Collaboration

Collaboration. How to stop the eye rolls and start working better together. This is what we'll be talking about today on how to lead the podcast for CEOs, founders, and leaders who want the perfect balance of authority and empathy. I'm Kate Waterfall Hill and I'll be sharing some ideas from over 30 years of working in business and leadership development.

Before we start, don't forget, you can check out my book, How to Lead, my group coaching programme, the Leadership Accelerator Premium, and my One-to-One and team coaching services at waterfallhill.co uk. Places are strictly limited and tend to sell out each month, so book now for yourself or your team.

Right then. Today we're talking about collaboration, not the overused buzzword, not the forced brainstorming session, but what true collaboration looks like in high performing teams, and also what gets in the way.

Let's start, as always with Linda, the bad manager, my alter ego, and see how she enables collaboration in her team.

“Collaboration is everything. It's about bringing diverse minds together and getting them to agree with me. I've created a really open culture in my team. Anyone can come to a meeting with any idea they like as long as they've run it past me first, and I don't completely hate it. It's all very democratic.

This morning we had a workshop. The whole team? Yes, and we co-created the quarter three plan. I get 'em to write things down on Post-It notes and we move them all around and they feel very seen and heard, I'm sure of it. I mean, of course I then go with the idea I already had, but at least they feel like they've contributed.

Collaboration isn't about consensus. It's about getting everybody in a room, wasting a whole load of time, but everyone leaving the room feeling like they've had a part to play and it looks like consensus, but of course I'm controlling it all behind the whiteboard as usual.”

Another cringe worthy moment from Linda as usual, but let's have a look at why collaboration isn't optional anymore.

In almost every organization I work with, collaboration comes up as a key driver for performance. Whether you are in product comms, ops, or the executive team, no one works in a vacuum. We rely on other people for ideas, decisions sign off, problem solving, and importantly, execution. Increasingly, those people aren't in the same room, time zone, or mindset.

So collaboration isn't just a nice to have soft skill. It's an essential muscle for modern work. If your team doesn't collaborate well, you'll often see slow decision making, frustration, rework, missed context, tension between departments and that low level cynicism that kills morale over time, but done well.

Collaboration fuels better thinking, better relationships. Better outcomes. So let's have a look at what collaboration isn't. Let's clear it up. It isn't endless meetings. Absolutely not. It's not about sharing documents, it's not about asking somebody to sense check something or sending something to a whole group of people and hoping for the best.

True collaboration is working together towards a shared goal using each person's strengths, solving problems jointly, and making better decisions than any one person could do alone. It sounds so obvious, but it takes effort, structure, and a leadership style that supports it.

And where does collaboration go wrong sometimes? Well, based on the teams I coach, here are the most common reasons. Collaboration filters, firstly, unclear goals. People just can't collaborate if they don't know what they're aiming for or if they're aiming for different things. Even worse, ambiguous roles.

If no one knows who's doing what, if they're not taking responsibility and accountability for stuff, then work tends to get duplicated or missed entirely. Then there's the lack of trust. If I think that you might drop a ball or steal credit, I'll work around you, not with you.

A key one here that's so difficult to get right is poor communication messages. Don't land updates get missed. Context is lacking. even well-intentioned leaders often say to me, I wish I could communicate better. Choosing the right messages, making sure people understand what I'm saying and not overdoing it or underdoing it.

Then there's power plays. So collaboration turns into competition when egos or silos creep in, and perhaps there's no structure. If there's no rhythm or plan, it becomes ad hoc chaos. let's look now at how to address each of these areas.

Firstly, set a shared goal. Start by making sure everyone knows what the collaboration is actually for, and I don't mean just the title of the project, but the purpose, the why. for example, instead of launch the product, you might say deliver a pilot version that's good enough to test with five clients by mid-July.

Instead of improved team morale, you might say, reduce unplanned absence by 20% and increase our team engagement score by 10 points. if you're going to try to increase employee engagement, then you do need to measure it.

If people don't understand the outcome, they can't make good decisions. Collaboration becomes uncoordinated effort instead of intentional alignment, which is what we're looking for. The top tip here is when starting a project, ask everyone to write down what they think the goal is and then compare.

You'll then spot misalignment straight away and actually collaborate on creating the shared goal, which means people are more supportive of it and you'll get buy-in.

Secondly, we need to clarify roles and responsibilities. this is where collaboration often falls apart because nobody knows who's doing what or worse people assume someone else is doing it.

You might like to use a framework to help you here, like RASI or rasi. It's a project management tool that helps define and clarify the roles and responsibilities of team members on a project. So if you don't know about it, I'll just give you a brief overview.

