Archive for Collaboration

The Root of Institutional Greatness

November 12, 2012 Rebecca Reynolds Business, Collaboration, Leadership

“It’s challenging when leadership can’t even agree.”  - Anonymous University Chancellor

Gaining leadership alignment in these times of rapid change and social rearrangement is so fundamental to institutional success that without it, it’s only a matter of time before institutional relevance is in the balance. And forget about institutional greatness.

To achieve something big – to solve a complex problem, or reach new levels of accomplishment, or exponentially broaden impact, or develop a game-changing innovation – requires a level of focus and clarity of Olympic proportions. Essential to this is alignment.

Alignment among individual leaders first, and then down through the organization and out into the community, whether local, national or global. This alignment is not about getting everyone to think the same, but rather to develop a view that encompasses myriad individual perspectives from which a grander vision is possible.

Without leadership alignment, organizations (and countries) are left to govern themselves from the bottom up, instead of enjoying the freedom of governing within a shared visionary framework. Without leadership alignment, communities are left to formulate their own (mis)understanding of the institution, if they bother thinking of it at all. Without leadership alignment, the leaders themselves are impeded in moving forward, fall short of achieving what is desired, and experience a diminished role of service.

The way in to leadership alignment – whether the team is reaching for a new business model, increased capacity, or innovative solutions to long-endured problems – is the leadership conversation. This is a simple idea: how people talk about their institution, their issues, and their world is the genesis of the results they achieve.

Even the greatest leadership teams get into troughs of habit in their conversations, in the way they frame issues and describe their worlds. And worse are the isolated silos of thinking and vernacular that foster so many illusory conflicts. Add to this the growing number, complexity and scope of issues facing leadership today – in our organizations, our communities and on our planet – coupled with the pace of change, and leadership is surely tested to deliver on its primary purpose: articulating a compelling vision.

For leadership to create and hold such a vision, here is what’s required:

A shared understanding of the world

A common language with which to discuss it

A broad view of what is possible

These are not insignificant goals; they are the foundation for brilliance.

And the only way to achieve these goals is through conversation. Not the quick and dirty repartee of the break room or text, not the functional email delivering edict or information, not certainly the soundbite or check list. The real kind. The kind of conversation that takes time, that wrestles with assumed meaning, surfaces unspoken values, considers new perspectives, that seeks more to learn than to persuade.

The kind of conversation that, when all is said and done, opens minds and creates accord.

When was the last time you treated yourself to a conversation such as this?

 

 

 

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A View of Ubuntu

May 31, 2012 Rebecca Reynolds Business, Collaboration

After three weeks in South Africa, the last of which I’d spent on safari near Kruger National Park, I flew to Johannesburg where I had a layover of a few hours before my flight back to the states. I’d scheduled to meet a friend at an airport café.

Even after just a week, the re-entry into teeming, jostling, noisy humanity was overwhelming.  So I scouted a table in an empty area opposite the cafe, where I could easily spot my friend’s arrival and also regain my equilibrium. As I took my seat, I saw a phalanx of people passing by on what I realized was a main artery of the airport.

Just come from long, quiet days in a game drive truck, the silent observer in me was still in service. So my instinctive choice of a seat next to a large white column that offered some cover made sense, allowing me to gaze at the crowd without being noticed.

Such variety marched before me – people in ones and twos, in groups dressed in matching uniforms (airport personnel and sport teams) and even costumes. People with dark skin and braided hair, people with lined faces, people with fair skin and hats. And the sounds – people laughing and shouting in Zulu and English and Afrikaans as they flung by, others with eyes darting about mumbling in Japanese or Italian, and some shuffled mutely as though lost.

It looked like the world parading by, the world of humans, that is. And I pondered the difference between this observation and that from the game drive truck. I noticed that in looking at my own species, I easily picked out unique individuals, as compared to when I looked upon a herd of zebras or elephants, who more or less looked the same. Watching a herd of elephants, or even following a lone leopard through the bush, I was really only aware of the species in general. And for the most part, each species hung out with its own.

