L3 Leadership

How are you experiencing collaboration right now?

Increasingly, any kind of achievement requires the crossing of boundaries, often bringing improbable partners together for a free exchange of knowledge, skills and resources across disciplines, cultures and organizational units.

Try this exercise!

Describe a time when you were inspired by working with a person or a group in a collaboration that utilized everyone’s strengths.

1. What did you learn about connecting across boundaries?

2. What were the outcomes?

3. What behaviors would you expect?

4. What kinds of organizational systems, norms, or practices would make it possible?

There Are Four Key Barriers  that exist in creating collaborative advantage ( MIT Research)

1.  The Unwillingness to Seek Input and Learn from Others. There is a prevailing attitude in our unit that people ought to fix their own problems and not rely on help from others outside the unit. How prevalent are these attitude within your organization, team, or project teams?

2. The Inability to Seek and Find Expertise. Our employees often complain about the difficulty they have locating colleagues who possess the information and expertise they need. Is your knowledge base organized in ways that make it easy to access needed expertise within the organization?

3. The Unwillingness to Help/Support. Our people keep their expertise and information to themselves and do not want to share it across organizational units. Is your culture supportive of sharing expertise?

4. The Inability to Work Together and Transfer Knowledge. Our employees have not learned to work together effectively across organizational units to transfer tacit knowledge. Does your workforce, work groups, and teams have ways to make their expertise available to all who need it.

As  a leader it is important for you to signal and role model the importance of collaboration.  If employees see you demonstrating these values and principles with your colleagues, partners and customers they will be more  likely to be motivated to seek and provide the help they need to be successful, and in turn, offer it to others.

Effective leaders are aware of their impact on others and can leverage it for the creation of collaborative advantage.

The most effective leaders are extremely sensitive as to how they come across to others. They know that their status in the organization, and their personalities  can have a dramatic impact on others. They have learned to channel how they come across in ways that bring out the best in others.

These leaders are always aware of an in charge of their own feelings and how they express them. Effective collaborative leaders have empathy for others; yet can still make tough decisions. The most effective collaborative leaders are able to put themselves in the others’ shoes and to understand how and why their direct reports, colleagues or customers are reacting to events, crises, and relentless change. At the same time, their empathy does not prevent them from making tough decisions. They do this by appealing to reason and acknowledging others’ feelings, thus enabling people to feel that the decisions make sense.

Effective collaborative leaders are astute judges of people without being judgmental. These leaders are able to size others up quickly in terms of their key strengths and weaknesses, and are especially good at recognizing and applying the diverse talents of everyone in the organization.

Teams perform best when they define a true sense of purpose and consistently work towards it.  Most teams do not take the time necessary to define their purpose. Even if they do, many do not actually use it as a constant reminder of who they are and what they are after. Here a Three things to remember to focus on..

Focus on Purpose happens at three levels of motivation:

1. Organization Purpose: “Why should we come to together as a team for the organization?”
2. Team Purpose: “Why should we come to together as a team for our group?”
3. Team Member Purpose: “What is my purpose on this team?”

When we speak with people in organizations we work with, they tell us that they really want to make a difference; they want to do work that is meaningful and that adds value. People in the workforce are starved to find meaningful work. Managers and non managers alike need work that gets them energized and excited to go to work every day.

What are people looking for? Sometimes they just need to look at the work on their plate with a new lens. Here are some recommendations for finding passion in your work.

1. Search for your Passion Nuggets: Make a list of all the things you are working on. Look at the work from a new perspective. Whether it is repetitive business process, or project work, try to re-think your contribution. Remember, we are trying to find your “passion” nuggets.

Rate your work based on their impact to the organization and to you. Ask yourself, “Does my contribution matter? Does it make a difference? Will it add value? Is it aligned with the key goals and objectives for the organization?”  Does it align with my purpose and passion at work? Keep searching until you sift up the “Passion Nuggets” – the work that really matters to you and to your organization.

2. Re-Frame: Reframe your work! In other words, connect with other people inside and outside of the organization, and discuss how you can make your contribution even more meaningful to you and to the business. Can you make it dramatically different? You want your work to be memorable and to leave a legacy of excellence.

How To Bring Passion Back To Your Work

3. Influence and Promote Your Passion. The easiest way to get excited about what you do is to promote it to someone else. That forces us to think about what is important about the the work itself, and why it matters. Sit down and develop a compelling 1-minute pitch that highlights the benefits of your contribution and why you are so passionate about it.. If you can’t get excited about your own work, neither will anyone else! Practice the pitch with a friend. Once you feel comfortable with it, share the pitch with someone who understands nothing about what you do. This will allow you to determine how clear your pitch is. Lastly, refine your pitch, print it out (in color), and put it in a visible place to remind you of why you and your work really matter.

4. Celebrate: As you move along in life, find little wins to celebrate along the way. Take time to notice what your peers and co-workers are doing, and make it a point to acknowledge their achievements. When we do something good for someone else, not only do we feel better, but we have also made the day of someone else. Adding joy to another’s life will add joy to yours.

Work can be about Passion. We just have to take the time to look at where and how we are spending our time. Are we working on the Passion Nuggets,” or are we working on something else without making the connection to our passion?  The work we produce can have a big impact on our attitude, our pride, our overall happiness and satisfaction. Search to find your Passion Nuggets, those things that align meaning and results for you, your team and the organization.