Collaboration: Understanding our Blind Spots with Mike Halperin

The Water Trough- We can't make you drink, but we will make you think!

We have been collaborating from the day we were born. Babies cry, parents figure out what they need, and the babies let them know if their needs have been met. Parents, especially moms, and kids work together from day one to accomplish objectives, ensuring that the kids are fed, safe, comforted, dry, snuggled, and loved.

By the time we start working, it is easy to assume that most of us have learned what we need to know about collaboration, particularly at the management level in organizations. We have worked together during school and earlier jobs, learned how success is judged, and internalized behaviors that we believe contribute to that success: We have learned subtler methods of collaboration, involving communication, negotiation, understanding organizational norms, and leadership expectations, and how to participate or lead teams, among others. We build upon our successes, which become part of our individual operating systems. On the other hand, we often can become blind to what we think collaboration is and isn’t, what actions we are taking, and how others experience what we are doing, which may be based on different definitions and experiences of collaboration. What used to work may not work with our current colleagues now in our current companies.

Mike Halperin, an expert in collaboration, has been a Professor at Bentley University, a seasoned consultant to large and small organizations across a variety of sectors, and a senior internal practitioner in a number of organizations. In this podcast, Mike shares insights from over 40 years of work in this area, including:

· What collaboration is and why it is important;

· Why it is so difficult to implement collaboration, even though everyone espouses its importance;

· Why people think they are collaborating, but they are not; and,

· Skills to learn to help us collaborate more effectively; and

· Practices that we may need to unlearn if we are to be successful in collaborating at work.

As you listen to this podcast, think about your own practice of collaboration, how you can test your assumptions, and collaborate with others to help you become better at collaboration.