Five Collaboration Mistakes Leaders Should Avoid

Hansen, M. (2010). Obama’s five collaboration mistakes. Retrieved February 10, 2010 from: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/02/five_collaboration_mistakes.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29

This article, found in Harvard’s The Conversation, discusses five collaboration mistakes President Obama and his administration have made in the past year and relates these mistakes to the business world. The first mistake is using the wrong language. “How leader talk matters…to get people motivated to collaborate, you need to talk the language of collaboration”. The second mistake is confusing delegation with collaboration. With delegation the leader is handing over the work to someone else. Collaboration should be more of a joint effort, sometime involving many parties, and the leader is more hands-on. The third mistake is no meaningful outreach to opponents. For collaboration to work, “you must involve all parties in a meaningful way”. The fourth collaboration mistake is not making compromises. If there is not some give and take between the parties, collaboration will be very difficult. The final mistake is not having a compelling goal. For collaboration to work there needs to be some common goals. This is a good article for mangers because collaboration is important in many work environments and avoiding the pitfalls mention in the article would help make the collaboration efforts more successful.