We talk about COLLABORATING the 4th category of the Inner Development Goals (IDG). In previous episodes we have covered Being, Thinking and Relating.

According to a study by Howspace, 76% of employees say they really enjoy collaborating, but 2/3 also say the way their company collaborates needs to change, but don’t believe it will change. There's clearly room to nurture better collaboration in organisations.

The IDG framework offers 5 skills or qualities to practice:

1) Communication the ability to really listen to others, to foster genuine dialogue, to advocate own views skilfully, to manage conflicts constructively and to adapt communication to diverse groups.

Communicating is not informing! Communication requires dialouge which in turn starts with suspending judgement and genuinely listen.

Reflection Questions:

• How open am I to engage in genuine dialogue and practice suspending judgment?
• How am I able to facilitate dialogue within my team, helping them communicate and collaborate more effectively?

2) Co-creation the skills and motivation to build, develop, and facilitate collaborative relationships with diverse stakeholders characterized by psychological safety and genuine co-creation.

Co-creation is a skill for all leaders, not only for professional facilitators. Also refer to episode on Collective intelligence.

Reflection Questions:

• How good am I at co-creating? Where might I use too much ‘top-down’, not involving people enough?

3) Inclusive mindset and intercultural competence the willingness and competence to embrace diversity and include people and collectives with different views and backgrounds.

To really include diverse people in collaboration we must be able to see things through cultural norms or beliefs that are different from our own.

Reflection Questions:

• How do I expose myself to people with different backgrounds? How do I challenge my own cultural understanding?

4) Trust the ability to show trust and to create and maintain trusting relationships.

We covered trust and relationships in Emotions at Work, and highlight that trust is nothing fuzzy or esoteric - it’s based on neurobiology.

Reflection Questions:

• Can I be myself at work? Am I confident that I’m good enough being myself?
• Which of my behaviors builds trust? Which might hinder trust?

5) Mobilization skills skills in inspiring and mobilizing others to engage in shared purposes.

If you have practiced the four previous skills well - communicated based on dialogue, engaged in co-creation, applied intercultural understanding, and built trustbased relationships - we would say you get  mobilization as a result.

Reflection Questions:

• As a leader, if I feel that my team is not as motivated as I wish, what could I have done different? Did I create dialogue? Was there sufficient co-creation? Was trust built?

More info about us and our work: SecondCrackLeadership.com


P.S. We are happy to announce that we have made it into Feedspot's Top 100 Leadership Podcasts