All power to you: Collaborative leadership works

Learn how you can get smart people who don't report to you to work together (and maybe transform the organization) in the process).

In over a decade of helping enterprise executives steer their workgroups through turbulent change in the workplace, my partners and I have come to a simple, but important, conclusion concerning the future of our workplaces. Successful leadership across organizational boundaries demands one ability above all others: executives must be able to organize and energize busy people (with demanding performance plans) who do not report to them. Furthermore, this ability depends directly on a leader's willingness to examine and separate his or her sources of power and wield the various "powers" in a mix appropriate to the given situation.

Simply put, power is the ability to get things done. But power comes in a lot of flavors. Most successful executives depend heavily on their authority power. They do this, ostensibly, to reduce the uncertainty that things get done the way they want them to be done. When they are required to lead a team of people, howeversome of whom do and some of whom don't report to themfunctioning across organizational boundaries, such executives often fail. This happens for a couple of reasons:

1) They don't believe it's possible to lead any other way. They are too accustomed to wielding authority. When they can't use it for everything, they may balk or actually refuse the assignment-or they may reluctantly accept it and provide no leadership. Others may ask for a re-organization, so that they can "control" the people or processes the way an executive "should."

2) They're gung-ho but don't differentiate their sources of power. In this situation, the leadership they provide produces uneven results across organizational lines. With enough of these experiences, executives adopt the belief that such team leadership is impossible for them.

These two dynamics deliver a one-two punch and take a large portion of executives right out of arenas where they might have contributed to cross-functional, collaborative leadership. Since the new workplace is-and, for the foreseeable future, will continue to be-full of cross-functional challenges, it behooves all of us to learn and practice collaborative leadership skills. Practicing these skills while leading one or more visible work teams can actually do more to introduce a new work ethic-if not a new culture-than most programmatic, top-down change-efforts.

Twin outcomes

Unpopular executive actions are often criticized as "immoral." Think, for instance, of the times you've seen an executive focus on the bottom line, at all costs, disregarding people, relationships, integrity, and fairness. Successful collaborative leaders know they can't reconcile things this way because they wouldn't be followed, and the followers are the ones who determine leaders. Collaborative leaders always demonstrate a moral imperative in groups they create and lead: neither the leader nor the group may create internal winners on the backs of internal losers. For collaborative leaders, this "moral" behavior is simply the most well reasoned and highly logical business move because it alone provides for all players to continue playing.

Collaborative leaders need not espouse moral agendas. The moral imperative need not be the rallying cry, and it often isn't. The imperative functions simply as an everyday demonstration of personal values. But it sends a matter-of-fact message of relationship fairness as loud as any rallying cry. And, with the fairness issue settled, the group is free to focus on the business result they're trying to accomplish.

The first organizing strategy for powerful, collaborative leaders is this: train the group's attention on twin foci, not the single-focus that most success experts have taught for years. The recipe for this is very simple:

One part clear business results (the business "what").

One part meaningful experience for the participants (the relationship "why").

Maintain equal parts. Never let one focus become more important than the other, lest you invite failure.

Determine your power source

With twin outcomes established, collaborative leaders must attend to their sources of power. Again, power is simply defined as one's ability to get things done. Those who have been organizational leaders for some time have been leaders in part by virtue of their position as managers-they've received some portion of their ability to get things done from authority, such as their "power over" others. A collaborative leader is keenly aware that "power-over" doesn't work outside of his or her own reporting chain. Yet, when working across organizational boundaries, does this mean we must accept powerlessness? Not at all.

Renowned Professor of economics at the University of Colorado at Boulder Kenneth E. Boulding suggests in Three Faces of Power (Sage Publications, 1989) three basic types of power:

Authority, otherwise known as threat or "power over."

Economic, otherwise known as exchange or "power to."

Integrative, otherwise known as love or "power with."

Integrative power is actually one's ultimate power, not authority nor economic power. Integrative power is without limits in its ability to energize and focus people through and across communication networks. To use integrative power, all one requires is an audience and a meaningful message. Therefore, becoming collaborative leaders requires that we repeatedly ask, "How can I use power-with alongside my powerover?"

Consider this large, very successful, cross-functional team from a traditional bureaucracy. During monthly team meetings he chaired, the leader, a Fortune 100 corporate vice president, never spoke in declarative sentences. He spoke only in questions, which he broadcast to the group while looking at an overhead display. "Who can tell me why I shouldn't be worried about our plant in Mexico?" When someone volunteered an answer, the executive listened keenly and then asked more laser-focused probing questions, always seeking information for the team, never attacking the individual.

In the same executive's staff meetings, the man commonly voiced demands and held individuals accountable for information in a directive and authoritative manner. His results were stellar in both instances. Although unaware of the unconscious distinctions the leader made in his communication, he had chosen to wield "power over" with his direct reports, while relying heavily on his "power with" in relation to the team that included others outside his reporting chain.

