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dimanche 5 janvier 2014

5 Resolutions to becoming a Collaborative Leader in 2014



Collaborative Leadership” is a very particular type of working together and it’s this essence or practice of "true Collaboration" that should not be confused with other Social trends.
Mc Kinsey Global Institute find that Social technologies, when used within and across enterprises, have the potential to raise productivity of high-skill knowledge workers that are critical to performance and growth in the 21st century by 20 to 25 %. However, realizing such gains will require significant transformations in management practices and organizational behaviors.

Companies that understood this challenge and have implemented collaborative habits in addition to their Enterprise Social Network are seeing progressively that their employees’ collaboration has a tremendous value for their customers. Their employees are able to give the best support experience if they have the information, resources and experience of internal experts. A employee may not always have the reply the customer needs, but they will have access to the knowledge of the entire organization to resolve the problem, issue or win a bid.

Other analysts predicted that "Mass Collaboration" will be a huge step forward for mankind in general. It will shape the workplace in the decades to come... We know the theory and their vision, but for Leaders and Business man; how it’s work?

Why Should You Be a Collaborative Leader?

The key benefit of being a Collaborative leader is that your colleagues will enjoy working together within your team. Also your prospects/customers/stakeholders will seek out your expertise and benefits' behaviors. If you’re not a Collaborative leader in your field, someone else will be, so step in and start becoming one today!

Collaborative leader is a powerful network commodity. Doors that were once closed are now open, people listen you and will thank for sharing your knowledge; in brief your business will grow organically thanks to the following resolutions.

5 Resolutions to becoming a Collaborative leader: 


1- Be a Facilitator.
The first resolution to being a Collaborative Leader is thinking like a facilitator rather than an authority figure. This means Collaborative Leaders don’t tell their team what to do, instead they ask themselves, “How can I bring my team what is necessary to get the job done?” This question implies an open and trusting attitude towards others on the team.
Collaborative Leaders believe in their team’s abilities, value their ideas and allow them to make decisions in order to get the job done.

2- Share your Knowledge.
The Collaborative leader you want to be is one who wants to share knowledge and help people be more successful. Ask yourself if you genuinely care and continuously demonstrate a strong purpose to help others? If not, you need to!
If you believe that your knowledge is valuable to others and you have the passion to share it, then you are on the right path.

3- Inspire others and help peers
It’s important to think about finding the message/post that will resonate in your community/audience—the one that will inspire action and motivation. Make sure that your message is not too constrained by your corporate culture and adversity to risk. 
Concretely; write a post/ blog about the topic you are an expert in and share it. To be a Collaborative leader, you must recognize that what you have to say (i.e., your knowledge and expertise is valued by others)
Also find peers and friends within other Communities in your domain. Repost their Post or tweets, comment on their blogs, do them favors and help you each other’s.

4- Empower, understand and trust your people
Leader who are becoming Collaborative are daily investing to:
  • Empower people; by creating new production lines of innovation fueled by the collective knowledge of the workplace and their community.
  • Understand people; by leveraging the human face of data based on a fundamentally new source of behavioral and sentimental insights. If you are going to talk about Collaboration, it is important you involve your employees from the start. Listen to their ideas, needs, suggestions and incorporate their feedbacks in your strategy.
  • Trust people by deploying new organizational designs and processes which optimize workplace talent and open up agile marketplace engagement. 
  • Reward your people collectively; If your organization focuses on rewarding employees for individual contributions as the driver of success, it will be quite hard to encourage employees to share and communicate with each other. There is nothing wrong with rewarding your employees for personal results, but it is equally important to recognize and reward Collaboration and teamwork (eg. Communities KPIs will have more impact than individual monitoring for adoption)

5-Be committed to your Community
As a Community leader, you have to be visible and accessible, to spend time online and offline (informal team meeting), to celebrate business successes or personal event, to appreciate and say thank you and of course by responding promptly.

People are more important than technology. You need to hire people who care about people. If you hire timid people in your teams, it doesn’t matter what you social network strategy is if your company is full of withdrawn or grumpy colleagues !

Also ensure the development of your community members; give them greater autonomy in expressing their genius, creativity, energy. You task is to support and motivate them!

In conclusion to become a Collaborative leader in 2014, you need talents, perseverance, transparency, networking, listening, exemplarity and always taking decision after collaborative discussions.

"It's not about you know anymore, it's about what you share with transparency to your colleagues" Quote from Anthony Bradley (Social Organization book author)

Author note :
“I wish all of you a wonderful and a Collaborative 2014. I hope this new year will bring lots of opportunities to innovate, change, explore and transform together our business life to the Collaborative Leadership”