Category: Collaboration

Fireside Chat: Collaboration – A Real Life Experience and Key Skill

There is always something special about the first time you do something. It is exciting, it is scary, it can be rewarding, and there are challenges.

However, in the end there is growth, expansion, and most of all the experience of creating. It is empowering! That is how I feel about collaboration; it can be all those things including fun.

Collaboration is like exploring the next frontier and you get to do it with colleagues, friends, or a group. Like when you get bold enough, take a tour, and do not know anyone in the group and the tour ends up being fantastic and you made new friends.

So, what is it about collaboration that is exciting? Collaboration allows you to see amazing possibilities.  It provides the environment in which you can think BOLDLY about the problem or issue. It is where possibilities begin. It is where we get to answer without limitations, “What if…”

Exploring the unknown and having other minds to add to the depth and expansiveness of the exploration, the unknowing. It is the unknowing and creating new knowledge that is exciting, rewarding and fun. Exploring options, “feeding” off others ideas, and seeing possibilities where there was none. Sharing and consoling when you fail or hit a dead end and regrouping to continue on a new path.

Oh, yes it can be scary. Like how am I going to relate to all the different folks in my group? What if my ideas are not the best? It is scary that I do not have all the answers and I think everyone else in my group thinks I do or should.  Can I really collaborate?  Will it be easier just to do this project myself and not rely on my teammates? What if we do not listen well to each other how will that affect our collaboration? Perhaps you can think of other scary aspects of collaboration that you could add to my list.

What I know is this, collaboration is valued.  From my experience as a graduate student, industry member, faculty member, administrator, and neighborhood/community member, the benefits, outcomes, and rewards of collaboration outweigh the scariness or challenges.

Let me give you a real life example. When I was president of our neighborhood association, we had situation where a developer wanted to build a project that would significantly diminish the safety and quality of life for our families especially our children.

Now I could have taken this on myself, but it was through inviting the neighborhood to form a collaborative group that we were able to reach an outcome that benefited our community more than, if I tried to solve the problem alone. Through that collaborative process, I learned and gained skills that I use today and those skills have helped me to advance in my career.

I learned that listening and really understanding my group members was critical. What were their issues, what were their solutions, what were their considerations? Respecting different viewpoints even though the ideas did not always agree with mine was so important to our collaborative process.

Let me tell you, everyone had a viewpoint on what we should do! I gained valuable experience in honing my interpersonal, organizational, and leadership skills that are highly valued in the job market and I use every day.

I also learned a valuable lesson. The importance of patience. Not everyone reaches a solution or comes to consensus at the same time. Some take longer in the information gathering stage than others. It is important for the collaborative group to allow for that because in the end, the outcome will be stronger.

There are many challenges to collaboration. In the end, it is so worth it. The impact of what collaboration can create is more than I could ever dream by myself.

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” Helen Keller

Fireside Chat: Collaboration and Communication

Collaboration and communication both begin with the letter “C” and so does the word conflict. As we think about or even experience collaboration, we learn first-hand that everyone in our group or team has a different perspective. We see things through different lenses. That is what makes collaboration rich and exciting. At the same time it is our different lenses that create the potential for conflict unless we stop for a moment, spot the conflict (what we are
seeing and experiencing), and be open to receiving and understanding the different perspective. It does not mean we have to change our viewpoint – just be open to receiving other perspectives.  When we are open, we are more receptive, we expand, and we grow. That is where the growth is in collaboration.

We all are the same. We all have a different viewpoint, a different way of doing things, a different method to solve problems or issues, a different cultural experience. I could go on and on about differences and that is where conflict can arise – in the differences. As Tom Crum states, “The quality of our lives depends not on whether or not we have conflicts, but on how we respond to them.”

Conflict can be subtle and very passive aggressive or conflict can be “In your face”, New Jersey style. Having lived in many parts of the country from NJ, to the mountains in the west, to the southwest, to the south, I learned how to live in different cultures and to understand different forms of communication and styles of conflict. I was used to the direct in your face style of conflict however, living in the south, that direct style of conflict just would not be appropriate.

Communication is another way we can experience conflict through the collaborative process. The conflict can arise from our different communication styles.  That is, how we receive and how we send communication can cause conflict. Let me give you an example of different communication styles or preferences with respect to collaboration.

The other day, I was having an impromptu conversation with two graduate students. One was a Gen X with business/industry experience and the other a millennial coming straight through from an undergraduate program. Both were in the same department and working on doctoral degrees.  I engaged them in a conversation about collaboration.  What I learned was that Gen X with industry experience had a different understanding with respect to expectations in how to communicate and collaborate with other generations especially with Boomers. Boomers like the face-to-face means of communicating and collaborating. Millennials prefer other means of communication. From our conversation, it became clear to me that different generations have expectationsthat other generations should meet their expectations and preference style in communication. Communication is key to collaboration. As Stephen Covey says, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood. This principle is the key to effective interpersonal communication.”

The Gen X person was very clear and stressed the importance of collaboration. “Collaboration is an essential skill in the workplace and that you cannot solve all the problems by yourself.” Both students told me how Millennials perceive collaboration differently.   The Millennial stated that Millennials collaborate using technology for example on google drive. In so doing, each person can work at different hours; people can do their own thing, and isolation can become an issue. Millennials are collaborating when they add to the document or conversation in google drive. The Gen X had a different perspective. “Collaboration looks different today as a result of technology”.  Collaboration happens best when team members “work in person” and not remotely. The Gen X student left me with this thought, “Bigger better ideas come through sharing knowledge and the end result is more innovation.”

What is clear is – as we engage in collaboration, it is important to understand the expectation preferences of each team member’s communication style. Perhaps a hybrid model will evolve to include the best of each generation.

What is important is that each generation wants respect and if we start with that premise, then Collaboration and Communication will begin with a big letter “C” and conflict with a small letter “c”.