I’ve worked as a member of many different kinds of teams and work groups through the years. My experience includes everything from teams where competition was passively encouraged, resulting in unhealthy relationships and the silos that come when it is implied to “go make it happen and don’t worry about the others,” to a 100% buy-in mindset with shared mission on a team of people committed to collaboration who actually like each other! Although I’ve been able to be effective and bring value to whichever team I was serving, I must admit that I much prefer collaboration to competition, synergy to silos, and buy-in to box-out! In fact, I spent most of my master’s degree studies researching the collaborative style of leadership and much of my thesis focused on it. I’m more than a convert to collaboration, I’m a true believer.
Collaboration for servant-leaders is far more than working together. It’s investing in each other on multiple levels of emotion, commitment, sacrifice, care, and support. The team with which I’m currently serving is a great example and I’m blessed to be a part of it. Because each of us is responsible for full-scale departments and a wide variety of large high-profile events, it would be easy to justify keeping our eyes and efforts only on our personal responsibilities, only giving nominal support to each other as we go through high stress and high activity processes. However, this team has taken collaboration seriously, and it is woven into the very fabric of how we interact, and more importantly, how we function.
Recently I did one of the largest events of my year and I was thrilled to have the rest of the team fully engaged in the process and involved in a myriad of ways. Certainly, there are some who play larger roles than others, but it is a pleasure to work alongside such a group who share our common mission with me and will jump in to do whatever it takes to get it done, regardless if a project is theirs personally. I do my best to do the same for them throughout the year as well. This kind of collaboration will include everything from planning and leading critical portions of a project or event to merely staying available to jump in at a moment’s notice when something comes up…and, something always does!
As you move forward in your leadership development, you will have many opportunities to decide how you should best approach the tasks before you. Sometimes it’s quickest to just get in gear and get the job done independently, however, I want to encourage you to look for times when you can pull the rest of your colleagues into your efforts and work together as a collaborative team. Collaboration takes patience, planning, and perseverance, but the results of a highly committed team who share their mission with each other, working closely on a common goal, are well worth the effort.
Lead well.