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Collaborative leadership is a management practice focused on leadership skills, which is contrasted vs hierarchical leadership as typically practiced.
The phrase "collaborative leadership" (specifying a particular type of public sector leadership) first appeared in 1992 with the founding of the Institute for Collaborative Leadership (a USA-based nonprofit serving the public sector).[ citation needed ]
In her 1994 Harvard Business Review article "Collaborative Advantage", Rosabeth Moss Kanter addressed leaders who recognize that critical business relationships exist "that cannot be controlled by formal systems but require (a) dense web of interpersonal connections". [1] In their book published that same year, Chrislip and Larson looked at the attributes of great civic leaders in communities across the US and found some similar attributes. "Collaboration needs a different kind of leadership; it needs leaders who can safeguard the process, facilitate interaction and patiently deal with high levels of frustration" [2]
In 2013, Harvard Business Review [3] authors Nick Lovegrove and Matthew Thomas (co-founders of The InterSector Project [4] ), explore the complex relationship between the business, government and social sectors as it relates to said sectors role in addressing society's most pressing challenges; issues such as managing resource constraints, controlling health care costs, training the twenty-first-century workforce, developing and implementing smart-grid and intelligent-urbanization technologies, and stabilizing financial systems to foster sustainable economic growth. Their research suggests that the future of collaborative leadership depends on the ability of leaders to engage and collaborate with the business, government and social sectors (see below for the distinguishing characteristics of such leaders). [3]
Hank Rubin, author and founder of the Institute for Collaborative Leadership, has written "A collaboration is a purposeful relationship in which all parties strategically choose to cooperate in order to accomplish a shared outcome." In his book Collaborative Leadership: Developing Effective Partnerships for Communities and Schools, Rubin asks "Who is a collaborative leader?" and answers "You are a collaborative leader once you have accepted responsibility for building - or helping to ensure the success of - a heterogeneous team to accomplish a shared purpose . Your tools are (1) the purposeful exercise of your behavior, communication, and organizational resources in order to affect the perspective, beliefs, and behaviors of another person (generally a collaborative partner) to influence that person's relationship with you and your collaborative enterprise and (2) the structure and climate of an environment that supports the collaborative relationship." [5]
Rubin and Brock distinguish collaborative leadership from collective impact, defining the latter as "...(beginning) when we, as a community, agree to a set of shared outcomes and then, individually, return to our home organizations and work with our staffs, boards, and volunteers to figure out what we - individually and organizationally - can best do to achieve those shared goals." [6] Collaborative leadership is how we align and integrate across organizations.
David Archer and Alex Cameron, in their 2008 book Collaborative Leadership: How to succeed in an interconnected world, identify the basic objective of the collaborative leader as the delivery of results across boundaries between different organisations. They say "Getting value from difference is at the heart of the collaborative leader's task... they have to learn to share control, and to trust a partner to deliver, even though that partner may operate very differently from themselves." [7]
Providing further exploration, in his 2016 book Enabling Collaboration – Achieving Success Through Strategic Alliances and Partnerships ISBN 978-0-9860793-3-7, Martin Echavarria argues that Collaborative Leadership is the result of individual collaborative leadership capability, as well as group leadership. In this respect, he argues that individuals can support and contribute to collaboration and do so from a leadership point of view; but at the group level, where collaboration can be behaviorally experienced. Echavarria cites the work of Enrique Pichon-Rivière, who developed the Operative Group method for working with groups, Wilfred Bion an influential British psychoanalyst, Kurt Lewin and others and describes the Operative Partnership Methodology for coaching teams to collaborate (an issue which is addressed vis-a-vis strategic alliances in said publication. [8]
There have been a number of research projects and reviews of key lessons learned for collaborative leaders.
Nick Lovegrove and Matthew Thomas, writing for the Harvard Business Review , [3] interviewed over 100 leaders who possess a demonstrated ability to engage and collaborate across the business, government and social sectors. The authors identified six major, distinguishing characteristics: [3]
Madeline Carter, writing for the Center for Effective Public Policy as part of a research project funded by the United States Department of Justice and State Justice Institute, defines five qualities of a collaborative leader: [9]
Archer and Cameron list ten key lessons for successful collaborative leaders: [7]
Rod Newing writing in a Financial Times supplement special report says "If a collaboration is to be effective, each party must recognise and respect the different culture of the other". And traditional development paths don't prepare leaders well for this "traditional management development, is based on giving potential managers a team of people and a set of resources to control – and success is rewarded with more people and more resources to control. By contrast, collaboration requires managers to achieve success through people and resources outside their control and for this they have had no preparation".[ citation needed ]
Steven Wilson mentions in “Collaborative leadership: it’s good to talk,” four major key leadership traits that all highly collaborative leaders share:
Chantale Mailhot, Stephanie Gagnon, Anne Langley and Louis-Felix Binitte did a research project to examine the qualities of distributing leadership and the effects diversity has on groups. They found that "coupling of leaders and objects helped to maintain the worldview of the different groups involved at different levels in the research project, while directing them towards project objectives". [10] In retrospect, the differences of each individual increases innovation due to the variety of minds at work. With everyone having their own qualities and prior experiences, the integration between them in a leadership role contributes to the overall experience. In this study, the case was made that collaborative leadership has many benefits and is more practical than just one person solely having the role as the leader.
