Collaborative Leadership Requires Planning

Greater levels of collaboration require collaborative leadership. I truly believe this. 

When a company is looking to improve and create a greater level of collaboration within the organization, they often don’t realize they need to bring collaborative leadership into the equation. 

In a lot of cases, the company “doesn’t know what they don’t know,” which is why education is important. 

Sometimes you get educated by reading a book and sometimes you get educated by just jumping in and putting collaborative leadership into action by restructuring things within the company so people work on teams. 

A lot of times when people hear “collaborative leadership,” they still tend to leave off the “collaborative” and leave off the “leadership.” So what happens is you end up with a group of people that are usually the same skill level and the same tenure level working to make things happen. 

But collaborative leadership is about the skills and techniques individuals within a team use to help make sure everyone is meeting the team’s goals and moving forward. 

I think that’s probably why there are so many misconceptions about collaborative leadership. 

A lot of times when people work on a team, there’s no position of authority assigned. This is a misconception. 

Teams still need to have a traditional reporting structure and/or the usual administrative/managerial tasks that would normally be associated with a hierarchical structure. 

When companies attempt to institute collaborative leadership, the hierarchical structure gets left off. So the company does gain the additional creativity from the collaborative structure, but it loses out on a lot of productivity it would normally gain from having a team structure in the first place. 

In order to develop collaborative leadership at your company, you want to build up the framework that’s going to support collaboration, but without letting it run rampant.

It’s really about striking a balance and not letting the pendulum swing too far in one direction or the other. 

Before you move your company from a more traditional structure into a team-based structure, there are some things to keep in mind: 

• Clearly defined expectations—In a team structure, you’re going to have people collaborating on the final output, as well as collaborating on what the output should be. You’re going to have a bunch of employees “wrestling” to be the visionary leader of the team, and a lot of times this causes the company to get stuck in the initial implementation phase.
  
  So if you’re going to send people off to solve a problem together or to be creative together, they need to have a clear vision that is shared, or some clear expectations, beforehand.
  
  
• Hang on to your management and administrative functions—You want to make sure that, once you implement collaborative leadership, you’re not losing all your management and administrative functions.
  
  For example, a project management function usually includes a project manager who has the authority to delegate tasks, but in a collaborative structure everyone works on the same level. This means there’s no position of authority, and a lot of times, as a result, the team isn’t holding people accountable for maintaining schedules for completing tasks.
  
  You need to make sure that all your management or administrative functions—reporting functions, project management functions, etc.—are assigned to individuals within the team.  
  
  
• Structure your meetings—You need to make sure the members on your teams have effective meeting skills. This is important so meetings are productive and not a waste of everyone’s time. It’s also important so meetings have a structure and someone to run them.
  
  
• Teach employees to lead by example—In a collaborative structure, usually what happens is the most dominant personality will attempt to take the leadership role within the group, rather than working in a new way.
  
  In order to stop this from happening, you really need to “roll up your sleeves” and show people how collaboration works and why it’s the best option.
  
  
• Lead by logic—If you can develop the skills to show other people your logic-chain, that helps you build consensus and prove that you’re basing decisions on logic and not on anything subjective. This will also help you maintain employee relationships and ensure everyone agrees. 

Taking the above-mentioned points into consideration will help you transition your workplace from a hierarchical structure to a team-based, collaborative structure.

When a company is looking to improve and create a greater level of collaboration within the organization, they often don’t realize they need to bring collaborative leadership into the equation.