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.