One notable exception was the vervet monkeys and the impala, which we came across in a sunny meadow one afternoon. It struck me then that this was one of the few times I’d seen two separate species markedly together. The ranger explained that they join for protection – the monkeys have the advantage of tree-climbing heights to watch for predators, whereas the impala have incredible ears to listen for them. This kind of cooperation was remarkable because it’s rare.

Back at the airport, I realized I could see in two ways – the usual way of seeing people one by one, noticing the color of hair, of shirt, of shoe, but also the safari way, seeing all as one swarming herd of a single species. And in this view, the idea of ubuntu came to me.

We’d discussed ubuntu in the leadership seminar I took during my first week in South Africa. Our conversation was based on Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s essay on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), where he explains the concept. After apartheid, South Africans had to decide how to deal with its aftermath – what legal process would be used to reach justice? Consideration of the options (criminal courts like those at Nuremberg or general amnesty) resulted in a third, now renowned, choice of the TRC – the process by which the accused could admit their crimes to the victims and be forgiven. According to Tutu, the choice to forgive rather than to punish was not only a necessary one for a country in dire need to unite itself, but also a culturally aligned one – aligned with the idea of ubuntu.

As Tutu explains it, “ubuntu speaks of the very essence of being human….It is to say, ‘my humanity is caught up, inextricably bound up, in yours.’ We belong in a bundle of life.” Rather than Descartes’ “I think therefore I am,” ubuntu implies “I am because you are.” This interconnectedness is at the root of humanity, and South Africa’s ability to come together even under the most heinous conditions Tutu attributes to the worldview of ubuntu.

As I sat watching so many humans gliding by, reminding me that globalization is no longer a theory but a living reality, I thought how terribly important it is now for us to engage the view of ubuntu. It may seem like an ideal or somehow impossibly selfless,
but then I recalled something else Tutu said: “To forgive is not just to be altruistic; it is the best form of self-interest.” And I saw the monkeys and the impala sitting side-by-side under soft afternoon light.

 

This piece is the last in a series on South Africa written for and published on www.Africa.com. This series explored leadership themes from her range of experiences on the South Africa trip. Reynolds will be starting a new series called Leadership Conversations, coming soon here and on Africa.com.

 

 

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Alphabetical Order

March 8, 2012 Rebecca Reynolds Business, Collaboration, Leadership

In college, I traveled to Italy for six months to study in the archives. My subject was, of all things, 18th century Italian opera. What I was looking for, namely letters from any of the prime donne (first ladies of the opera house), was not to be found in US libraries. So, I spent a semester planning, reading history, contacting likely scholar mentors, and learning Italian so I could go and search in the Italian archives.

When I arrived in what was to be my home, the small, medieval hill town of Siena, I immediately got to work. First, intensive language study; second, intense social life (I was just 24); third, practice in approaching the archives. Facing the mirror, I rehearsed my introductory sentences about being an American, studying 18th century opera, and looking for letters from singers of that period. When I’d got it down, I headed for the local library – a palatial edifice founded in 1759. I didn’t really expect to find anything there, just to practice, to get the feel of it.

My rehearsal was pointless; the arch fellow behind a monolithic desk barely glanced at me as he pointed, raised arm and index finger, at a stack of what I took for card catalogues. Not bad, I thought. Just like home. At the case, I peered at the tiny white cards on each mini-drawer. And here began the mystery that would engulf me for the rest of my six-month trip.

Each card was written in a sloping, curly que hand that looked like it belonged to the first librarian back in the mid-1700s. The drawers were in alphabetical order, but it was unclear of what. Some entries were name of historical figure, some of place, and some of author, with no obvious system denoting why or which. I was baffled. Upon closer inspection, I found there were also no numbers in the top right or left corner of the cards: no Dewey Decimal system. Egads – it never occurred to me that Dewey wasn’t ubiquitous! What was going on?

Enter Mr. James Gleick and his wonderful book The Information, out in paperback any day now. As it turns out, how we organize information is indicative of who we are. Makes sense. And the way we organized things early on had more to do with the things themselves than with the efficiency of the system. In other words, Gleick explains, information was ordered by subject, rather than by alphabetization (which, by the way, didn’t come into common practice for an astonishingly long time – 1613, to be exact).

