Collaborative Leadership is the New App

Collaboration, by its very nature, tends toward disorder at times and a lack of central control by any one entity.                 Academics and Practitioners on Collaborative Leadership, Turning Point Leadership National Excellence Collaborative

Collaboration has been identified in the research as a leadership skill that is greatly needed, and which many leaders lack. It is a higher level  leadership skill than cooperation. Wikipedia defines it as

an emerging body of theory and management practice which is focused on the leadership skills and attributes needed to deliver results across organizational boundaries…

David Archer and Alex Cameron in their book Collaborative Leadership: How to succeed in an interconnected world, identify the basic task of the collaborative leader as the delivery of results across boundaries between different organisations. They say “Getting value from difference is at the heart of the collaborative leader’s task… they have to learn to share control, and to trust a partner to deliver, even though that partner may operate very differently from themselves.”^[4]

Collaborative leadership includes such broad skills as trust building and using systems thinking in solving problems. While it has been discussed primarily in public policy settings and science classes in the past, leadership programs around the world are now offering entire courses in collaborative leadership. The idea of collaborative leadership as essential in today’s complex business world is catching on. It is being seen as a source of competitive advantage for those organizations who are embracing it and using it well.

Some articles sorting out what it means

Using collaborative leadership is not intuitive and it’s not easy. It’s a “next level” leadership skill, which is why I called it the “New App.”  Here are some sources for understanding what it involves:

This MIT article, Collaborating for Systemic Change, describes collaboration as the new necessary competitive advantage.

The Institute for Collaborative Leadership has some interesting resources available.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek has added a regular column on Collaboration.

A source with free learning modules (yes – free!)

Complete free learning modules on Collaborative Leadership from Turning Point, including Self-Assessment Questionnaires.

Some food for thought about how it relates to ethical leadership

While ethics has been thought oftraditionally as about “doing the right thing,” the definition of “doing the right thing” is changing rapidly. We share a finite space with an increasing number of other citizens and organizations with values and mission that differ from our own.

[People] may be said to resemble not the bricks of which a house is built, but the pieces of a picture puzzle, each differing in shape, but matching the rest, and thus bringing out the picture.                            Felix Adler

As we face new challenges together related to resources, rights and responsibilities, collaboration becomes a necessary part of ethical leadership. As leaders, we are required to gear up to learn a more complex (and rewarding) way of leading others that integrates the needs of many into solutions, requires a systemic view and commitment to trust, and recognizes the chaotic beauty of leading across traditional dividing lines. We have a responsibility to work toward mutually beneficial solutions, rather than railroading our special interests through. We must use a bigger view that takes into account the ideas, values, rights and needs of others.

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