Collaboration is a way for people to work together where decision-making power and project resources are shared, rather than held by a designated decision-maker. Collaboration can create a sense of collective ownership and responsibility for common goals, build trust and mutual respect among those working together, develop leadership skills in everyone involved, and foster honest accountability within a group. And collaborations often achieve results that are surprising, creative, and something that no one person or one person’s vision could have achieved.

Collaboration requires leaders who empower their teams or communities. These leaders design processes for teamwork that achieve goals through shared decision making and accountability. Collaboration leaders have learned the values of relaxing their control over process and goals, improvising as the process of working together evolves, listening actively to others, contributing to conversations as an equal, and being open to receiving and giving honest feedback.

I can work with you to develop yourself as a collaborator and collaboration leader. We can:

• clarify your goals in the work that you do with others,

• explore the value of relaxing control over how things happen,

• develop skills for leading without controlling, and

• design and problem-solve processes for achieving goals through shared decision making and accountability within your team.

Reach out and let’s talk about building teams that collaborate.