What Gleick explained, that seems quite obvious upon reflection, is that humans think about things in terms of their experience of them. And then, bin them up accordingly. (Everything I eat, everything that breathes, everything that grows, etc.) This system worked quite well for a limited quantity of information used by a small and perhaps congenial group of people. So, it wasn’t until the amount of information increased and a larger, more diverse group was using it that the need for a more efficient cataloguing system arose.

This, significantly, would cause information to be separated from experience. Alphabetical order, as Gleick explains, “is unnatural. It forces the user to detach information from meaning; to treat words strictly as character strings.” The Dewey Decimal system takes abstraction a step farther since the number has nothing whatsoever to do with its correlated subject. (At least a letter corresponds with the name.)

With Gleick’s help, I see now that what I’d found in Siena’s small, but centuries old library was the layering on of alphabetical order over what appeared to be a prevailing subject matter system. And, as I would come to learn from living in Italy, Italians hold hard to how things are done – no matter how seemingly nonsensical or inefficient. But then perhaps, so don’t we all.

Back then, as I sat staring into a drawer (and by the way, the cards came fully out, which also made me gasp – how easy it would be for them to be stolen or put in the wrong order!), it suddenly occurred to me that I’d never find anything in Italy. All that way for nothing, simply because I had no idea how the Italians organized things! This was something, in all my preparations, that just hadn’t crossed my mind.

But I was in Italy and for six months too, so I endeavored to figure it out. As I traveled first from Siena to Florence to work in the archives there, and then on to Bologna, Modena, Parma, Verona and Venice, I began to see something I now refer to as an “organizing principle.” All this means is the method by which information is structured or catalogued: by time (date or period) or by subject (name, place, or field), and which is primary and secondary and so forth.

When I’d get to an archive, I’d challenge myself to think of every possible organizing principle with which to conduct my search. I’d try different methods and sequences as I scanned the shelves, the indexes and what card catalogues there were. I’d leave my own organizing prejudices behind and try to imagine how people in the 18th century might think. The more flexible my thinking, the faster I found the key for using each archive. And soon, it became the game, the researcher’s version of hide and seek.

The happy outcome of my Italy trip was finding seven letters from my favorite prima donna, Caterina Gabrielli, on which I based my thesis. The letters were hidden away in the Vatican Archives…but that’s another story.

The true treasure of that trip was the notion of the organizing principle. We all have them. And which ones we use dictates how we organize our worlds – both our physical one and, more importantly, the one inside our minds. Knowing this has proved invaluable in my leadership, collaboration and strategic planning work over the past 20 years (not to mention my travel).

Little did I know that dusty Italian archives would prove a useful training ground for a consulting career. Or that a book, with an unassuming cover, called The Information, would help explain a mystery a quarter of a century old.

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The Gift of the Skeptic

February 16, 2012 Rebecca Reynolds Business, Collaboration, Facilitation, Leadership

Do you know how in a group there’s often one person who won’t get on board? He or she just seems to be interminably skeptical and constantly throws stones at whatever the group is working on. And pretty soon, the work feels like a large rock is tied to the back of it, putting a major drag on forward movement.

The group inevitably grows weary. And depending on the situation, the rock’s drag may win out and the project gets dropped. Or in other cases, people will start to look back at the rock and give it nasty looks, shake their heads at it and maybe even come around and cut the rope. In some cases, the group just slogs on, dragging the rock forever.

What’s up with the rock?

At first glance, the rock appears to be the skeptic. Those who sit apart from the group, mutter under their breath or roll their eyes, and when they do contribute, speak out loudly with sarcasm or confrontation – all in the name of skepticism.

But not all skeptics employ these tactics. For instance, accountants and attorneys often play the skeptic role, and do so by calmly explaining legal or financial reasons for rethinking what everyone else is enthusiastically supporting. Although this can feel like a “wet blanket”, people are generally glad that someone bothered to “kick the tires” to prevent driving off in a lemon.

