3.1 Collaborative leadership
Although the concept of collaborative leadership has been around for many years, it is a style that might be viewed as particularly relevant in current times.
Hank Rubin (2009), the founder of the Institute for Collaborative Leadership, provides the following explanation (p. 2):
You are a collaborative leader once you have accepted responsibility for building – or helping to ensure the success of – a heterogeneous team to accomplish a shared purpose.
This succinct summary is equally relevant whether you are leading the team in person or remotely.
In their book Collaborative Leadership: Building Relationships, Handling Conflict and Sharing Control, Archer and Cameron (2013) explain three critical skills and three essential attitudes a collaborative leader needs:
Skills
- Mediation – the ability to address conflict constructively and effectively as soon as it arises
- Influencing – the ability to share control and choose the best approach to influencing partners
- Engaging others – the ability to network and build relationships
Attitudes
- Agility – a forward-looking attitude of mind, coupled with an ability to quickly assimilate facts and ask incisive questions
- Patience – able to take a calm and measured approach, reflecting on new information and giving confidence to others
- Empathy – a willingness to truly listen and be open-minded to the views of others
They go on to lay out a ten-point manifesto for the collaborative leader:
- Seek out conflict early – address it openly and with confidence.
- Don’t expect your partners to have the same objectives as yourself – look for common ground.
- Understand that collaboration is not a zero-sum game – if you want your partners to invest in your success, you must invest in theirs.
- Value and use diversity to find innovative solutions.
- Only get as close and collaborate as much as the situation demands.
- Look to the long-term in relationships.
- Listen hard and then show you have understood what you heard.
- Be clear where the significant ‘points of interdependence’ are in a relationship.
- Engage others in your mission to be a collaborative leader.
- Be authentic in all you do.
Generalising, this research represents a Western view of collaboration, which comes from a more individualistic starting point. Elsewhere in the world, for example East Asia, people have a more naturally collaborative/collectivist approach, stemming from a childhood focused on family and community.
What is your experience of collaboration?
Activity 2 Are you collaborative?
Choose one skill and one attitude from Archer and Cameron’s list. Reflect on when you have demonstrated those attributes or seen others do so. In the box below, describe your best example(s).
If you find this a useful exercise, and have experience of leading both in person and remote teams, it might be interesting to compare the two experiences. Is there any difference in how you demonstrate your chosen skill or attitude? Are you more comfortable in one context than the other?
Discussion
Being collaborative in your approach is an increasingly important leadership skill and brings many potential benefits. Looking from a wider perspective, collaborative projects are more likely to win funding; your connections and collaborations will make you better informed about competitors and context; the individuals you add to your network might have an impact on your future career, etc.
Looking closer to home, creating the right environment and encouraging your team members to collaborate more effectively might take some effort, but is an important aspect of a leader’s role. Even if you are not yet the leader, you can use some of the skills and attitudes outlined by Archer and Cameron, to work more effectively with other team members.
Whether you are collaborating with your colleagues or beyond your organisation, the core skills required are the same.
If you are struggling to think of examples of when you’ve demonstrated these skills, talk to your boss or mentor about ways in which you can become more involved in collaborative projects, for example, working across teams or departments.