Knowing when to collaborate is a useful leadership skill.
I feel as if collaboration can be overrated, and is potentially overused in many workplaces.
That’s not to say that collaboration is a bad thing. It may result in the best outcome, depending on the situation.
In this post, I’m going to take a look at a simple model you can use to help you decide when to collaborate, and when you might choose to adopt a different strategy.
What Do We Mean By Collaborate?
When I mention collaboration, I mean working together in partnership with others to achieve a goal.
This might mean your team working with another team within your organisation, or working with a team externally, that is part of another organisation.
You might also need to decide when to collaborate individually, with other leaders in your organisation.
Or, you might be deciding whether to take a collaborative approach with your team members when a decision needs to be made, for example.
Learn More: Thoughtful Leader Podcast #119: Too Collaborative? Let’s Avoid This Leadership Trap.
A Simple Model to Decide When to Collaborate
Models can be useful to help us make decisions, so the one I’m introducing today is the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode model.
This model is used in lots of leadership courses with regard to conflict resolution, high-performing teams and negotiation skills, so it’s a fairly well-regarded resource. However, not everyone gets the chance to go to leadership training, so you can get an overview right here instead.
The model is simple, and (like many of these types of models), it is comprised of two axes which create a two by two grid.
The vertical axis is the importance of the goal, which is how much the particular issue or objective means to you.
Horizontally, we look at the importance of the relationship, which is the degree to which the other person or team matters to you.
The combination of these gives us five different approaches, as shown in the diagram below.
This means we have five strategies we can choose, which can be summarised as:
- Collaborate. Working in partnership with the other party to create a “win-win” outcome, where both you and they are better off for having worked together.
- Compete. The aim here is to “win”, without worrying so much about the other party’s needs.
- Accommodate. If we take this approach, we let the other party win, and we put our own needs on the back-burner.
- Avoid. This strategy means you’ve decided you’ve got bigger fish to fry. You won’t bother to engage in this issue, because you decide that other things are more important to focus on.
- Compromise. This middle-of-the-road strategy means you don’t achieve a “win-win”, where everybody benefits. Instead, both parties give up something to reach an outcome. It isn’t optimal, but you do get to a solution.
Each strategy has some positives and negatives, which I’ll cover next.
Learn More: 3 Ways That Leaders Can Improve Cross Team Collaboration.
Every Approach Has Its Pros and Cons
As with most things, there is no one-size-fits-all approach that will be the best for every situation.
That’s why we need to be intentional about the strategy we choose.
That’s exactly why I wrote this post, to help you be more intentional.
And also to remind us that we don’t always have to collaborate! (even if that seems like the nice friendly thing to do).
Collaboration
First lets start with collaboration, where there are a few downsides.
First, collaboration can take a long time, because we need to find out what each party wants and work together to come to a win-win solution.
Next, it is possible (depending on the situation) that there is no optimal win-win solution. If the two parties involved have very different objectives and needs, you may spend a long time collaborating, only to get nowhere.
Of course, if you can make it work, collaboration can achieve the best outcome, where you strengthen the relationship with the other party while also achieving your own goals at the same time.
Learn More: 3 Useful Negotiation Concepts For the Everyday Leader.
Competing
Competing is not always a bad thing, but it has its risks.
If you compete, there is a chance you’re going to damage the relationship with the other party by trying to “win”.
Depending on the situation, this might not matter so much.
An example of competing in business would be when a big company (with lots of power) drives hard for a favourable deal with a smaller supplier who doesn’t have much bargaining power.
Another example in the workplace might be when we need to roll out an important policy change, related to safety or compliance.
In these situations, it’s often not really appropriate for everyone to have an opinion, so competing might be the best approach.
Avoiding
Avoiding is always a valid option, but it has one major flaw: you won’t get an outcome at all if you avoid the issue.
If you have bigger things on your mind, this isn’t necessarily a problem, but as we know, avoiding our problems won’t solve them!
This might sound like a “head in the sand” way of dealing with your problems, but it can be a valid strategy… as long as you are intentional about using it!
Accommodating
In some situations, we may choose to accommodate because we decide that the relationship is more important than the goal or issue we are trying to resolve.
The obvious downside here is that you don’t get what you want.
However, another potential problem is that it may set a precedent for the future.
That is – the other party may think that they can continue to get what they want at our expense – that we will continue to be a pushover.
If strengthening the relationship is likely to be of benefit in the future, however, then we may choose to accommodate so that the next time we work with this person, we have a strong foundation for the relationship.
Compromising
Compromising often happens because it’s quicker than collaboration.
Both parties give up something to reach an agreement. Neither get what they want, but they don’t lose out completely either.
The major risk with this strategy is that you push to compromise too early, and you may miss the opportunity to reach a win-win solution, where both parties are actually better off.
In this way, you may be seen to be “leaving money on the table”.
Questions to Help You Choose When to Collaborate
Now that we have the model, we need to assess how important the issue (or goal) and the relationship are to you.
Here are some questions to ponder to help you think about the importance of the relationship:
Are there longer-term benefits that might come from having a strong relationship with the other party?
What are the potential consequences of damaging the relationship with the other party?
Do you think the other party might take advantage of you if you adopt a collaborative approach?
Is this person or team going to be relevant to you in the future? Or are they really only involved for the short term?
Do you have more or less power than the other party? Or about the same?
Now, to think about the importance of the goal or outcome:
If you don’t get what you want, what are the consequences?
Is it appropriate for other parties to have a say in this issue? Or does it simply need to happen?
If you get what you want but the other party is annoyed or upset, would it really matter?
Every situation is different, but hopefully these questions will help you decide what approach to take.
Learn More: Thoughtful Leader Podcast #183: Power Dynamics: How Are They Impacting Your Team?
How to Encourage Others to Collaborate
One common challenge that I find many leaders have is that they would like to be collaborative, but they are faced with someone who is adopting a competitive approach.
So if you look at the model, in this situation, you would believe both the relationship and the goal is important to you.
The other party, on the other hand, is much more interested in the goal.
The relationship? Not so much.
So if we use our conflict model, we can see that we need the other party to care more about the relationship if we’re going to get them into a collaborative mode.
To do this, you might try:
- Spending time building your relationship, so they feel more invested in it
- Building your network within your organisation, to increase your overall influence (and therefore become someone who is more valuable to get along with)
- Emphasising what you bring to the table which can help the other party achieve their goals; or …
- Raising their awareness of the influence you have in the organisation (which could become a bad thing if they annoy you!).
Basically, you’re trying to shift them up into the top half of the matrix!
Learn More: Stakeholder Management Tips For the Everyday Leader.
Let’s Be Intentional About Collaboration
One challenge with being a people-focused thoughtful leader is that we always think about people and relationships.
While in general I think this is a positive thing, it can get us into an ultra-collaborative mode where we use this as our go-to style all the time.
Instead, we could try being more intentional about our approach and potentially get a better outcome for ourselves, and for others.
What are your biggest challenges with collaboration? Let me and all the other thoughtful leaders know in the comments below!
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