The skeptic then, is not a person or a set of behaviors; it’s a role. A valuable role that keeps us from doing things that we’ll regret, cause us harm, or waste resources and effort. We all use skepticism to protect ourselves: we are skeptical of politicians’ promises, skeptical of advertising claims, skeptical of things that seem too good to be true – some of us are skeptical if too many people endorse something.

In fact, we need the role of skeptic. It’s hugely helpful in situations involving large investments of money, a high risk of bodily harm or that defy generally established norms (remember the Wright brothers?) The adage “a healthy dose of skepticism” reminds us all to use this critical faculty in our daily lives. The “healthy dose” refers to using it appropriately to the situation.

So, the question is, how do we gain the gift of the skeptic in a way that’s
constructive and additive rather than destructive and an impediment to
progress?

First, design the role into group process. When the group recognizes the value of the skeptic’s gift, this role can be designed into group process, in a “healthy dose” appropriate to the situation. (For example, experimental brain surgery requires a bigger dose of skepticism than, say, exploring new restaurants for a dinner party.)

Designing the skeptic role into process means identifying the most opportune times for the full group to apply the skeptic’s perspective. In this way the role of skeptic is shared and the burden for tire-kicking isn’t left to one person or to a small minority. This also frees the group to be visionary and innovative together, to be practical and methodical together, and to be critical and skeptical together – each of which are equally important to the creative process. With everyone taking on the role of skeptic together, the group’s cohesion is increased, with outliers able to join in.

Second, distinguish the role from the behavior. Once process has been designed to include the skeptic’s role, the next step is for the group to create normative standards for participation and to clearly communicate what these are. Explain that the skeptic’s role has been designed into the process, and there is no need for one person to take it on him/herself. Nor will it be useful to play the role of the skeptic (i.e., interject criticism) when the group is still in the learning or idea generation phases. Once group process and norms are clear, the next step is to enforce them.

Finally, openly address “rock” behavior. When a process is new, it may take a bit of road testing to get it right. So if “rock” behaviors begin to appear, they need to be addressed right away, as a demonstration to all that the process is now different from before. The group needs to make clear that indeed there will be the opportunity to evaluate and critique as part of the development process, but not at this time. In other words, the mis-timed skeptic behavior should not go unchecked.

This can be done by group participants, the group’s designated lead, or, depending on the size, nature and track record of the group, this may be done best by a neutral facilitator. The point is, groups that do not check this “rock” behavior allow themselves to be held hostage by it.

* * *

So, the group develops its process to explicitly include the skeptic role, communicates this from the outset, and monitors that everyone is clear as the process unfolds. What if then some people still take on the lone skeptic role? What if these individuals continue to sit outside the circle, pitching rocks in, rolling their eyes, and even jumping up every now and then to rant and rave, or stomp out?

One reason for “rock” behavior by the skeptic is that the group isn’t really playing the role. In many groups, the majority of people will seek convergence. This is a human trait: we are relationship-oriented. This can lead to acting too quickly or to “group think” resulting in the status quo. In these situations, the skeptic may resort to “rock” behaviors to get the group’s attention. Since the skeptic role is essential to achieving effective and lasting results in anything, but particularly in something new, groups need to be sure it is given real attention. When this happens, many times the “rock” behavior will simply disappear, because it’s no longer needed.

Sometimes the skeptic needs more certainty before acting than others – s/he is more risk averse. Or the skeptic may have specialized knowledge that causes them to see risk that no one else does. In such cases, even if the group dons the skeptic role, this may not feel sufficient to the skeptic, so s/he will continue to tire kick long after everyone is well-enough satisfied to give whatever it is a go. The key here is to try to understand if the skeptic has a valid point the group hasn’t considered, or if the individual’s risk tolerance is really at issue. The more self-aware the individual is – the more able to identify this for him/herself – the more easily the situation can be resolved.

In some cases, the skeptic role has become so second-nature to the person that s/he no longer distinguishes between the role and self. This type of person has become the role. The person has come to identify with it and to use “rock” behaviors as self-expression. This is an unfortunate state for the individual because any skeptic that’s unaware that skepticism is fine as long as it remains in a “healthy dose” risks becoming the boy who cried wolf: ignored by his peers and ostracized to the back of the room. Coaching can be very helpful with this kind of individual, with the aim of increasing self-awareness and options for self-expression.

