Collaboration is a commonly used term in business today but often misunderstood and misused.

Basically the act of collaboration is often thought of as working with others to do a task and to achieve shared goals.  In reality real collaboration is much more complex than that.

To be effective and achieve higher quality goals more quickly and efficiently;  the skills, ideas and cultural backgrounds of a diverse group that is working to a common purpose need to be leveraged in such a way that the best of everything is used and conflicts are positively focused.  That is not to say there should not be conflict as often positive use of differences results in a much better end product.

What’s at the Core of Real Effective Collaboration?

All good collaborations exhibit the following core behavioral traits among everyone who participates”

• everyone both is heard and hears others
• trust and respect are not lip service or behaviors practiced because good collaboration needs it but rather the team has developed (the members have earned) the trust and respect of each other.  This does imply that powerful collaboration sessions come over time and need some background experience and that is usually true.
• a common shared understanding of how the collaboration will work, that is the associated processes and methodologies are defined, debated, confirmed and proactively practiced right up front and throughout the entire exercise.

Much more than working together to achieve shared goals

Definition aside, for me true collaboration that produces better results requires patience and setting the stage so that the team (the collaborators) will natural practice the key behaviors I highlighted in the above three points.

And the final word, and most important aspect of creating and then working in a collaborative way is motivation.  Everyone has to have a good personal reason to work in harmony.  Human nature is such that collaboration is not a natural state and to fully embrace the concept you have to really want too.

So think about motivations, both your own and those you are collaborating with and leverage your observations of both your own and others behaviors to reinforce positive motivators, whatever they may be, (recognition, appreciation, etc).