Leadership and Collaboration: Shift To A More Collaborative Work Environment
Leadership and Collaboration
Collaboration - “Pass The Ball”
When it comes to leadership and collaboration, sometimes collaboration is overlooked as an important skill. Organizations may encourage it, think it’s ‘nice’ to have but rarely measure the impact of collaboration or lack of it, as directly impacting the bottom line.
In the article Forget Myers-Briggs: To Build a Great Team, Focus on 'Factor C' By Cass R. Sunstein and Reid Hastie, published on Jan 17, 2015, the authors explore what they call ‘Factor C’ – collaboration. Here is an excerpt from their article:
In 2010, the Miami Heat basketball team created a kind of dream team, with three genuine superstars: LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, and Chris Bosh. James and Wade rank among the best basketball players of all time, and Bosh has been an All-Star. When the team was initially assembled, Sunstein had the good fortune to meet the Boston Celtics’ Hall-of-Famer Bill Russell, who is the greatest winner, and the greatest team player, in the history of professional sports. In his thirteen years in the NBA, Russell won the championship eleven times—an astounding championship rate of 85 percent. By the way, Russell was an anxious leader. He was famous for vomiting before big games, and when he was in the bathroom (vomiting), his teammates knew that they could expect to win.
Excited and a bit terrified (what can one say to Bill Russell?), Sunstein asked Russell whether the Miami Heat would win the championship that year. Sunstein was confident that Russell would say yes; who could possibly beat a team with James, Wade, and Bosh? Instead Russell offered a definite “No!” When asked for an explanation, Russell gave a quiet but firm response: “One ball.” And in fact, the Heat lost in the finals that year to the Dallas Mavericks, a far less skilled team—but a team.
Which brings us back to Michael Jordan. By the time he retired, Jordan had become one of the greatest all-time winners, besting Johnson (but not Russell) with six championships to his credit. What happened?
Here’s a clue. Late in Game 5 of the 1991 NBA Finals at the Forum in Los Angeles, the Chicago Bulls were ahead 3 to 1 in the series, and they were clinging to a fragile lead. Though double-teamed, Jordan was still shooting a lot—and missing. During a crucial timeout, Phil Jackson, the Bulls’ coach, looked Jordan right in the eyes and said, “Michael, who’s open?” Michael didn’t answer. Jackson asked again. “Michael, who’s open?” Jordan responded: “Pax.”
“Pax” was John Paxson, an unheralded guard who was a deadly shooter, at least when no one was covering him. Jordan got the ball to Paxson, who nailed a series of open shots. The Bulls claimed the first of their NBA championships. And by the way, the Miami Heat eventually became a team as well, winning two championships after its initial defeat, arguably because of improved teamwork.
Collaboration is certainly more valuable in some industries than others. Clearly sports teams require a high degree of collaboration. What about your work team?
2. Collaboration – “Rock Stars and Lone Warriors”
Collaboration is one of the most important and often most challenging aspects to develop on a team. We naturally elevate personal excellence, skills, abilities and talents. At times, our ‘rock star’ players actually impede the growth of the team.
‘Rock star’ players can be self-focused, looking at what they can personally get, win, or accomplish versus considering what’s best for the company or the team. How do we invite our best and brightest to share their resources and encouragement to build a better team?
Consider what motivates our best players – what makes them tick? Is there a way we can frame the benefits of collaboration so we can utilize all the talent at the table? What type of conversations could we invent to encourage this type of generosity?
In Dave Logan’s book Tribal Leadership, he asserts there are 5 levels of organizational culture.
If you recognize your team is made up of lone warriors, you’re in Stage 3. Many companies enjoy plenty of success in Stage 3. Depending on your industry and overall corporate vision, you may have no problem staying in Stage 3. Logan estimates 49% of corporations operate at this level. However, you may be leaving resource and new levels of productivity and creativity on the table.
