Dr. Bill Howatt, Founder and CEO Howatt HR.
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Collaborative leadership is the action that promotes and allows two or more parties to engage in open, cooperative and respectful communication. This creates spaces where all parties feel safe to be their authentic selves and share their perceptions, beliefs and concerns without fear of retaliation or judgment. Collaboration allows for spirited debate on differences and recognizes that conflict is an opportunity for new thinking and ideas, not a barrier. Collaboration aims to enable all parties to feel their contributions matter and are supported and listened to.
Collaborative leadership goes beyond a leader’s team. It includes discovering the best way to join forces with other leaders to ensure no silos between groups impede opportunities to achieve the organization’s full potential.
Leadership development regarding collaboration typically focuses on the employee-leader relationship. This key performance behavior (KPB) can create positive employee experiences. KPBs are the habits leaders are encouraged to develop to maximize the employee experience and create psychologically safe workplaces.
Mastering KPBs like collaboration and listening requires knowledge, skills and practice until they become habits. Leaders must appreciate the intrinsic and extrinsic benefits to be motivated to develop a KPB and convert it into a habit.
Leaders focused on their objectives can drain an organization’s potential. For example, Group A’s leader is meeting their goals, but Group B’s is failing to achieve theirs. Collaborative leadership would encourage Group A’s leader to explore helping their colleague win.
Collaborative leadership sets the expectation that all leaders are willing to share information, help others succeed and look beyond just achieving their own objectives to help the organization succeed.
Senior leadership’s expectations and reinforcement of incentive models can influence leaders' behavior. Key performance metrics define how leaders’ success is evaluated to define their organizational value. Collaborative leadership must be clearly defined with a Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) framework that provides continuous feedback on how leaders are learning and adopting this critical KPB. Information and expectations are useless without a focus on collaboration becoming a core leadership habit that is reinforced, recognized and rewarded.
Some CEOs set the expectation for collaborative leadership as desirable. However, they fail to ensure there are no conflicting incentives to distract leaders and reinforce old mindsets, habits and silo behaviors.
4 Steps For Building Collaborative Leadership
Effective leaders accept that employees’ experiences matter and are maximized through collaboration. Leaders’ experiences also matter. They are enhanced when they support their peers. Let's look at a few steps to get to that point.
1. Define The Owner And Adopt A PDCA Approach
Determine who is accountable for monitoring and evaluating leaders’ effectiveness in collaborative leadership. Who will the CEO look to if this initiative is not having an impact? A few leaders cannot handle this task by themselves. Without accountability, this initiative may become another activity that drains energy and fails to achieve its potential.
Some unlearning and new learning will likely be required to develop collaborative leadership habits among all leaders. Plan by setting expectations for collaborative leadership. Do means implementing the plan through communications and training. Check to ensure what was done in the Do step is working. Adjust what can be done to improve results. The CEO and senior leadership must accept that this initiative requires focus and patience. Like achieving any behavioral outcome, success requires constant monitoring and reinforcement.
2. Set Expectations And Ground Rules And Clarify Value
Do not assume that every leader understands the desirable collaborative leadership behaviors that will help an organization succeed or why they are critical. Being told something is important is not the same as understanding why. Knowing an initiative’s purpose creates an opportunity to plan expectations and put them in writing. Stress test this expectation with a sample of established and new leaders to get their reactions, observations and concerns.
Before seeking feedback in one-on-one sessions or focus groups, set ground rules that create a safe space for sharing information without fear of consequences. This step’s goal is to become as clear as possible within the organizational context about collaborative leadership and why there could be a lost opportunity and risk to the organization if it is not implemented.
3. Discover Barriers And Remedies
Leadership behavior in established cultures is often driven by system norms and expectations that may require success metrics and policy changes around rewards and incentives. Barriers impede leaders from collaborating. Common barriers include being unsure of one’s role, being unclear on responsibilities and accountability and feeling pressure to achieve deliverables. Leaders may lack energy or time to support peers, the culture may have entrenched silos or incentives could be rewarding silo behaviors.
Other barriers like little-P politics, personalities, proximity, leaders’ stress levels and concerns about confidentiality, and limits to what is allowed to be discussed may hinder progress. Senior leaders must understand the barriers and look for ways to remove them. Check with leaders to test whether the remedies make sense and what support is needed. The CEO and senior leaders must be clear they want to develop the KPB collaborative leadership habit. This will not happen overnight, as new behaviors and habits take time to master.
4. Prioritize And Action Expectations
Implementation is about action, not perfection. It takes time to get leaders who are entrenched in old habits to learn how collaborative leadership benefits themselves, their peers and their organization. It may take time to remove some barriers during the implementation process. Talk openly about what may be harder to change. Collaborative leadership can be implemented by setting expectations in writing from the CEO and senior leadership and providing training and coaching for leaders.
Leaders may need additional skills like self-care and emotional literacy to collaborate. Leaders with established mental fitness habits are more likely to cope with stress, regulate their emotions to meet the demands of their role and have the capacity to look outside their accountabilities to support other leaders.
Once this KPB is launched and positioned as critical leadership behavior for success, those accountable for ensuring the PDCA framework is followed through should be rewarded, valued and recognized.
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