How to Foster Collaboration | 120 Seconds to Better Leadership

Collaboration Makes for Better Results

One of the things I notice is that people can get really competitive when they don’t necessarily need to. I see this among peers who might perceive themselves as competing with someone for the next promotion. They might feel like the person next to them is a little bit too much of a superstar. And I think all those feelings are really human, really normal, really natural. And certainly, in my industry I see people be, a little territorial about what they do. And again, I get it, we’re all here to feed our families, so I think those feelings are natural. But I think if you can shift into collaboration, cooperation, and communication, you’ll find they make for better results. It can really help you open up to the ideas that others can share.

Collaboration Gives You the Opportunity to Learn

So, for example, I met an executive coach on LinkedIn and loved her stuff right away. Our expertise is a little bit different, but loved her energy, loved her content, and I said, “Hey, let’s get together, let’s record a video. Let’s just have a conversation about things that we both care about.” We’re both pretty into fitness and nutrition, as well as leadership, and we both serve executives, so we got on a call for 20 minutes, we recorded it, it’s actually a Zoom video, and we’re going to release it together with both of our contact information. And I learned a lot from her, and I don’t know if she learned anything from me, but I think there’s really a lot of value not just in collaboration for the sake of collaboration, but you learn things from other people, and your clients are better served when you bring that wisdom to them.

Try to look at people as resources, and doing what’s best for the business and what’s best for your clients versus doing what may be only in your best interest.

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