Here is the cold, hard truth: professionals want to collaborate, but they don’t know how. If your team is making any of these mistakes, it could be keeping you from collaborating effectively:
- Your team doesn’t understand that collaboration is uniquely different thatn cooperation and coordination. Collaboration involves creating new knowledge. To accomplish this, power needs to be dispersed and ideas must be allowed to flow. Define collaboration in advance and ensure everyone involved is working from the same definition.
- Your team believes that collaboration is required in all engagements with cross-functional colleagues. Determine up front whether your goals really require a collaborative effort if you just need to focus on empowering an individual or small group.
- Your team believes their collaborative efforts must result in consensus-style decision-making. Don’t allow debates to go on too long. Make sure all voices are heard and vetted, then move on to decision-making and coordinating next steps.
