I used to tease Frank, an accountant where I worked some years ago, about his hope that life would track more like a balance sheet — all the ins and outs offsetting perfectly, all neat and tidy.
Truth is, neat and tidy rarely applies to life, love and leadership.
Getting life, love and leadership right is messy, time-consuming and requires real commitment. This reality surfaced recently in a chat with a colleague when he remarked collaboration was more trouble than it was worth.
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. ~African Proverb
Borrowing an acronym from the military, collaboration is full of VUCA – volatility, uncertainly, complexity and ambiguity. Yet, when a shared effort goes right, the rewards are well worth the trouble.
4 takes on the power of collaboration
1. Collaboration is volatile – hang on, fasten your seatbelt and enjoy the ride.
Multiple opinions, experiences, styles and preferences come into play when working with a group. Sure it’s a balancing and sharing act, yet the variety of inputs yields a richer outcome than what you could have produced alone.
If you’re not confused, you’re not paying attention. ~Tom Peters
2. Collaboration is full of uncertainty – what a great way to expand one’s comfort zone and sphere of knowledge.
Unpredictability and surprise expose us to ideas and emotions we may not encounter on a singular journey; some are beneficial, some not. Yet all add to the breadth and depth of our experience.
When you come to the edge of all the light you have, and must take a step into the darkness of the unknown, believe that one of two things will happen. Either there will be something solid for you to stand on or you will be taught how to fly. ~Patrick Overton
3. Collaboration is complex – embrace it.
It can be confusing, confounding, crappy and chaotic, too. Embrace them, too! Go it alone if you seek simplicity. If you and/or organization seek growth, engagement and innovation, pass out the hip waders and head for the deep end of the pool. That’s where the group can really challenge and support one another in the way to excellence.
The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity. ~Douglas Horton
4. Collaboration is ambiguous – add being tolerant of it to your toolkit.
Ambiguity is the breakfast of leaders. There’s no room in today’s complex world for cut-and-dried, black-and-white answers to everything. Many of the realities of business are dualities to be perpetually managed — things like stability and change, task and relationship, impose and facilitate.
Success requires you to do both because they identify a relationship that’s ongoing and which raises issues that don’t go away. A diet of all stability leads to atrophy and demise; a feast of all change yields bedlam and uncertainty.
I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity. ~Gilda Radner
Emmanual Gobillot writes in Leadershift, “traditional leader behavior that focuses on command and control becomes irrelevant.” Can’t wait for that day to get here!
Communal social power and transformational leadership rest on a base of collaboration.
Are you ready to play?!
Image source before quote: morgueFile.com
