Rethinking Collaboration

Welcome back to Everyday Leader. Shannon and Conrad here. I want to talk about collaboration -- and specifically about a misunderstanding I keep running into. I was in a conversation with a client this week where this came up, and I realized: we often think of collaboration as requiring agreement. Consensus. Everyone folding into the same page. And I think that is where we get it wrong. When leaders are really skillful -- when a group has a strong design alliance -- collaboration is generative. It is co-creation. It is a playground where people can hold passionate, focused points of view and let those views spark something that no one could have arrived at alone. That is very different from groupthink.

Exactly. True collaboration requires a cultural foundation: a shared belief that together is better, and that difference -- different viewpoints, different approaches, different perspectives -- is celebrated rather than smoothed over. And it requires a shared purpose. When those two things are in place, disagreement becomes generative rather than threatening.

I want to share two specific moves that Shannon and I use -- both drawn from improv -- that make this concrete. The first is blend and lead.

Blend and lead: find something true in what your partner or colleague just said, name it, and build on it. Take what is already present and move it forward. It is the "yes, and" of collaboration -- you are not agreeing with everything, you are connecting to what is real and taking it somewhere. In coaching, it looks like taking the last thing a client said and turning it into the next question. In a team meeting, it looks like: "what I hear you saying is -- and here is what that opens up for me."

The second move is break and give. This is when a leader steps in, says what needs to be said, and takes the conversation in a different direction. It is a "no, not that" -- but within a relationship designed to hold that move. The team or partner gives space: OK, Shannon is taking us somewhere else. Let's follow and see where it goes.

And to be clear: the break is never a shutdown. It is a no and a build. A no and a go. The leader who breaks is also the leader who leads -- they take responsibility for where they are pointing, and they stay accountable to the group's purpose.

The breaking move was something I had to learn and practice -- especially in group settings. It did not come naturally. What helped was having the design alliance in place first, so that when I stepped in, people knew it was coming from somewhere real and purposeful, not from ego.

Start with the relationship. Build the design alliance -- the shared agreements for how you will be together, when things are going well and when they are not. From that foundation, both blend and lead and break and give become available. Trust your instinct when something needs to be said. Be responsible for your impact. And know that you can always let it go if the timing was off.

To everyone out there doing big things in a world that is not easy to collaborate in -- you are making a choice to stay in it. That matters. Until next time.