Being collaborative leaders does not require us to give up our authority. We simply have to add to authority those skills that accomplish integrative power. (This is a comforting thought to many executives who fear they have to quit one long-learned skill set to start using another.) The new workplace actually requires us to keep all of our old skills-and then add to them.

Between work and a hard place

While many professionals expend major energy just trying to manage their areas of responsibility, collaborative leaders know that the largest opportunity to add value is not within job descriptions, functions, departments, or organizations. They see opportunity between job descriptions, functions, departments, or organizations-in the relationship space, the margins, the white space, between what is formally and informally defined by organization structures. Hence, to collaborative leaders, the largest opportunity to add value is not assigned to anyone.

Problems in this space-the space between-are commonly defined by people on one side of a problem as being caused by people on the other side of the problem. This blaming (by all parties) causes a problem to persist, grow, and spawn other problems and conflicts. The best way to solve "problems between" is to surround the problems with the people laying blame on each another. Collaborative leaders need to learn how to form a team constituted of those who seem to be the problem and help them solve it together. (Well-known examples of this strategy include the assembly of cross-functional manufacturing-design engineering teams and supply chain partnering with customers and suppliers. In both instances, surrounding the problem with parties to the problem commonly provide rapid, appropriate solutions and resolutions.)

To use problems between as a collaborative leadership strategy, recruit close rivals to co-lead teams. Close rivals are persons often found on the opposite side of conflicts. This strategy works best when, by nature of their positions, both parties are highly visible, interdependent, and frequently in conflict over resources, direction, or policy. Typical pairings include manufacturing and sales, engineering and marketing, and sales and marketing.

What happens when a collaborative leader, tasked with heading up a large crossorganizational effort, recruits a close rival as a co-leader? Pandemonium? Hardly. Instead, look for the following:

The primary source of contention is eliminated.

The essence of collaboration is demonstrated to team-members who are direct reports to either rival.

The rivals create more power by sharing their own.

The rivals expand their range of influence.

When recruiting for this kind of team, however, both the critical business reason (the "what") for collaborating and an extremely compelling personal outcome (the "why") must be defined for each rival. Both will be critical resources in the team's efforts to overcome the inertia of the rivalry.

Recruiting a close rival is the single most important strategy one can employ for successful collaborative leadership. Both parties' alignment and commitment to the "what" and the "why" must be total, however. Any perceived politics or other fissures dividing the co-leaders will force team-members to take sides, and functional interest groups will never be true collaborators.

High performance is voluntary

Collaborative leaders have no formal organizational "carrots" or "sticks" to motivate all team members. Contrary to first impressions, this doesn't make them powerless. It's actually very empowering to have no motivation tools. You merely have to look at work differently to see the advantage.

In responsible relationships, we want to move others to action without using carrots or sticks-otherwise known as behavioral control.

Responsible leaders must tap into others' existing motivation. In other words, collaborative leaders do their homework; they discern what puts others into motion and then position themselves to help them get that-whatever it happens to be-by working with them. How do leaders discern this? By asking about their dreams and wants, needs and pleasures. Then, knowing what others want and need, they help their teammates specify exactly how they can achieve those things by working on this project, at this time, with these people.

If you make sure you find the answers that clearly energize others, you will serve them by helping them keep their sights on what they want-and can achieve-by working with you. Sounds really simple, doesn't it? Keep in mind that high performance is always voluntary, as is collaborative followership.

The skill will follow

Conventional teambuilding wisdom advises leaders to pay primary attention to creating the "right" skill mix as they assemble teams. Yet, this is not the way to do it because skill is much less critical to responsible relationships than are aligned motivation, energy, enthusiasm, drive, and interest.

Of course, leaders must demand the best skill-fit possible for all jobs. But managing skill-fit is a project-management task, not a collaborative leadership role. And it's vital not to confuse the two roles. We've all seen supposed "teams" with all the right skills perform miserably. And we've seen teams with low skills-but broad alignment-perform at extraordinary levels. Shared commitment to achieve an agreed outcome drives team members to find the skills and resources they need. Furthermore, such focused and high-energy teams will attract the best talent. The truth is, proper skill mixes have no necessary correlation to group motivation. If teamwork is important to you, recruit team members for their commitment first and their skills second.

Real-time problem solving

Basic democratic communication and problem solving are fundamental to collaborative, cross-functional leaders. They don't have to be "one of the guys," but neither do they hole up in their offices with handlers planning every nuance of a public encounter. True collaboration leaders solve problems in real-time with whomever is on the team today, not concerned with whether or not their thoughts are prepared or staged just right.

Christopher M. Avery, Ph.D. is president of Partnerwerks Incorporated (www.partnerwerks.com), which teaches integrative skills for independent

thinkers. (To obtain a free weekly e-tip from Partnerwerks, send a blank message to teampower-on@mail-list.com.) Avery may be contacted by phone at 512-342-9970 or by e-mail at cavery@partnerwerks.com.

Copyright Association for Quality and Participation Mar/Apr 1999
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