Getting Comfortable with Collaboration

As a leader, are you truly comfortable with collaboration?

We praise and encourage collaboration for improving problem solving, increasing creativity, and spurring innovation. Done correctly, it does yield all these benefits. But it can also be scary for us as leaders. Here are three facts you have to accept, and embrace, about collaboration before it can work:

• You won't know the answer. There's no point in collaborating on a complex problem if you know how to solve it. Be comfortable with ambiguity and accept that you aren't necessarily the expert.  The wisdom is in the room because it is a collective wisdom.
• Roles will be unclear. Responsibilities are often fluid. Be ready for the role you play to change with each phase of the work.  That said, addressing who is responsible for what can be helpful in moving work forward.  It just doesn't need to be you, as leader, who determines who does what.
• You will fight. If you avoid conflict, nothing will happen. Knowing how to debate tradeoffs between options means knowing how to productively argue.  This may take some practice for the whole group.  Establishing norms for processing different opinions is very helpful.  Effective processes also allow for a range of voices.

Adapted from "Eight Dangers of Collaboration" by Nilofer Merchant.

Stop Emailing! Pick up the Phone!

As a leader, do you build strong working relationships by using personal communication?

Email has dramatically changed the way we interact. But, it cannot replace live, person-to-person conversation. This especially applies when resolving a conflict or communicating an important decision.  Too many people try to do important or sensitive business through email. This is problematic because tone and context are easy to misread. In a live conversation, how one says something is as important as what they are saying. Without inflections and intonations, it's hard to understand the feelings behind the words. In fact, email-based conflict often escalates because you aren't required to be as thoughtful as you would be in a one-on-one conversation.  Indeed, even apparently benign emails can turn ugly if they are misunderstood.  Next time you have a delicate or complex issue to discuss, take your hands off the keyboard and pick up the phone.

Keep your communications emotionally intelligent.


Adapted from "Don't Send That Email. Pick up the Phone!" by Anthony Tjan.