
Leadership Tip of the Week: Collaboration
Develop your leadership by improving your ability to collaborate.
Collaboration is an important leadership skill that requires leaders to be open-minded, cooperative, collegial and flexible. This is much easier said than done. Leaders can improve their ability to collaborate by learning to ask questions instead of giving answers.
As leaders, we often think we need to have all of the answers. This is far from the truth. We need to find answers, but that doesn’t mean they always have to come from us. The next time you facilitate a meeting, try asking more questions. This changes the tone of the conversation and fosters collaboration and better participation from team members.
I recently had the opportunity to participate in a panel of leading academic researchers and CEOs. The panel focused on improving the relationship between academics in the leadership field and leadership practitioners. It was an incredible opportunity and reminded me of the power of collaboration. The panel collaboratively identified some really exciting opportunities.. The impressive part of the experience was hearing the great questions the panel members asked each other. This was what led to the outstanding partnership.
Collaboration is a way to lead your team to better results — so try asking more questions this week.
Disclaimer
Here at Lead Read Today, we endeavor to take an objective (rational, scientific) approach to analyzing leaders and leadership. All opinion pieces will be reviewed for appropriateness, and the opinions shared are solely of the author and not representative of The Ohio State University or any of its affiliates.
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1 Comments
Great article! I believe as the leader it is important to set the tone for your team to state the fact that you don't have all the answers and your role is to empower the team to develop the solution. I love the quote by Ken Blanchard, "None of us is as smart as all of us" because it sets the tone that everyone can bring value and it is up to the leader to cultivate a climate that encourages the team to deliver that value.