Business, Philosophy, Entrepreneurship

The Best Collaboration

Raising Your Leadership Game

Collaboration is a fundamental component of every successful endeavor, yet there are still some who would put it’s value below others. It is however, a coequal among those components, going beyond simple communication and relationship-building.

Much of the initial collaboration in your endeavors is not necessarily inside your sphere of control, things like sunlight, air, and gravity to name a few, but try doing something without them. We don’t always appreciate or even acknowledge this collaboration, but we should never take it for granted.

Another type of collaboration we should appreciate, comes from the biological and evolutionary marvel that is the human body. You have been able to wield all four parts of a successful endeavor since the moment of your creation. Where you were born or when you were born are irrelevant to this ability. We were created with the instinct to use the tools that lead to success, and that instinct was given indiscriminately to all of us.

Can everyone maximize the use of this ability? Unfortunately, the answer is no. Due to factors such as genetics and life circumstance, a person may have or may develop physiological and/or psychological barriers that could prevent maximization, but that wouldn’t necessarily exclude them from using the ability in a less than maximized capacity.

For most people, the biggest factor preventing the maximization of collaboration, is individual preference.

A leader in an organization may go through their career with a specific set of habits when it comes to collaboration. If they experience any type of success, then those habits become reinforced. When they are challenged with a new position and a new team, they bring their same “success process” with them. It may work again — several times in fact. At this point, there is no reason for them to change their process, or even doubt its capability. Then one day, in a new position with a new team, the leader meets with abject failure.

“I don’t understand,” they will say. “This is the same process I’ve used many times before, and it has always worked. The only difference now, is the team. Either the team is inferior, or someone is out to get me!”

In every endeavor, collaboration is one hundred percent present.

In this scenario the leader was likely accustomed to putting in a certain percentage of the effort towards collaboration. It is a perhaps an amount with which they felt comfortable, or the amount they preferred to invest. Let’s just assume it was thirty percent, while the remaining seventy percent would have fallen to an investment from the team. As long as the team consistently made up for that deficit, they would have met with success. This is actually a formula that could have worked like magic several times, but only because of the sacrifices of the individual teams, or even the individual team members.

There is no magic, only effort.

Now imagine the leader was put in charge of a team that was only willing to match the leader’s thirty percent effort in collaboration. Added together, the sixty percent effort would’ve fallen short, the outcome of the endeavor would’ve been failure, and it likely would have surprised the leader.

It could be that the leader would not have been opposed to investing greater effort, but they never took the time to understand that in the past, the extra effort and sacrifice had always been delivered by the team. They did not realize the degree of importance collaboration plays in success. They were simply left wondering why the magic had stopped working.

This isn’t to say this would have been an easy fix, but not taking the time to understand why your endeavor works, can lead you to take the unknown for granted. Every time you do that, you run the risk of having your endeavor end prematurely.

The method for creating collaboration begins with utilizing communication to build relationships with your team. This creates a reciprocating loop where an established relationship can help improve your communication, which will lead to a stronger relationship, and so forth. Remember to do this early, well in advance of the time collaboration with the team becomes critical.

Efficient communication, plus a strongly built relationship will equal powerful collaboration. Try your best to communicate with your team in a way that strengthens and maintains the relationship, but do not forego vital communication for the sake of that relationship. If something needs to be communicated, do it, even if it causes a rift. Neither communication alone, nor the existence of a relationship, are sufficient enough to maximize collaboration. Only when you are utilizing all three, is when the true benefits of collaboration materialize.

There are many reasons people choose to stay away from communication and relationship-building, including things such as shyness, the undervaluing of relationships, and sometimes, it just isn’t something people think about.

But if you really want to raise your game in the art of leadership, take the time to get to know everyone on your immediate team. And if you get to know others further down the hierarchy, it’s only going to help you.

The most important item to learn about them is their personal vision, and how it relates to the organizational vision. If you believe the two visions will be similar, you will be sadly mistaken. As soon as a vision is created at the first level and communicated down to the second, that vision gets converted into several personalized visions. The further outward it travels, the more variants are created. This is why organizations work so hard to deliver one message all the way down to their lowest ranks, but it doesn’t matter. They will still have people in nearly all levels whose attitude is, “I just work here.”

For all of us, the journey together is but temporary — make the most of it.

The best leaders do not shy away from relationship-building, because they are well aware of the value gained. They will look at an obstacle like the existence of personalized visions in their team and help rebuild them. They will help the individual team member embrace a vision that is a blend of the team member’s personal vision, the organizational vision, as well as the leader’s own personal vision. It will not always produce a one hundred percent win/win/win situation, but it is a realistic collaboration with gains for all. The best leaders can do that, because they have taken the time to understand their team.

The article you just read is largely about collaboration, but even if you practiced everything in it to near perfection, you would still only be twenty-five percent successful. But as you continue your journey towards better leadership, practice the art of collaboration every chance you get.

A good leader communicates, a great leader builds relationships, and a wise leader creates collaboration. Be all three.