Shared Goals Lead to Mutual Benefit in Collaborations—Here are 3 Ways to Build and Sustain Them

In collaborative initiatives, mutual benefit has to mean more than "I get something out of this, and so do you."

There is value in collaborators achieving individual and independent goals, but some of the goals need to be shared for coordinated work to happen. Shared goals stimulate shared identity and shared effort. They grease the skids of collaboration.

But you can't just put some goals up on a whiteboard, or write them into an MOU, call them shared goals, and dive in. Like everything in collaboration, shared goals require care and feeding. Here are three things you can do to nurture and sustain those goals.

Talk About Them

Goals are often laid out at the beginning of an initiative, then never seen again, except maybe when the report is written. For goals to be shared, they have to be visible and regularly reinforced, and sometimes even adapted. So talk about shared goals a lot, at regular check-ins or even the beginning of every meeting.

Tolerate (Some) Selfishness

Conventional wisdom says that when actors behave in their own interests shared goals and coordinated effort are undermined. But they don't have to be. Don't make shared goals so brittle that they can't tolerate a little bit of selfishness. Everybody in your collaboration has their own organization's agenda to serve, and occasionally some selfish behavior is bound to emerge. When it does, it's time to talk about shared goals. Again.

Celebrate Small Wins

Buy-in happens over time. For some, it comes easy. Others need a lot of proof that goals are achievable and collaborators are trustworthy. When the group accomplishes something together in support of a shared goal—no matter how small the achievement—celebrate it. Shared goals require reinforcement.

Whatever you do, don't take shared goals for granted.