The best thing a collaborative leader can do is to lead by example. They have to ‘walk the talk’, and be seen to model the right behaviors. Leaders must show a willingness take risks, continually question their own ideas, and reward others for their clear communication and valuable insights. [10]
The need for collaborative leadership is being recognised in more and more areas;
An Ipsos MORI research report published in 2007 found that relationship management and collaborative leadership were the top two qualities or capabilities that Directors of organisations involved in large business partnerships would have liked to have had more access to when setting up or running a partnership. [14]
A team is a group of individuals working together to achieve their goal.
Chief information officer (CIO), chief digital information officer (CDIO) or information technology (IT) director, is a job title commonly given to the most senior executive in an enterprise who works with information technology and computer systems, in order to support enterprise goals.
Collaboration is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. The form of leadership can be social within a decentralized and egalitarian group. Teams that work collaboratively often access greater resources, recognition and rewards when facing competition for finite resources.
A strategic alliance is an agreement between two or more parties to pursue a set of agreed upon objectives needed while remaining independent organizations.
The National League of Cities (NLC) is an American advocacy organization that represents the country's 19,495 cities, towns, and villages along with 49 state municipal leagues. Created in 1924, it has evolved into a membership organization providing education, research, support, and advocacy to city leaders across America. Based in Washington, D.C., it is considered part of the 'Big Seven', a group of organizations that represent state and local governments in the United States. NLC provides training and other resources to municipal officials, holds conferences, and conducts federal advocacy efforts on behalf of cities, towns and villages.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter is an American sociologist who is a professor of business at Harvard Business School. She co-founded the Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative and served as Director and Founding Chair from 2008 to 2018. She was the top-ranking woman—No. 11 overall—in a 2002 study of Top Business Intellectuals by citation in several sources. She was named one of the "50 most powerful women in Boston" by Boston Magazine and named one of "125 women who changed our world" over the past 125 years by Good Housekeeping magazine in May 2010.
Supplier relationship management (SRM) is the systematic, enterprise-wide assessment of suppliers' strengths, performance and capabilities with respect to overall business strategy, determination of what activities to engage in with different suppliers, and planning and execution of all interactions with suppliers, in a coordinated fashion across the relationship life cycle, to maximize the value realized through those interactions. The focus of supplier relationship management is the development of two-way, mutually beneficial relationships with strategic supply partners to deliver greater levels of innovation and competitive advantage than could be achieved by operating independently or through a traditional, transactional purchasing arrangement. Underpinning disciplines which support effective SRM include supplier information management, compliance, risk management and performance management.
Business partnering is the development of successful, long term, strategic relationships between customers and suppliers, based on achieving best practice and sustainable competitive advantage. The term also refers to a business partnering support service model, where professionals such as HR staff work closely with business leaders and line managers to achieve shared organisational objectives. In practice, the business partner model can be broadened to include members of any business function, for example, Finance, IT, HR, Legal, External Relations, who act as a connector, linking their function with business units to ensure that the technical, or functional, expertise they have to offer is placed within the real and current concerns of the business to create value.
Governance is a broader concept than government and also includes the roles played by the community sector and the private sector in managing and planning countries, regions and cities. Collaborative governance involves the government, community and private sectors communicating with each other and working together to achieve more than any one sector could achieve on its own. Ansell and Gash (2008) have explored the conditions required for effective collaborative governance. They say "The ultimate goal is to develop a contingency approach of collaboration that can highlight conditions under which collaborative governance will be more or less effective as an approach to policy making and public management" Collaborative governance covers both the informal and formal relationships in problem solving and decision-making. Conventional government policy processes can be embedded in wider policy processes by facilitating collaboration between the public, private and community sectors. Collaborative Governance requires three things, namely: support; leadership; and a forum. The support identifies the policy problem to be fixed. The leadership gathers the sectors into a forum. Then, the members of the forum collaborate to develop policies, solutions and answers.
