Des Moines Area Community College Collaborative Leadership Discussion

Last week, you explored ways in which leaders can build more effective relationships in the workplace. Collaboration with others is important because completing complex work depends on key relationships between functional areas in organizations and cross-functional pollination of ideas. Collaborative leadership helps organizations identify opportunities for collaboration and connection.

Continue thinking through the value of collaboration and answer one or more of the following questions. Consider illustrating your points with personal anecdotes or with visuals such as memes, cartoons, or illustrations.

• Offer an example from your experience of either extremely effective, or ineffective, collaboration, and describe what you learned from it.
• Identify ideas from the resources for this unit that might be useful to you either in your current or future work. How might you apply those ideas?
• What can you do to be more collaborative?
• Collaboration is a key part of being a leader. The following resources consider this week’s topics and will help you with this week’s discussion:
  • Goman, C. K. (2014). Collaborative leadership. Leadership Excellence Essentials, 31(4), 35.
  • Ibarra, H., & Hansen, M. T. (2011). Are you a collaborative leader? Harvard Business Review, 89(7/8), 68–74.
    • Click the link and follow the instructions to access this Harvard Business Review reading.
  • INSEAD. (2011). Leadership: Are you connecting and collaborating? [Video] | Transcript.

• About Collaboration

  Collaboration has become an essential element of the work leaders do, whether it is collaborating with peers, with members of a team, or with suppliers and vendors. Collaboration has multiple benefits to organizations such as generating new ideas, learning from others, and building partnerships. As work becomes more complex, sharing ideas with others and working effectively with others is essential (Ibarra & Hansen, 2011).

  Reference

  Ibarra, H., & Hanson, M. T. (2011). Are you a collaborative leader? Harvard Business Review, 89(7/8), 68–74.