In other cases, the skeptic is playing the role to prevent change. Some will even continue the skeptic role into the implementation phase, looking for opportunities to say “I told you so” to undermine the process. This is the worst type of skeptic behavior because the criticisms are really masking a hidden agenda. Most groups can sense this, even if it’s not openly discussed. This shouldn’t go unchecked if a group desires to make progress. But even this skeptic has something s/he is concerned about protecting – whether for the greater good or for him/herself - listening to what this is can bring valuable information to the group.

* * *

In summary. The issue is not with the role of the skeptic. The role has the inestimable value of avoidance of pitfalls. The issue is with how, when and by whom the role is played. The skeptic role is far more productive if openly recognized for its value by the entire group and then designed into group process. The skeptic role is also more effective if it doesn’t get played by the same one or two people in every situation. And finally, the individual who seems trapped in the role and/or in “rock” behaviors should be coached to see that the role is a choice and that other roles can bring just as much satisfaction.

Remember: A little skepticism goes a long way. And “rock” behavior is really only suited to preventing something from going over a cliff.

This is a follow-up piece to Collaboration: What to do about Politics and Power Plays? 

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What’s Hospitality Got to Do with It?

August 16, 2011 Rebecca Reynolds Business, Collaboration, Facilitation, governance, Government, Leadership, Nonprofit Organizations, Technology

Collaboration’s time has come. And it’s time to get everyone, not just talking about it,
but really good at doing it. Collaboration isn’t a set of tech tools or an ideal. It’s a verb – something we do. And we can do it well or really poorly. What makes the difference? The answer might surprise you: hospitality.

What’s hospitality got to do with it, you may wonder. Everything.

The simple concept of hospitality is the foundation of collaboration. By “collaboration” I mean convening – whether in government, business, or community, in person, on the phone or online – a group of people, diverse in background and perspective, toward a common purpose. The supposition is that the people being convened are in some way unknown to each other: either actual strangers meeting for the first time or at least people who have among them unknown, foreign or differing perspectives. It is to this meeting of strangers that hospitality speaks.

Abraham Offering Hospitality

The concept of hospitality comes to us from ancient times when people depended on each other in a way we don’t as much today, at least not in the developed world. There were far fewer of us then and there were great distances between our encampments. Travel was arduous, dirty and dangerous, making hospitality not merely a matter of kindness, but also of survival.

Strangers arriving at your door was not an uncommon event, and hospitality dictated how you treated them. Welcome with a bath, food, and drink, a place to sleep – this kind of hospitality seems extreme and is unthinkable for most of us today. And yet, its vestiges still hold as our protocol for overnight company and in hotels the world over.

Although the concept of hospitality has equivalents in all ancient languages, the English word comes from the Latin hospes. Interestingly, hospes refers both to the host and to the guest, as does the Greek counterpart xenos. This ambiguity of the term still exists in modern derivatives of Latin, for example, the Italian word ospite. I remember when I first lived in Italy 20 years ago this confused me plenty: was I invited to the party or to host the party? The root of my confusion was, of course, my mother tongue, which divides the concept: host (from hospes) and guest (from the German gast, meaning stranger). I remember vaguely wondering why the Italians suffered under this confusion, thinking that they must somehow be bereft of vocabulary.

Today, hospitality has come to signify more of a nicety than a necessity. And yet, there is a renewed need for it. The technology of travel means that we can get anywhere pretty much any time, and the technology of information means we can do so virtually in seconds. The borders of our encampments, both geographical and ideological, constantly bump up against each other now, bringing new resonance to the notion of hospitality. We are being called to apply hospitality to the entryways, not just of our homes, but of our hearts and minds. Collaboration begins here.

Collaboration is hospitality on steroids. If you’re the convener, it’s as if a caravan of travelers has descended on your doorstep, and what’s more, you invited them. And there’s something you need from them, so making sure they feel welcome, they’re clear about the purpose of the visit, and how they’re going to get their needs met are all essential to a genial, productive relationship. The adept collaboration convener plans for these logistics well before any of the participant guests arrive (see more on this here).

