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How to be a Collaborative Leader

Leadership

Collaborative Leadership and the benefits it brings is something you may have heard being bounced about in the workplace.  But what exactly is Collaborative Leadership and how can you become a Collaborative Leader?

Collaborative Leadership is a management practice that draws on the Leadership Skills across different business functions and organisational boundaries.  It draws on the collected leadership skills of many versus the leadership skills of one. True effective leadership is no longer the old style of ‘telling’ leadership but the newer style of working collaboratively and together with a team to achieve tasks and goals.

A point to make in relation to Collaborative Leadership is that it’s not the only set of tools you should use from your Leadership Tool Box, it’s a style that can be used in varying situations on your leadership journey.

Here are a few tips on how to be a Collaborative Leader:

1.  Empower your Team to be Powerful – encourage participation from all team members.  This will ensure you gain ideas from every team member as well as explore different ways, other than yours, to solve problems.  The Team has collective power which is both rewarding and empowering for Teams.  Applying Collaborative Leadership also prevents silos and non-transferring of knowledge and expertise amongst Team members.

2.  Let your Team Members’ Roles Flex and not Stagnate – everyone is creative and resourceful so if you enforce roles and responsibilities on them, they won’t have the ability or opportunities to grow.   Give them a free rein to expand their roles and increase their knowledge and see them grow and shine.

3.  Build and Promote Trust within your Team.  If you encourage distrust amongst your team members by talking about them to other team members behind their backs, you are fostering distrust and disrespect.  If you are not happy with someone’s performance, then you need to call that out in a 1 to 1 meeting with them.  Address the issue rather than bitching about them to others. When you lead people you become a role model so how you create and build trust amongst your Team and peers will be noticed – make sure you are demonstrating the right behaviours of a good leader.

Go ahead and try out the above and see how your Team and your organisation will benefit.