A business network is a complex, enduring, and interdependent web of business relationships among market and non-market actors that allow firms to co-create value in their business environment. Firms influence their markets by managing and signalling their network positions, facilitating entry of new actors, or removing other actors, for instance, through disintermediation, which means elimitating the middleman.
A chief strategy officer (CSO) is an executive that usually reports to the CEO and has primary responsibility for strategy formulation and management, including developing the corporate vision and strategy, overseeing strategic planning, and leading strategic initiatives, including M&A, transformation, partnerships, and cost reduction. Some companies give the title of chief strategist or chief business officer to its senior executives who are holding the top strategy role.
A business–education partnership is an agreement of collaboration between schools and businesses, unions, governments or community organizations. These partnerships are established by agreement between two or more parties to establish goals, and to construct a plan of action for achievement of those goals.
Creating shared value (CSV) is a business concept first introduced in a 2006 Harvard Business Review article, Strategy & Society: The Link between Competitive Advantage and Corporate Social Responsibility. The concept was further expanded in the January 2011 follow-up piece entitled Creating Shared Value: Redefining Capitalism and the Role of the Corporation in Society. Written by Michael E. Porter, a leading authority on competitive strategy and head of the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard Business School, and Mark R. Kramer, of the Kennedy School at Harvard University and co-founder of FSG, the article provides insights and relevant examples of companies that have developed deep links between their business strategies and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Porter and Kramer define shared value as "the policies and practices that enhance the competitiveness of a company while simultaneously advancing social and economic conditions in the communities in which it operates", while a review published in 2021 defines the concept as "a strategic process through which corporations can turn social problems into business opportunities".
The Meta-leadership framework and practice method is designed to “provide guidance, direction, and momentum across organizational lines that develop into a shared course of action and commonality of purpose among people and agencies that are doing what may appear to be very different work.” Meta-leadership has been “derived through observation and analysis of leaders in crisis circumstances” starting with the September 11 attacks in the U.S.The focus on national preparedness has subsequently been distilled for more general application, though it remains useful to crisis leaders particularly given current and persistent natural and man-made threats requiring the coordination of multiple agencies and organizations in preparation, response, and recovery.
Human resource planning is a process that identifies current and future human resources needs for an organization to achieve its goals. Human resource planning should serve as a link between human resource management and the overall strategic plan of an organization. Ageing workers population in most western countries and growing demands for qualified workers in developing economies have underscored the importance of effective human resource planning.
Workforce development, an American approach to economic development, attempts to enhance a region's economic stability and prosperity by focusing on people rather than businesses. It essentially develops a human-resources strategy. Work-force development has evolved from a problem-focused approach, addressing issues such as low-skilled workers or the need for more employees in a particular industry, to a holistic approach considering participants' many barriers and the overall needs of the region.
In organizational theory, organizational analysis or industrial analysis is the process of reviewing the development, work environment, personnel, and operation of a business or another type of association. This review is often performed in response to crisis, but may also be carried out as part of a demonstration project, in the process of taking a program to scale, or in the course of regular operations. Conducting a periodic detailed organizational analysis can be a useful way for management to identify problems or inefficiencies that have arisen in the organization but have yet to be addressed, and develop strategies for resolving them.
Collective Impact (CI) is the commitment of a group of actors from different sectors to a common agenda for solving a specific social problem, using a structured form of collaboration. In 2021, the Collective Impact Forum changed the definition of collective impact to "Collective impact is a network of community members, organizations, and institutions who advance equity by learning together, aligning, and integrating their actions to achieve population and systems-level change. This definition identifies equity as the North Star for why and how collective impact work takes place, specifically names community members as key actors along with other stakeholders, and emphasizes the importance of systems change in this work." The concept of collective impact was first articulated in the 2011 Stanford Social Innovation Review article Collective Impact, written by John Kania, managing director at FSG, and Mark Kramer, Kennedy School at Harvard and Co-founder FSG. Collective impact was chosen as the #2 philanthropy buzzword for 2011, and has been recognized by the White House Council for Community Solutions as an important framework for progress on social issues.
Collaborative partnerships are agreements and actions made by consenting organizations to share resources to accomplish a mutual goal. Collaborative partnerships rely on participation by at least two parties who agree to share resources, such as finances, knowledge, and people. Organizations in a collaborative partnership share common goals. The essence of collaborative partnership is for all parties to mutually benefit from working together.