The R in RASI stands for responsible, the people who are directly involved in performing the work. Then you've got A accountable, the person or people who ultimately own the outcome and are responsible for ensuring the task is completed, then supporting the people or person who provides assistance or resources to the responsible individuals consulted the person whose expertise is sought and whose input is required for the task.

And then lastly, informed the personal people who need to be kept updated on the progress of the task.

So RASI is often used in conjunction with a RASI matrix, which is a visual representation of the roles and responsibilities.

So to simplify it even further, just ask these questions. Who's leading it? Who needs to input? Who needs to be kept in the loop and who's signing it off?

Clear roles don't stop collaboration. They actually make it easier knowing who's doing what is really important. Then thirdly, building trust and make sure you do it on purpose. it's not just a vibe, it's about building trust through consistent behaviours.

You don't have to like everyone you work with, but you do need to follow through on what you say. Be honest when things go wrong, give credit where it's due, and show up to help, not just to critique. As a leader, you set the tone. If you undercut people in meetings or only celebrate individual heroes, don't be surprised when collaboration is scarce.

So a top tip here is to start meetings by acknowledging where collaboration has worked. You might say, thanks so much to marketing and sales for working closely on this launch. That joint client call made a real impact.

Number four, improve how you communicate because good collaboration depends on good communication. Not more of it, but better communication. So that means short clear updates, asking open questions as a leader to help other people make progress.

Actively listening, repeating back what you've heard and flagging early if something feels off. So at the end of every collaboration session, you might ask, what are our next steps? Who's doing what by when? Then document it. Don't rely on memory. Don't assume everybody knows what you mean.

Number five, watch out for turf wars. Because silos kill collaboration and so does ego. If someone's protecting their patch or competing instead of contributing, call it out constructively. I know everyone's under pressure. Let's focus on how we can make this easier for each other. Let's lean in and support each other.

So you might need to consider how your incentive structures work If only individual results are rewarded, you are accidentally discouraging collaboration. a top tip here would be to build shared targets into cross-functional projects. No one wins unless everyone delivers.

Number six is importantly about structure, because collaboration doesn't mean chaos. You need to give it a rhythm and some format. So try this, a 15 minute check-in every week, a shared document with the updates. One person responsible for keeping things moving, clear deadlines, decisions, and review points.

It's not controlling, it's clarifying.

If you are the leader of the team, department or project, here's what you need to do to support better collaboration. First of all, model it. Don't be afraid to ask for help, and don't be afraid to give credit where it's due. Be open about what you don't know. Facilitate it. Make space for input. Don't always be the first to speak.

Support it. Make time for it in people's workload. Prioritize team outcomes over individual wins, and coach it. Help people manage conflict. Ask better questions and work through tensions. And lastly, celebrate it. Acknowledge where collaboration has created better outcomes. People notice what you encourage and what you ignore.

I am sure you've all seen it in the real world happening where you get cross-functional teams who are struggling, maybe engineers. Blaming marketing, marketing, blaming, operations, operations, blaming poor communications and deadlines, slipping all over the place, meetings tense or missed. So it's important, strip it back, get clear on the shared goal.

Define the roles one lead, maybe two key contributors, one senior sponsor. Introduce a short weekly check-in. Create a decision tracker so people can see what was agreed by who and why, and give every team member space to raise concerns without being shot down.

The likely result is that you'll get more alignment, less stress, faster decisions, fewer postmortems and better outcomes. Collaboration isn't magic, but it is something that you can design on purpose.

Here are some things you can say to encourage collaboration in your team. Who else do we need to involve before we move forward? How might this affect other teams? Is there anyone who could help unblock this? I. How do we make sure everyone's voice is included here? What one thing could we do to collaborate better this quarter?

And when someone does collaborate well, as I said before, notice it, celebrate it. I saw how you brought tech and ops together to solve that problem. Absolutely brilliant.

To wrap up then, here's what good collaboration needs a shared goal.

Clear roles, trust and respect, strong communication, a healthy challenge to silos and egos, and a structure to hold it all together. But importantly, you as leader need to actively support collaboration.

And remember, collaboration isn't just working together. It's choosing to build something better together, and that choice starts with you. That's all for today's episode of How to Lead. Until next time, keep leading with clarity, care, and curiosity.

If you've enjoyed this episode, do follow for more leadership insights. And if you'd like my personal support, take a look at my website, waterfallhill.co.uk. For more information about my one-to-one group and team coaching programs. There's never a better time to take your professional development and that if your team seriously than right now.

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