You may be working as part of a group or team but you may not be sure if you are all working toward the same goal. Does everyone share the same idea about the result you want to achieve? Do people agree on the form that the project will take? Do they need to? You can ask…
Listening: A key skill for collaboration
It may seems like a lot of work to listen to others and build understanding. Sometimes we don’t take the time to hear or read about ideas being put forward by others. But projects don’t evolve without input from all the players. Collaboration that is not going well is a sure sign that someone is not being heard.
Collaborate better: A guide for teams and partners
The right effort at the right level Let’s look at 4 ways of working with others. Your understanding of what happens at each level can help you become a more valuable contributor to any project. From there you can build a checklist for any collaborative effort you engage in. 1. Networking When you exchange contact information with someone and express interest in an idea at an informal meeting, you are kicking off a…
Great Collaboration Tables 1 – King Arthur and his Knights
Collaboration happens at tables, usually in meeting rooms. Legendary meeting tables continue to inspire our work together. In this series, let’s look at one that comes to us through the mists of time: the Round Table of King Arthur and his Knights. According to legend, King Arthur drew the sword Excalibur from the stone—a feat that made him ruler of…
Collaboration and what we can learn from slime mould
Guest blogger Max Hardy looks at what slime mould teaches us about collaboration: that our identity is not lost when collaborating and that collaboration helps solve complex problems. A big thanks to Max for sharing his thoughts here. I’ve been reading a terrific book titled Collaborative Leadership: Building relationships, handling conflict and sharing control by David Archer and Alex Cameron. Drawing on the…
5 practical benefits of collaboration
People are talking about the benefits of collaboration. Michael Hyatt and Michele Cushatt looked at five advantages from their experience in a video that is no longer available. I will summarize their points here. But there were many gems, such as how it is not necessary to completely agree with one another when collaborating. They also address how to build great collaborative teams….
Embracing success: Six signs that your collaboration will survive … and thrive
When you are collaborating, it’s a lot like dancing. There are steps, actions, paths, communication, coordination, skills, postures and positions, and it all takes time and practice. How do you know if it will work or not? Today, I’d like to offer you six signs to look for. They are inspired by the dancers in Roberto Blizzard‘s video “Dancing…
Repairing connections in collaboration
When you work with others, you have expectations. Sometimes the connections on the great project tree seem damaged, dried up, brittle and fragmented. The project drags on. You have a deadline. How do you do your job? Questions open the door to deeper collaboration … or not This week, I wrote to a subject matter expert who was assigned as the main information…
Perfect Collaborators
We often have a pretty good idea about who we’d like to work with on a project: people we like, especially folks who have the skills and qualities the project needs but we lack. Yet finding the perfect collaborators is not a cat-and-mouse game. Collaboration is about having a shared purpose. Everyone involved in a project brings a unique perspective and they…
With support, collaboration promotes insight and innovation
Insight is a new way of seeing a problem, a new awareness or understanding. It becomes possible when a problem is first recognized, then addressed and considered in different ways. Insight can lead to discovery and innovation and that is usually a good thing. Writing teams are made up of people from various parts of an organization who…