes for collaboration is really not yet collaboration. Then there is the process of collaboration, which can only be properly undertaken if collaborators possess the right states for each stage. As a caution, we will also explore what can hinder or stop a collaboration.

 From the book, 'The Collaborative Leader’ by Dr Michael Hall, founder of Neuro-Semantics and the Meta-Coaching System: www.neurosemantics.com

In today’s interconnected world, collaboration is more important than ever. Neither individuals nor nations can afford to “go it alone,” operate in isolation, or act independent from the rest of the world. Today companies are moving to self-managing teams of people who via their collaboration provide the leadership and management required for their area of responsibility. To facilitate this, we need collaborative leaders who have the ability to set a vision, pioneer with a collaborative style, pull people together, and work through the conflict of differences so that a group spirit emerges, a community of care.

Why Collaboration?

• Larger results: Collaboration enables us to accomplish things together that are far bigger to accomplish alone.
• Increased ROI: High quality collaboration increases the ROI in organizations.
• Larger Challenges: Collaboration enables us to take on challenges which are too big for a single individual.
• Manage Risk: Collaboration managed well can reduce risk and the fears which accompany risk.
• Competitive Advantage: Many cutting-edge companies today are gaining competitive advantage. They access more talent to increase synergies which favor innovations.
• Face Uncertainty: Collaboration enables us to face the uncertainty and ambiguity which is required for creativity as we have each other to depend upon.
• Vitality: Collaboration enables us to have more fun at work, to be more playful and optimistic, adding an elan vitale to the organization.
• Fun: Collaboration enables groups and teams to experience greater levels of creativity and fun.
• Learning: Collaboration promotes group or team learning which transcends individual learning.
• Quality Relationships: Collaboration enriches the quality of relationships at work lower attribution which retains the best people.
• High Quality Culture: Collaboration enriches the kind of culture in organizations that increases the quality of creative products and services.
• Teamwork: Collaborations can inspire people to want to be a part of a group, a team, or an organization.

Benefits of Collaboration:

• Unleash Potential: Collaboration facilitates the unleashing of potential in all of the participants.
• New Gestalts: Collaboration can unleash a synergy to create things that are far “more than the sum of the parts.”
• Emotional Intelligence: Collaboration can enhance trust and emotional intelligence so there is more self-management, self-leadership, maturity, and sense of responsibility.
• Inspiration: Collaboration increases inspiration and motivation as we work on something larger than ourselves. It improves morale.
• Resilience: Collaboration makes us more resilient because we have others who can hold us up when the going gets tough.
• Humane Organizations: Collaboration enables us to make our worklife more human and humane. This reduces stress, dis-engagement, theft, etc.
• Creativity: “Collaboration is one of the best kept secrets in creativity.” (John Briggs)
• Neurological: We all feel the pull of both of these forces. They are built into our very neurology and psychology. We want to be independent and we want to be a part of a community. We want to be true to our innermost self and we want to be part of a winning team. Which force is stronger in you? Which force do you need to strengthen.

Collaborative Leadership

Date: 4 -5 April 2019

Venue: Voila Hotel, Bagatelle

Price: Rs 25,500

Course content:

• The 7 Collaborative Questions
• The Collaborative Process
• The Collaborative Quadrants
• The Quality of Collaboration
• Pseudo-Collaboration and Barriers to Collaboration
• Setting Ground Rules
• Creating a Collaborative Culture
• Principles of Collaboration
• Collaborative States of mind and body
• Abundance Mindset
• The Pyramid of TRUST

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