How Collaborative Leadership is Changing Business
The last year forced companies to take a hard look at their internal processes, and shift everything from management styles to business practices to marketing strategies.
One trend that has emerged from this shift is an increase in collaborative leadership.
By definition, collaborative leadership is a managerial strategy that brings a group of leaders together to share information, work simultaneously, and take responsibility for the team as a whole.
Collaboration breeds communication and builds a stronger, more effective team. There are several benefits to transitioning to a collaborative leadership structure.
It reduces friction within the group as everyone is working toward one common goal.
The leadership team operates as though every member within the group is a peer instead of competition.
It gives a voice to all team members and makes them feel valued, potentially increasing retention.
It allows the opportunity for everyone to contribute to a project, goal, or idea.
For a business to successfully implement collaborative leadership, the larger team is often reassembled into smaller, diverse teams. Each team offers different viewpoints, ideas, and experiences. This encourages everyone to get involved with discussion and decision-making. Overall, collaborative leadership has shown great success.
Collaborative Leadership vs Top-Down Management
Collaborative leadership, also known as a team-centric managerial style, differs greatly from the traditional top-down management style that most companies have used for decades. Top-down management refers to the classic managerial style where the senior leaders determine goals, ideas, and tasks, and then communicates and divides them amongst the junior and entry-level employees.
Top-down is the most familiar and common approach to management. It sets clear expectations for a group and frees up time for employees to work on a designated task. However, it's not all roses. There's often a disconnect between the employee and the company's values, and a lot of responsibility is landing on the leaders.
These issues are why collaborative leadership was introduced. A more modern way of thinking, both employees and managers are encouraged to work as equals to provide more robust ideas. In fact, according to American Express Report, the new wave of workers, millennials, believe that within ten years, "the CEO role will no longer be relevant in its current format”.
As more millennials are becoming self-employed and revolting against the traditional workforce, it's becoming clear that the top-down managerial style is outdated.
How to build a Collaborative Leadership group
For large corporations, collaborative leadership takes on a different meaning, as working collaboratively becomes more of a challenge. However, according to Inc.com, there are factors of collaborative leadership that top companies such as Marriott, Pixar, and BBC use to become industry-leading businesses.
Their leaders continue to encourage collaboration within the team.
They offer up their expertise.
They’re focused on building a community.
Their project leaders balance being both task and relationship-oriented.
They understand role clarity.
Here are five important things to think about when building your collaborative leadership approach.
1. Recognize that all team members can and should contribute
Everyone in the room has something to say.
Whether they feel comfortable saying it or not is up to them, but nine times out of ten, it's valuable, and it can offer an idea or viewpoint that could scale you to new heights. As a collaborative leader, it's your job to create a safe and open environment where people feel they can share their ideas.
At the end of the project, you want all of your team members to feel like they helped create the final product. That creates an immense sense of self-worth and contentment. They are more willing to commit to the job if they have something invested in it.
2. Everyone will bring something new to the table
Do you know the term "two heads are better than one"? It turns out it's true. Actually, thirty heads are better than one, which is exactly why collaborative leadership is gaining so much momentum.
Team members can continually build on each other's ideas to offer different perspectives that are important to make sure your company is really speaking to its customer base. Hearing and recognizing these different perspectives will ultimately make you a stronger team.
As a leader, your job is to keep the environment positive to ensure that everyone feels safe to contribute.
3. Transparency is key
You can’t have real collaboration without open and honest communication. Speaking openly and with complete transparency is required for a fluid and successful transfer of knowledge.
This means communicating goals, KPIs, deadlines, etc., with everyone at all levels, and also being honest about the information that you are not sharing. There is inevitably information that not everyone will have access to and being honest regarding the barriers to this information is key to establishing trust.
For example, company financials may be a clear red zone where information has to be withheld. Being upfront about why this is the case is important to maintaining a culture of transparency and trust.
4. Use influence, not control, to achieve goals
In order to create a successful Collaborative Leadership group, the leader(s) must have thrown out top-down ideologies and adopted a collaborative, team approach to management. Opposed to command-and-control, this model uses influence and asking thought-provoking questions to assist the team in generating new ideas and working towards solutions.
Management should never dominate the conversation, but instead, provide provisions, suggestions, and direction when necessary.
5. Employ collaboration software to keep meetings democratic
A shared, collaborative, online workspace (like Stormboard!) is the perfect tool to use to help you build and refine a team led by Collaborative Leadership.
Stormboard allows you to generate more ideas, brainstorm, and make projects more effective because all participants are active contributors that can add content whenever inspiration strikes, in their own voice. It makes giving input, adding comments, and voting on what they think should be priorities more democratic, encouraging all employees to take ownership of your team’s projects, strategies, and goals.
Are you interested in using Stormboard to help your shift to Collaborative Leadership? Sign up for a free trial now!
About the Author
Celina Dawdy is a freelance writer in Edmonton, Alberta. When she isn’t writing, she’s volunteering and spending time with her three dogs.
Keep Reading
