How often have you heard that the team has to collaborate to find a solution? The team has to reach consensus to make a decision. What usually happens? The strong, dominant members of the team, sometimes those with power, drive the rest of the team members to agree and happily call it collaboration.  What if the players on the team are from competitive groups? What if team members were “voluntold” to participate on a team to do work that they:

• don’t believe in
• have no interest in or
• want to see fail

If a team member comes to the game with one of those mindsets, collaboration becomes more than problematic, it can be not only impossible, the result could be worse than no collaboration at all.
However, hard it is, the fact is, collaboration is the key to successful projects. No one succeeds alone and the process of multiple minds working together to find creative solutions is critical. As leaders in the mist, it’s up to us to help facilitate and build what I call a collaborative structure; where collaboration is the way to get work done. In the book, Radical Collaboration, James Tamm and Ronald Luyet describe five essential skills for collaboration. I’ll paraphrase them here:

1. Collaborative Intention – Maintaining an authentic, nondefensive presence – with a commitment to mutual success
2. Truthfulness – Commit to telling and listening to the truth
3. Self-accountability – Take responsibility for the choices made either through action or failing to act.
4. Self awareness and awareness of others – Commit to understanding one’s own and others’ concerns, intentions and motivations
5. Problem solving and negotiation – Commit to cooperation and avoid competitiveness.

Great ideas aren’t they? Pretty obvious as well. But how do you help others on the team to practice these skills? You won’t be able to say in  a meeting, “Hey, I don’t think you’re practicing a collaborative intention!” and expect the person to say, “Hey, you’re right! Thanks for telling me.”
The answer lies in becoming the change you would like to see. (Thanks, Gandhi!)

1. Collaborative Intention: Demonstrate collaborative intention by releasing your ideas. Never defend an idea – be willing to change it. Here’s a technique that I  call, “Change Accommodation,” and  have used very effectively. You present an idea or approach. Someone says, “That won’t work.” Your natural reaction is to defend the idea, explain why it will work and why it is right. Resist the urge. Try this: “How can I change it to make it work for you?” Two things can happen. You’ll get some input that will make it more powerful and you’ve modeled collaborative intention. Another possibility is that the team member will not be able to offer something and you’ve still modeled collaborative intention. It does something else as well. It changes the interchange from competitive to collaborative with a single question and takes the pressure off you and puts it on the person requiring the change.
2. Truthfulness: It’s not a simple blurting out of what you believe to be true. It is the calm articulation of your position. It is indeed a double-edged sword. You must be willing to listen to what others believe to be the truth – using Change Accommodation will temper how you feel. Allow yourself to be changed.
3. Self-accountability – always be prepared to apologize. Perceived mistakes are the same as those you recognize. Perception is reality – if someone perceives an error, even if you disagree, apologize and ask again what you can do to make it right.
4. Self-awareness and awareness of others: This is about discovery. If feelings or concerns are not addressed, the team member will use the entire meeting to try to resolve these feelings. Take the time to ask; to be aware of body language and facial expressions. Understand that collaboration is not our natural behavior and be the person to facilitate it.
5. Problem Solving and Negotiation: Being part of the solution is a natural result of change accommodation. When you always ask how you can change to make an idea, a concept, a method to make it work, you are defaulting to problem solving. 

The result is collaboration and collaboration will equal excellence.

Wouldn’t it be grand if we could predict the behavior of people the same way we can predict system behavior? How often does what you are trying to accomplish appear straight forward but the people get in the way? I don’t know about you but for me, it’s a daily occurrence and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  People with their unique talents, unique approaches are what makes everything we do have value. The real challenge is to accept that uniqueness and make it work. In the book, First Break All The Rules, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman unveil a different approach to thinking about people. That, we, as managers often use the word competency to encompass skills, knowledge and talent. In fact, these are very different things and should be viewed separately.  They postulate that the approach of having people “work on” competencies where they are weakest is flawed.
I can’t play basketball, never could. I could be given the best coach, play 12 hours a day and I may improve to become a poor player at best. That’s because I have absolutely no talent for it.  We work with talented people everyday. But often, we force them into trying to improve in areas where they simply do not have any talent. We may be able to improve their performance marginally, but,  just like me and basketball, it will be mediocre at best. So, what do we do instead?
Why not discover what people are really good at and have them do more of it in the context of their roles in the organization? Why not think of partnerships where individual strengths can complement each other?  What are you really great at? How can you take that strength and apply it in a way that helps you do your job more effectively, helps you set the path to being not just good but great?
People aren’t perfect – but I wouldn’t want them to be.