How to Become a Stronger Collaborative Leader

The unquestioned authority of leaders in the past has been replaced by the need to enlist all team members as true partners. This updated leadership style is an essential ingredient for success in a collaborative culture. Embracing connection-based leadership makes you approachable, likeable, and trusted. Your team feels comfortable and secure offering their suggestions and honest feedback.

To sharpen your collaborative leadership, here are my A-to-Z tips:

· ACKNOWLEDGE collaborative team members. Recognize and reward people who learn, teach and share.

· BODY LANGUAGE will either support or undercut your verbal messages. You gain credibility when what you say is supported (and not sabotaged) by your nonverbal signals.

· CUSTOMERS are part of your team. When you build collaborative relationships with your internal customers, you give them power and investment in your team’s success.

· DIVERSITY is crucial to harnessing the full power of collaboration. Group members who think alike or are trained in similar disciplines with similar knowledge bases run the risk of becoming insular in their ideas. Diversity causes people to consider perspectives and possibilities that would otherwise be ignored.

· ELIMINATE the barriers to a free flow of ideas. When people are free to challenge the status quo and offer novel--even bizarre--suggestions, collaboration becomes a more creative process. And challenge the “knowledge is power” attitude. Let people know that knowledge is not a commodity like gold, which holds (or increases) it’s worth over time. It’s more like milk – fluid, evolving, and stamped with an expiration datehere's nothing less powerful than hanging on to knowledge whose time has expired.

· FAILURE needs to be embraced for people to learn. Let the lessons learned from failures and mistakes become the basis for future success.

· GUIDE the energies and talents of others while keeping your own ego in check. Managing through positive influence and inclusion is much more effective than managing by position.

· HONESTY is the hallmark of a collaborative leader. People may not always like the truth, but they'll never forgive you for lying.

· INNOVATION is fostered by collaboration. Creativity is triggered by a cross-pollination of ideas. It is in the combination and collision of ideas that creative breakthroughs most often occur.

· JOIN the celebration. Periodically, take time to celebrate with your team and acknowledge whatever progress has been made to date.

· KNOWLEDGE comes in different forms. Explicit knowledge can be transferred in a document or entered in a database. Tacit knowledge needs a conversation, a story, a relationship. Make sure you are developing strategies to capture both.

· LEADERS at all levels of an organization can nurture collaboration within their own work group or staff. It only requires making people feel safe and valued by encouraging and respecting everyone's contribution.

· MIX it up by inviting managers from other areas of the organization to attend (or lead) your team meetings.

· NETWORK throughout the organization to enhance collaboration. You can accelerate the flow of knowledge and information across boundaries by encouraging team members to build relationships across the organization.

· OPEN up communication channels and encourage transparent communication. The way information is handled determines whether it becomes an obstacle to or an enabler of collaboration. Make sure you are modeling the behavior you want from others.

· PARTNERSHIP. As one savvy leader put it, “It's pretty simple, really. Treat all team members as your partners. Because they are."

· QUESTION. At the beginning of a project, ask: What information/expertise do we need? Who in the organization has done this before? Who else will need to know what we learn? How do we plan to share what we learn?

· RELATIONSHIPS matter. The success of any team – its creativity, productivity, and effectiveness – hinges on the bonds of its members. Taking time to strengthen personal relationships at the beginning of a project will increase the effectiveness of a team later on.

· STORIES – of successes, failures, opportunities, challenges, and knowledge are the best transmitters of information. Find those stories and tell them.

· TRUST is the foundation for collaboration. If you want to create a highly collaborative team, the first and most crucial step is to build trust.

· UNIFY your team around its goals.  Your team needs to understand the overarching goals of the total organization and the importance of working in concert with other areas to achieve those crucial strategic objectives.

•     VALUE is created by building collaborative leadership skills. These skills are highly portable, as organizations from high-tech to healthcare are shifting to cultures of inclusion and collaboration.

•     WATCH where people sit. People are naturally reluctant to share information with others when they don’t know them personally well enough to evaluate their trustworthiness. If you notice that the same people are taking the same seats at every meeting, rearrange the seating to encourage new relationships to develop.

• EXamine how people learn. Real learning doesn’t take place in the classroom - or in any formal setting. In fact, people were found to learn more from comparing experiences in the hallways than from reading the company’s official manuals or attending training sessions.

•     YOUR success is dependent on the collective wisdom and experience of everyone on your team. No one person has all the answers. Regardless of how talented you are, no leader, is smarter than the collective genius of the entire team.

•      ZEST. Embrace your role as leader with zest and lead your team in learning and developing their collaborative leadership skills.