Key Insights: Building a Culture of Collaboration
- Collaboration, the ability to work with others willingly and agreeably toward a common purpose, happens when people actively leverage the unique talents, perspectives, and insights of others to achieve shared goals.
- Research shows that most leaders spend the majority of their time collaborating, but only a small percentage believe their teams consistently achieve outstanding results.
- Effective collaboration starts with creating the right environment by identifying barriers, encouraging productive behaviors, and aligning teams around common goals.
- One surprising strategy for better collaboration is beginning with individual thinking before group discussion. Silent idea generation leads to more original, higher-quality contributions and greater accountability.
- High-performing collaborative teams establish clear principles, communication rhythms, and action steps that guide how they work together moving forward.
- Collaboration becomes sustainable when it is embedded into company culture through shared values, supportive incentives, and recognition of successful teamwork.
- Organizations that learn to collaborate and adapt effectively are better positioned to innovate, solve problems, and thrive long term.
“When I was a kid, there was no collaboration; it’s you with a camera bossing your friends around. But as an adult, filmmaking is all about appreciating the talents of the people you surround yourself with…”.
Steven Spielberg, Film Director, Writer, and Producer
Growing up in the 1970s and ‘80s, we played a lot of pickup games (yes, I’m that old and yes, you’re still listening to my music). In the summer and after school, we’d meet up at the dusty baseball diamond with the rusted fence, or the clover-laden football field, or the metal-chained basketball hoops, and organize the game. No coaches, no referees, no parents, no issues with showing up on time, just really fun and competitive games. We were highly effective collaborators and didn’t know it.
Collaboration: The What and Why
To collaborate is to work with others willingly and agreeably for a common purpose. Taking a page from Spielberg’s script for success and our after school pick-up games, are we as business leaders actively aware of and tapping into the talents and insights of those around us on a regular basis in order to drive towards our destination?
Several studies suggest we have an opportunity to shorten our paths to success by engaging in effective collaboration. Why is this relevant? The majority of leaders and their direct reports are involved in collaborative activities a whopping 85 percent of their time. A survey by Human Capital Media Research found that 58 percent of cross functional groups within organizations do not effectively align their strategies with one another. And when collaboration is occurring, it’s not always achieving its intended effects. Research shows that a meager 6 percent of people collaborating through cross-functional groups think that they are regularly achieving outstanding results and less than 10 percent report that information is shared effectively. How then, can we improve our collaboration?
Context for Collaboration
The following questions can serve as a starting point in examining the environment for collaboration in your organization:
1. What factors have inhibited collaboration?
2. What factors have facilitated collaboration?
3. Identify the mindsets, behaviors, and actions that can foster future collaboration for your group.
A subtle but powerful technique to turbo charge collaboration is to work alone. Say what? While the idea of working by oneself to collaborate more effectively is counterintuitive, research demonstrates its value. Dozens of studies show that during idea generation sessions, those people who worked in silence to think about and record their ideas prior to talking with others produced higher quality and significantly more ideas than those that immediately jumped into conversations.
Beginning a session by having people work individually to write down their ideas allows for more original thoughts to surface because people aren’t immediately influenced by the first thing that comes out of their colleague’s mouth. Working alone to start also spreads accountability for ideas across the entire group, preventing the mental drafting that some do to avoid having to contribute. Finally, studies show that in idea generation sessions, individual thinking prior to group conversation generates a higher quality and quantity of ideas than initiating the session with collective brainstorming.
Collaboration Agenda
If you have teams that are struggling with collaboration, here is an agenda that may help grease the wheels for more productive cooperation:
Goal: Identify principles and practices to foster high-level collaboration between your teams.
Pre-Work: Please review the following questions and come prepared to discuss your ideas:
1. Collaborate is defined as “to work with others willingly and agreeably for a common purpose.” How would you describe the common purpose for our teams?
2. Consider two examples from your past where excellent collaboration occurred. What were the key factors that created the high-level of collaboration? How could those factors be applied to these teams?
3. What challenges or issues could hinder high-level collaboration between our teams?
4. A principle is defined as “a guiding rule of conduct.” What principles do you believe would help guide strong collaboration for our teams?
5. What action steps would you recommend to ensure high-level collaboration between our teams moving forward? Consider purpose, cadence, people, forum, etc.
Collaboration is fueled by mindset, language, and behaviors. The quality and quantity of collaboration is embedded in an organization’s DNA, consisting of the values and principles by which people work. Start by identifying the types of activities, and principles that will stimulate collaboration and introduce them into everyday interactions. Ensure that culture and financial incentives are supporting collaboration and share examples of successful collaboration and the benefits its’ generated.
Charles Darwin, the English naturalist, wrote: “It is the long history of humankind and animal kind, too, those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” And that’s coming from the guy who’s known for the natural selection theory “survival of the fittest.” So let’s collaborate more effectively and more often and be comforted by the fact that we no longer have our parents screaming across the neighborhood, “Dinner time!”