Transitioning from Stage 3 to Stage 4 requires, among other things, building shared values and creating micro-strategies to make adjustments in habits, process and attitudes. Disrupting the status quo on your team calls for courage and leadership.
3. Collaboration – “Topple the Silos”
Perhaps inside your department, there’s plenty of collaboration, what about among departments? I frequently hear statements like “our team works great together, we just don’t trust other departments” or “I know what to expect on my team, some of our other departments drop the ball”. In any industry, it takes multiple departments and functions to provide goods or services. Connection, communication and collaboration in between these departments is critical to producing an excellent experience for our customers.
A silo is a structure used to store grain; as a verb, it means to isolate. One reason to use a silo is to isolate and separate the grain from the elements. In the silo, it doesn’t get affected by wind or weather. In organizations, siloes function much the same way. When departments are siloed from each other, they don’t ‘affect’ each other. There’s little or no exchange or influence between them. In this type of vacuum, it’s easy to assume, make judgments, not listen or create ‘work arounds’ to avoid interaction.
The benefit of siloes is they provide an automatic excuse for why something didn’t get done on time, doesn’t work, didn’t launch etc… Keeping them in place allows each department to blame shift, have an ‘out’ when things don’t work. It reduces personal responsibility and diminishes shared vision.
The reality is every person, every department affects another. Organizations, like communities, are intertwined. Each decision in one area had some impact on another. Without this awareness, synergies get lost, resources are squandered and time is wasted.
Perhaps success in the coming year hinges upon creating new levels of inter-departmental collaboration. Who would you need to talk to? How would you start? What requests would you need to make and of whom? Consider the narrative you could create to compel action in this area.
4. Collaboration - “Creating Collaboration”
How do we encourage and create collaboration on our teams? There are multiple ways. To start, create a context for the benefit of collaboration – why do it, who does it benefit, what’s the bigger picture?
What are some important steps in creating a culture of collaboration? In a Harvard Business Review article in 2007 by Lynda Gratton and Tamara Erickson, they assert you need:
Executive Support (modeling collaborative behavior)
Focused Human Resource Practices (ensure requisite skills, create community)
Finding the Right Team Leaders (both people and task-focused)
Team Formation and Structure (role and task clarity, expectations)
What if we were looking to collaborate for something mind-blowingly innovative? We would want to invite collaboration with not only other departments but also other industries. In The Medici Effect by Frans Johansson, Frans highlights two different type of ideas: directional and intersectional. For example, a directional ideas is one within the same field, on the same path. It’s the most common type of idea, usually a refinement, enhancement or improvement. Intersectional ideas produce leaps along new directions, they are surprising, often opening up entirely new fields. People in different areas or different industries have new ‘eyes’ to see existing problems.
Collaboration takes on a whole new meaning when we’re willing to expand the circle and invite other perspectives into the mix. It may seem threatening at first, or slow, or frustrating – sharing with people who don’t ‘get it’ about your industry. However, over and over again, major innovations in science, architecture, food service and many other industries, are generated by exactly this type of process.
If you expanded your circle, who would you include? Why would you include them? What resource could become available in this bigger version of the circle?
Leadership and collaboration are perhaps one of the most important combinations to strive for the best results. If you’d like to discuss leadership and collaboration or dive deeper into leadership training, contact Yellow Marker here.
Are you wondering how to measure invisible metrics of leadership and how measuring leadership can help you? Read the article here.
Jean-Marie is a master trainer, having delivered over 15,000 hours of training time. Her experience ranges from corporate marketing in the US and international markets to inter-cultural work in Canada, Holland, Africa and the Middle East. Jean founded Yellow Marker with the vision of bringing character and values to the foreground in the commercial sector. Prior to founding Yellow Marker, Jean was CEO of Culture ROI. She developed and co-authored training materials and resources for CultureROI, their corporate clients as well as several non-profit and humanitarian organizations. Click here to schedule a call with Jean.