In the same way ancient hospitality ritualized the treatment of strangers in the
home, collaboration calls for ritual that welcomes strange opinions and foreign modes of self-expression in the conversation. The ritual itself signals the participant that “strangers” are indeed welcome. And like all ritual, it is the attitude behind it that endows its meaning. Anyone can go through the motions of hospitality, but it is the feeling of the open heart that makes us know we are welcome. Collaboration is ultimately defined by this.

But there’s another important dimension of hospitality at work today that takes us further into territory useful for collaboration. The Latin hospes is formed
from hostis, which meant “to have power,” and the Online Etymology Dictionary gives the literal translation of “host” as “lord of strangers.” Where the ancients took for granted the roles of guest and host as sacrosanct in the ritual of hospitality, today we push against such conventional relationships.

Jacques Derrida, originator of deconstruction, put this hospitality power dynamic into sharp relief for us. What Derrida saw was that hospitality is a paradox: what makes hospitality possible is ultimately what makes it impossible. If being hospitable requires that someone has the power to host, which means, in some measure, the ability to control the guest, then, says Derrida, this control is, in fact, inhospitable. On the other hand, if hospitality means the host is obligated to welcome without rules or boundaries whoever arrives (say, a complainer, or worse, a thief or harm doer), then the host is stripped of the very power and control that makes hospitality possible.

Derrida’s reasoning is, I think, instructive for collaboration as well. If I convene a
collaborative process and act as host by creating the rules and protocols by which the “guests” will participate, haven’t I taken control, thereby constricting the participants and undermining the very goal of collaboration itself? The goal being an interaction of equals toward a shared creation. And if, on the other hand, the convener does not act as host, does not develop and maintain process rules and governance, thereby causing chaos or a survival-of-the-fittest contest of wills among the participants, won’t many feel disenfranchised and leave? And again, the goal of collaboration is unrealized.

Derrida’s hospitality paradox – and the peril of collaboration - lies in the apparent power struggle between the host and guest (convener and participant, in collaboration). It’s as if these roles sit opposite each other on a set of scales, with things weighted all on one side or the other. But the key to their balance is, for me, found in the, well, ambidextrousness of the ancients’ language.

The fact that the same word (hospes, xenos) represents both roles may not signify a dearth of vocabulary as I once thought, but rather a deep understanding of the very nature of hospitality itself. The ambiguity instructs me that guest and host are but two sides of the same coin, interchangeable among us. No one is always host and no one is always guest, no one always in control and no one always compliant.

Hospitality is the proscribed ritual for bringing strangers together well. The roles of host and guest are part of this ritual, but they are simply a means to the ultimate end of what hospitality intends. The key again comes from the ancients’ language. Hospes is the root of, not only hospitality, but also hospital and hospice. What these have in common, more than tending to the ill or a protocol for doing so, is the way that’s done. This is the essence of hospes: Caring for people.

It is the caring then that enlivens the ritual created for bringing people together
well and that acts as the fulcrum for the role of host on one side and that of
guest on the other, tempering the extremes of each. Caring is the both the underlying method and the intended outcome of hospitality.

The same is true for collaboration. Caring for each other in the process of collaboration, and caring for the higher purpose to which we all are invited as the ultimate outcome of it is the foundation of collaboration done well. As conveners, if we will remember this and let it guide our role as host, our participant guests will do what humans do in a hospitable environment: enjoy and learn from each other. Great things come from this and it is within our grasp.

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Collaboration: What to do about Politics and Power Plays?

June 3, 2011 Rebecca Reynolds Business, Collaboration, Facilitation, Government, Leadership, Nonprofit Organizations, Policy

What makes the difference between a collaboration that results in brilliant, new thinking and the ugly opposite: more entrenched, polarized, stuck thinking? One of my readers asked me recently, how do you deal with politics and power plays in collaboration? This is such a great question because it gets at the heart of exactly what makes the difference.

Let’s start by looking at what “politics and power plays” are. Simply put, they are some of the ways people get what they want. They are the way some people work when a clear, open process to get what they want doesn’t exist.

