Social:Collaborative leadership

Short description: Management practice

Collaborative leadership is a management approach characterized by shared decision-making and joint problem-solving. Unlike traditional hierarchical models, which rely on centralized authority and formal chains of command, collaborative leadership distributes control among participants. Collaborative leadership is frequently used in businesses' organizational structures.

History

In the early 1990s, the term collaborative leadership first began appearing in public‑sector management literature. One of the earliest institutional uses was by the Institute for Collaborative Leadership, founded in 1992 to promote cross‑agency cooperation in U.S. public administration and to describe a form of leadership in the public sector.

In a 1994 Harvard Business Review article, Rosabeth Moss Kanter introduced the concept of "collaborative advantage," arguing that organizations increasingly rely on informal networks and shared problem-solving rather than hierarchical control.

In 2013, Nick Lovegrove and Matthew Thomas, co-founders of The Intersector Project, expanded on these ideas in Harvard Business Review. They argued that leaders must collaborate across business, government, and civil society to address increasingly complex public challenges, including healthcare costs, infrastructure, workforce development, smart-grid technologies, and financial-system stability. Their research suggested that effective collaborative leadership depends on the ability to engage across sectors and coordinate institutions with different incentives, cultures, and goals.

In the 2000s, the concept gained attention as scholars such as David Archer and Alex Cameron emphasized leadership and sharing control across organizational boundaries to achieve joint outcomes.

Hank Rubin, founder of the Institute for Collaborative Leadership, and Leonard Brock differentiate collaborative leadership from collective impact, defining the latter as beginning when a community agrees on shared outcomes. "Individuals then return to their respective organizations to determine how they, both personally and organizationally, can contribute to achieving those goals."

David Archer and Alex Cameron, in their 2008 book Collaborative Leadership: How to Succeed in an Interconnected World, identify the basic objective of the collaborative leader as the delivery of results across boundaries between different organizations. They argue that "getting value from difference is at the heart of the collaborative leader's task"; leaders must learn to share control and trust partners that operate differently from themselves.

Characteristics of collaborative leaders

Nick Lovegrove and Matthew Thomas, writing for the Harvard Business Review, interviewed over 100 leaders. Many demonstrated the ability to work effectively across businesses, government and social sectors. The authors identified six major, distinguishing characteristics:

1. Balanced motivations:
   • A desire to create public value, whether it be through wielding influence (often in government)
   • Having social impact (often in nonprofits)
   • Generating wealth (often in business)
2. Transferable skills:
   • A set of distinctive skills valued across sectors, such as quantitative analytics, strategic planning, and stakeholder management.
3. Contextual intelligence:
   • Empathy for the differences within and between sectors, especially those of language, culture, and key performance indicators.
4. Integrated networks:
   • A set of relationships across sectors to draw on when advancing their careers, building top teams, or convening decision-makers on a particular issue.
5. Prepared mind:
   • A willingness to pursue an unconventional career that zigzags across sectors, and the financial readiness to take potential pay cuts from time to time.
6. Intellectual thread:
   • Holistic subject expertise on a particular intersectional issue by understanding it from the perspective of each sector.

Madeline Carter, writing for the Center for Effective Public Policy as part of a research project funded by the United States Department of Justice and State Justice Institute, identified five key qualities of collaborative leaders.

1. Willingness to take risks.
2. Eagerness to listen.
3. Passion for the cause.
4. Optimism about the future.
5. Ability to share knowledge, power, and credit.

Rod Newing, writing in a Financial Times supplement special report, said that "If a collaboration is to be effective, each party must recognize and respect the different cultures of the other." He continued, "Traditional management development often rewards managers with increasing authority over people and resources. By contrast, collaboration requires leaders to achieve results through people and resources outside their direct control."

Steven Wilson mentions four major key leadership traits that all highly collaborative leaders share in his article, "Collaborative leadership: it's good to talk":

• Focus on authentic leadership, placing the goals of the organization ahead of their own self-interest and following through on their commitments.
• Relentlessly pursue transparent decision-making, clarifying how their decisions are made and who is accountable for the outcomes.
• View resources as tools for collective action, using them flexibly to achieve shared goals.
• Clarify the relationship between decisions, rights, accountability, and rewards, taking time to establish decision paths and using a common vocabulary that everyone can comprehend for successful collaborations.

Wilson further states that the best thing a collaborative leader can do is to lead by example. Leaders must show a willingness to take risks, continually question their own ideas, and reward others for their clear communication and valuable insights. Chantale Mailhot, Stephanie Gagnon, Anne Langley, and Louis-Felix Binette conducted a research project to examine the qualities of distributing leadership and the effects diversity has on groups. They found that "coupling of leaders and objects helped to maintain the worldview of the different groups involved at different levels in the research project, while directing them towards project objectives." In retrospect, the differences of each individual increase innovation due to the variety of minds at work. With everyone having their own qualities and prior experiences, the integration between them in a leadership role contributes to the overall experience.

Applications

Collaborative leadership is being used in the following areas:

1. Public-private partnerships
2. Global supply chains
3. Civic collaboration to solve complex community problems
4. Online collaboration, such as Linux, Wikipedia, etc.
5. Political collaboration to address issues such as the 2008 financial crisis, climate change, and terrorism
6. Government – Heather Getha-Talyor and Ricardo S. Morse state in their article that collaborative leadership affects the roles of local government officials. Public administration is shifting toward a more collaborative leadership-oriented field because it supports the development of skills required for these roles.
7. Education – According to Abdolhamid Arbabi and Vali Mehdinezhad, collaborative leadership promotes cooperation, which allows for adaptability and consistency, "increasing organizational commitment and decreasing employee resistance to changes." There is a significant correlation between the teachers' self-efficacy and the principals' collaborative leadership style. Gialamas, Pelonis, and Medeiros state that collaborative leadership allows leaders to work together and adapt more effectively to change, which supports "growth and development."
8. Health Services – According to Markle-Reid, Dykeman, Ploeg, Andrews, Bonomo, and Stradiotto, collaborative leadership in healthcare can provide professionals with a broader set of skills needed to assist patients. One example discussed is that older adults may not always receive the support they need because professionals may have theoretical knowledge but lack the practical skills required in real-time situations. Collaborative leadership helps develop these practical skills and encourages consistent approaches to care.

A research report by Ipsos MORI, published in 2007, found that relationship management and collaborative leadership were the two capabilities that directors of organizations involved in large business partnerships most wanted greater access to when establishing or managing partnerships.

See also

• Collective intelligence
• Collective decision-making
• Collective problem solving
• Collective intentionality
• Group cognition
• Business partnering
• Collaboration
• Shared leadership
• Situational leadership
• Strategic alliance

Further reading

• Middleton, Julia (2007). Beyond Authority – Leadership in a changing world. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-230-50001-3. 
• Tapscott, Don; Williams, Anthony D (2006). Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. Atlantic Books. ISBN 1-59184-193-3. https://archive.org/details/wikinomicshowmas00taps_0. 
• Reffo, Gerry; Wark, Valerie (2014). Leadership PQ: How Political Intelligence Sets Successful Leaders Apart. Kogan Page. ISBN 9780749469603. 
• Echavarria, Martin (2015). Enabling Collaboration – Achieving Success Through Strategic Alliances and Partnerships. LID Publishing Inc.. ISBN 9780986079337.