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Are we Collaborative Leaders?



As leaders, transforming employee participation into empowerment and engagement is at the top of our priorities.


Collaborative leadership is crucial in navigating rapid change and fostering innovation, engagement, and shared decision-making.


Many leaders have found success by leveraging a collaborative leadership style to drive progress, promote an atmosphere of participation and collaboration, and use the power of facilitation and conversations to draw employees toward shared goals and build strong bonds in a productive work environment, which results in employees feeling that they have a valuable perspective to contribute.


A collaborative approach facilitates a sense of personal accountability and ownership among the team, increasing their commitment to the organizational goals.  Creating an inclusive and supportive work environment that fosters effective communication, strong bonds, and success requires patience.


Here are the essential qualities of collaborative leadership, according to Forbes, for the road ahead:


Purpose: Without a guiding north star and clear purpose, a meeting can feel like a waste of time, and the same applies to leadership. Sharing direction and forming a structured environment around it allows all team members to feel connected to a greater purpose and invested in realizing it.


Inclusive: Collaborative leaders have a unique opportunity to significantly impact on the organization's inclusivity goals simply by guiding people, running meetings, and operating businesses. Using active listening skills and creating a psychologically safe environment with a climate of trust, where all ideas are encouraged and welcomed, can go a long way.


Clear: Corporate communication can sometimes seem to exist at two extremes: either sharing an overwhelming amount of information that is impossible to sift through or failing to be transparent. Collaborative leadership invites employees in, making them a part of the collaborative process rather than a recipient of endless memos.


Crafted: Collaborative leaders should cultivate a mindset that promotes experiences over agendas. They should be intentional in their actions and encourage utmost creativity. By crafting a structured environment, they can harness a team's brilliance and encourage collaborative thinking.


Adaptive: for collaborative leaders, adaptability isn’t just a buzzword. It’s the cornerstone of genuine progress and unity.  They rely on their adaptiveness to identify when needs change, recognize when a plan is failing, understand the mood of their team members and more.


In conclusion, a well-laid plan may seem like the ultimate sign of a great leader, but a great leader knows when to pivot away from an anticipated course.  Collaborative leaders utilize their adaptiveness to delve beyond the surface and address the core challenges that, when resolved, can set a team on a transformative trajectory for the road ahead.

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