The more vested someone is, the more important it is to them to know how to influence decisions that affect them. And the more extreme their behavior will become in contexts where this is unclear, inaccessible or both. We want to be heard, and if it’s important enough, you and I will go to extreme lengths to be so, even if we look manipulative, rude or downright crazy to everyone else.

Every one of us has experienced areas of life where the way things work is murky, overly complex, and badly (if at all) communicated. Think neighborhoods, schools, municipalities, banking, the office, the tax code, even the produce section at your local grocery store – who is deciding produce selection and what criteria are they using, anyway? Do you take what you can get, or try to influence the process through the suggestion box or a visit to the manager? And if that doesn’t work, do you take your business elsewhere, throw your weight around, or jump up on your soap box?

So, if we all have the capability of extreme tactics to get what we want, what hope is there for collaboration? When we want to use collaboration to get something important done, like develop a plan for sustainable water use, or design and implement a major fundraising event, or develop new office policy around flex time? Won’t these efforts be killed every time by politics, power plays or people just giving up?

The hope comes from understanding these dynamics, what causes them and what to do about them. First, those managing the collaborative process need to remember that people come to the table because they care. They want something. And that’s a good thing. Second, since we want and need vested people in the room, we should anticipate that for them to participate in a productive, effective way (instead of resorting to more extreme behaviors like power plays) they need to understand a few key things:

  1. the scope of the collaboration – what is being addressed and, just as important, what is not?
  2. the role of those involved in the collaboration – is it to frame the issue, to develop recommendations on it, to provide expert knowledge, or…?
  3. the governance process – how will the issue(s) ultimately be decided (what, who, when)?

So, at the beginning, these questions are carefully considered and decided. Let me emphasize: this work happens well in advance of the start of the collaborative effort. These are NOT issues to “wing it” on or to address as you go! Then, communicate the decisions (referred to a “process parameters” or “rules of engagement” or whatever term best fits your situation) as an explicit part of the invitation to participants. Surprisingly, most people are pleased to see that this has been thought through.

Next, re-emphasize the process parameters at the first session, and at all subsequent sessions as needed (e.g., when the collaboration is open and new people come each time, review at each meeting is essential). And all while the collaboration process is underway, it must adhere to the scope, role and governance process as decided. This may seem terribly obvious, but the number of times I have seen people transgress their own process (scope of work, bylaws, charters, job descriptions, etc.) is both stunning and remarkably self-defeating.

People can accept rules and parameters, which are essential to well-functioning group process, but not if they change without warning or reason. And disregarding them wholesale is even worse.  Managing the collaborative process in a way that honors agreements is exactly like a personal relationship: people trust people who do what they say they will.

And this trust is fundamental to achieving great things from collaboration. It’s simple: if people are always worrying about how something is getting done (process), they have less energy to focus on what is being done (content). In collaboration, the goal is to get the collaboration participants fully engaged in the content so that great outcomes can result. The more participants distrust or don’t understand the process, the more they will focus on it – with some people resorting to those negative behaviors that cause collaboration to fail. In countless such efforts, I have experienced the most seemingly aggressive and manipulative participants shift to invaluable members of the team simply because they come to trust the process.

By the way, this is not to say that process parameters can’t change – in multi-year collaborations, there is often a need to re-think them: scope may need to expand or contract, roles shift, governance change. When this occurs, giving participants the heads up well before changes are made and the opportunity to give input is the way to maintain credibility.

In summary, politics and power plays, as well as other challenging behaviors, show up in collaborative processes when there is:

  1. lack of clarity about the scope and intent of the collaboration
  2. lack of clarity about the roles and other process parameters of the collaboration
  3. weak or ineffective adherence to process parameters during collaboration

The good news is that, understanding this, you can see unwanted behavior not as a threat or failure, but as a terrific signal that it is time to re-look at and/or re-clarify these. And remember, basic sincerity about all of this goes a long way in repairing any mis-steps.

For a follow-up piece to this one on addressing challenging behavior in collaborative process, see The Gift of the Skeptic.

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