Discover the 4 key competencies of collaborative leadership

In a complex and rapidly changing world, the responses must necessarily be collective. The solutions will not be the result of a plan foreseen by a few, but will emerge from the courageous action of many people at all levels of the organization, who have been able to adapt and change their mental models to face the new reality.

Value creation in the Age of Collaboration is a transformative journey, not a one-off project. Leaders who take the time to engage their employees in decision-making and a culture of collaboration that enables collective intelligence will empower their organizations with the speed, adaptability, productivity, and innovation required to grow and thrive in a world of rapid change. And on this journey, they’ll find that it’s worth the investment, as collaboration is equally powerful in its ability to support business goals as it is to thwart them.

Collaborative Leadership vs Formal Leadership

Unlike traditional formal leadership, in which authority derives from our position, collaborative leadership is exercised from our personal power and credibility. It does not originate, therefore, in the position we occupy, but in our proactive action as leaders, based on our passion and perseverance, our self-confidence and our ability to decide. This is the essence of collaborative leadership.

But beware, collaborative leadership It’s not a panacea, nor is it free. Collaboration requires interaction, has its coordination costs, and often requires exercising leadership beyond the boundaries of our own organization. Some may even argue that collaboration can sap a lot of energy, and therefore be exhausting for some people. Constant change is also exhausting, and as collaborative leaders we need to connect with our passions to find the necessary energy and be a source of inspiration and energy for our colleagues.

As collaborative leaders, we must be able to recognize the differences in values and structures between large and small organizations, between for-profit companies and NGOs, all of which have very different cultures. Ultimately, we have to overcome differences and build the trust necessary to enable collaboration in very diverse and complex environments, establish credibility, understand others, connect emotionally and Develop a collaborative culture that enables collective innovation.

Collaborative leadership without borders

A good collaborative leader starts from the premise that his or her domain of action does not stop at the edge of the organization. In a world of global and rapidly changing events, the boundaries of the organization often become blurred, and both authority and personal responsibility do not stop at the edge of the organization. New business models are increasingly based on informal networking, mass collaboration, and production ecosystems that transcend organizational boundaries. Therefore, leadership has to go beyond the boundaries of the organization, and persuading others to build value in community is an essential part of any effective collaboration.

In a global, hyper-connected world, borders are blurred. New user communities – as large as countries – emerge seemingly out of nowhere, and previously well-defined and differentiated environments, such as work and private life, begin to fade. The young people of the digital generation are able to write a blog and respond to a work email while watching a show on TV. They’re digital natives, and you know, it’s in their DNA, that sharing creates value. They live connected, without borders and their natural reaction when they find something of value on their social network, Youtube or Twitter, is to share it with others.

The Four Key Competencies of Collaborative Leadership

These key competencies can help you introduce the seed of Collaborative Leadership into your organization:

1. Empathy. A good Collaborative LeaderOr you need to feel what’s going on with peers. Often the signals they are sending are very weak and encoded. Therefore, it is important to listen with an open mind and without prejudice, pay attention and show interest in what they are telling us. Collaboration requires a climate of trust that we must build on a sincere concern for people. As collaborative leaders, we must be able to get under the skin of others and respond quickly to their needs and uncertainties. Empathy is what allows us to recognize and understand the emotions of others, their motivations, the reasons for their behavior or their preferences in decision-making. And it’s a key emotional competency for managing the inevitable conflicts, losses, and confusion associated with change, so that disruptions are productive rather than destructive to people and the organization.
2. Redarchy. It is becoming more and more evident that we need new organizational models for the coordination of collective efforts. Current hierarchical structures are failing in their attempts to adjust to a new, more global, complex and uncertain reality. While hierarchy has given scalability to our organizations, its cost has been high in terms of people’s initiative, creativity, and commitment. As leaders, we must be able to accept the duality of hierarchy – redarchy and be able to operate in collaborative networks and become the drivers of the Netarchy as a natural structure for innovation. If we really want to accelerate the strategy and the necessary digital transformation, we must provide our companies with a estructura dual capaz de ejecutar el día a día y a la vez explorar las nuevas oportunidades y sortear las amenazas.
3. Influence. This new type of leadership is exercised on the basis of influence, authenticity, personal credibility, and added value that the leader brings to the community, and has nothing to do with the ability to accumulate power. Collaboration requires authentic leaders, people with the ability to energize and broaden the community rather than manage it from above, which requires a great capacity for personal credibility to connect with the collective intelligence of the organization, mobilize and coordinate human efforts. A good collaborative leader is one who is able to influence and convince his colleagues, without falling into the trap of becoming manipulative.
4. Adaptation. Change and change management are adaptive challenges in which people in the organization are both part of the problem and part of the solution. There are no magic answers, but questions capable of moving us in the right direction. As leaders we must be able to select what we want to maintain and preserve, what is expendable and what we must discard, and the new capabilities we must create to face the future successfully. It is about mobilizing others – outside and within our area of responsibility – to achieve understanding and agreement on what needs to be done and how it needs to be done, facilitating individual and collective efforts to adapt and developing the new competencies and collaborative ways of doing things necessary to adapt to new circumstances.

Do you want to implement collaborative leadership in your company?? At Cabrera Management Consultants we have created ” Acelera Liderazgo“, a training program in collaborative leadership and team management

that we have already successfully implemented in several companies. Want to know more? Contact us

!