Real Collaboration Or Total Confusion

Working through teams is a hot topic and the idea of collaboration has been around for a long time.  Certainly no one wants to go back to the bad old days of a few top down decision makers meeting in private and then telling the whole organization what to do.  Surely with all the emphasis on involving everyone on your leadership team those old habits have finally died.  Not really, they are alive and well.

Effective teams are honest with each other and deal with conflict in a healthy way.  They value the combined strengths and gifts of the team over the limited skills of the few.  Some leaders though are still playing the game of valuing everyone on the team publicly but in reality privately they are not willing to pay the price to build a strong consensus.

There are several clear indicators that will let you know that the leader is not all in on collaboration:

1.  Lots of talk but no real decisions.   At some point in time in the meeting everyone realizes that the impression of listening to everyone has really become how can we end this meeting without making a decision.
2. Overvaluing the input of everyone.   In every team environment depending upon the subject some people on the team will clearly have more knowledge and experience.  When leaders spend an equal amount of time hearing from everyone, they value the acceptance of the people more than the effectiveness of the team.
3. Making unnecessary assignments.  This is a classic delaying strategy by the leader to avoid the realities of the team moving toward a consensus decision.  It sounds a lot like collaboration but in reality its organizational constipation.
4. Meetings with selected individuals.  When a leader does not like the potential direction of the team, they will meet ahead of time with certain individuals to ensure their opinion will be expressed by others.  These team members will do the dirty work while the leader can remain above the conflict.
5. Giving passive approval.  Finally, when it is obvious that the collective team is moving toward a consensus decision to move forward, the leader will give passive approval.  The right words get said but in reality the leader is living to fight another day and has no intention of supporting the groups decision.

If you really don’t want your teams to help you make the decisions then just tell them.  They have plenty of other work to do and they hate playing the game.