To collaborate or not to collaborate? A question of leadership.

October 2007

By Diann Rodgers-Healey

Leadership and collaboration can be said to be two opposing and contradictory concepts. Whilst leadership in a traditional sense is about a leader leading others who are the followers, collaboration is about working together and moving ahead as a team. So why are these two concepts juxtaposed in so much of the theory and talk about leadership.   

Andrew Carnegie said: "No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it."  Putting aside, the gender bias of this statement, this statement presumes that a leader could if they wanted to, do it all by themselves, but in doing it with others, will be recognized as being a great leader. Given this presumption that leaders can do things all by themselves, one could ask for the purpose of our discussion, what would be the quality of the achievement if leaders do achieve their vision all by themselves as opposed to, if they collaborate with others?  

Moreover, If leadership is universally about improving the situation for the benefit of others, then would that achievement be qualitatively better if it was shared by others, enhanced by others or if its implementation spread beyond the responsibility of the leader and became the responsibility of all interested parties who owned the vision?   

Before answering these questions perhaps we should first consider, what are the reasons for collaboration?

Some of the reasons are:

• The leader can use the varied skills of others.

• The leader can use the knowledge and experience of others.

• The leader can consider and use the perspectives of others thus widening the focus and usefulness of the initial vision.

• A collaborative team environment is productive and conducive to greater creativity.

• The outcomes are owned by the team meaning responsibility for achieving the outcomes is shared.

So, what are some of the reasons leaders have for not wanting to collaborate?

• The leader does not want to let go of the vision and change it to include others input.

• The leader feels that they do not need the help of others to achieve the vision.

• The leaders feel that they cannot trust others with the responsibility of being involved in the whole process of achieving the vision that they see as being significant.

• The leader sees others as not having the competence to work with them on this initiative.

The above are only some of the reasons to collaborate or not to collaborate. In my opinion, what lies at the heart of this issue is what one believes leadership to be about in the first place. Leadership, for me, is about empowering others to empower oneself.

I don’t believe that we can effect change in anyone else if we are unable to change ourselves. By reaching out to others, we validate ourselves, our visions, our hopes and if perchance some one else identifies with a spark of our vision, then what is set in motion, is the catalyst for collaboration. As a leader, we can choose to walk the path alone and do what we set out to achieve, or we can choose to walk the path together and co-build or co-create. I believe that the collaborative vision must be qualitatively better and more in tune with the needs of others.  

If as leaders we collaborate with others we create around ourselves the reality of the vision which begins to take shape and form with the input of our collective intellect, our emotions and the energy to make it happen.  The ripples from this circle of twosome grow as more individuals enter it and add their special brand of contribution to its centre force.  

CLW’s Leadership Achievement Awards for Women that were launched in 2005 honours those women who achieve their visions in the community through collaborating with others. Past recipients of this Award have demonstrated that effective leaders know how to collaborate when it isn’t easy. They demonstrated how they valued and listened to alternative views and how collaborating with others enabled them to develop and achieve a vision for the betterment of others.