Chapter 29
Becoming and Being an Effective Collaborator
Rosemary O'Leary
The focus of this chapter is the skill set of effective collaborators. I define collaboration as the process of facilitating and operating in multiorganizational arrangements to solve problems that cannot be easily solved by single organizations (Agranoff & McGuire 2003). Collaboration can include the public.
Becoming and being an effective collaborator is highly relevant to today's public managers for a number of reasons. Many public challenges are larger than one organization, requiring new approaches to addressing policy and administrative issues. The desire to improve the effectiveness and performance of programs is encouraging public and nonprofit leaders, in particular, to identify new ways of providing services. Technology is helping these organizations and personnel share information in a way that is integrative and interoperable, with the outcome being a greater emphasis on collaboration (Pardo, Gil-Garcia, & Luna-Reyes, 2010). Finally, citizens are seeking additional avenues for engaging in governance, which has resulted in new and different forms of collaborative problem solving and decision making (Nabatchi, Gastil, Weiksner, & Leighninger, 2012; O'Leary, Gerard, & Bingham, 2006).
Knowledge about Effective Practice
Collaboration as a mechanism to improve government performance is well documented. On the federal level, for example, between 2004 and March 1, 2014, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published more than seventy reports evaluating collaborative efforts or calling for increased collaboration among agencies, as well as with other actors. Taken as a group, they are immensely valuable in demonstrating the breadth of collaborative efforts and the challenges to success, particularly the need for compatible processes, procedures, budgetary practices, and information systems among agencies with common missions and policy agendas. Some of the reports analyze or concern individual collaborators.
One report identified eight collaborative practices from the study of three efforts and referred to leadership, trust, and organizational culture as important factors underlying successful collaborations. The report discusses successful trust-building practices at the interorganizational level such as face-to-face activities, interagency training, and colocating staff that need to work together (US Government Accountability Office, 2005). A more recent report evaluated professional development activities aimed at improving interagency efforts in the national security arena (involving the Departments of State and Homeland Security, as well as others) and found many examples of skill-based training in leading interagency collaborations and networks (US Government Accountability Office, 2010). A 2014 report (US Government Accountability Office, 2014) highlighted five “collaboration competencies” communicated by expert federal practitioners: works well with people, communicates openly with a range of stakeholders, builds and maintains relationships, understands other points of view, and sets a vision for the group. Their conclusions echo a study by the Center for Creative Leadership (Martin, 2007) that reported that the 90 percent of executives they surveyed said that collaboration is vital for leadership success, but less than 50 percent of those same executives indicated that the leaders in their organizations were good at it.
While it seems self-evident that collaborations are implemented by people, the scholarly literature has not adequately reflected this fact. For example, Huxham early on studied organizations' “collaborative capability” (1993) but emphasized that she was focusing “not on collaboration…between individuals, but on collaboration…between organizations” (1996, p. 1). Four years later, she shifted her lens to include the people who represent their organizations in collaborations, writing with Vangen that the relationships between individual participants in collaborations are often fundamental to getting things done (Huxham & Vangen, 2000 2005). In a later work, Huxham, who seemingly had moved a full 180 degrees, explained:
Collaborations are, of course, enacted by individuals…These individuals are generally linked to the various organizations that form the collaboration. Commonly, they are acting in a representative function. In the course of collaborative activities, such individuals tend implicitly (and often unwittingly) to converse about their aims, and those of their partners at three levels: the level of the collaboration; the level of the participating organizations; and the level of the participating individuals. (Huxham & Vangen, 2005, p. 84)
Indeed, throughout Huxham's impressive body of work on collaboration are repeated findings about and references to the difficulties and challenges involved among the individuals who represent the organizations that collaborate. For example, she writes about difficulties that arise in collaborations because of “differences in aims, language, procedures, culture and perceived power” (Huxham, 1996, p. 4), all phenomena created by individuals.
Common Themes in the Literature
Six themes emerged in examining the fifteen most comprehensive studies in the public administration literature on the skill set of the collaborative manager (see table 29.1):
- Collaborative mind-set, including individual attributes
- Sharing
- Communication and interpersonal skills
- Group process skills and conflict management
- Strategic leadership
- Technical and substantive knowledge.
Table 29.1 highlights the major findings in this literature concerning the skillset of the collaborative manager.
Table 29.1 The Skill Sets of Successful Collaborators: A Comparison of Findings
Click here to view table 29.1:
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118775554.html
Collaborative Mind-Set and Individual Attributes
Successful collaborators have distinctive individual attributes that Linden (2002), Morse (2008), and O'Leary, Choi, and Gerard (2012) call the “collaborative mind-set.” The primary skill of the successful collaborator is an open mind, specifically being open to new ideas to change and to help others succeed. They are interested in achieving results for the greater good and are convinced that a collaborative strategy, where the combined talents of many people, groups, or jurisdictions come together, will yield the best result for all in a particular situation. In order to do this, they must be self-confident, decisive risk takers with a passion for outcomes. They value other people's perspectives on shared problems.
At the same time, effective collaborators have high emotional intelligence and demonstrate self-management. This means showing patience, treating all parties with respect, and being inclusive. Other attributes identified in the literature include being flexible, unselfish, persistent and diligent, diplomatic or tactful, empathetic, trustworthy and trusting, respectful, and goal oriented. A collaborator also needs to demonstrate honesty and integrity, friendliness, a sense of humor, and humility.
Sharing
The vast majority of researchers emphasize that savvy collaborators share information, power, leadership, and goal setting. Part of the rationale underlying this insight has to do with effective collaborators' seeking a democratic and egalitarian process. Successful collaborators treat others as equals regardless of rank and look out for the welfare of network members. As a facilitator, this means enacting and enforcing fair processes, transparency, and inclusiveness. Another part of the rationale underlying this insight is the idea that by giving away power, information, and resources, one may gain power in a group, perhaps in the form of influence, and help shape outcomes.
Communication and Interpersonal Skills
The vast majority of work on the skill set of effective collaborators concludes that communication and interpersonal skills are essential. Collaborators must be good at both verbal and written communication. They must be excellent listeners, listening not only to the actual words being said but the underlying message being conveyed. They legitimize anger while addressing the frustration that people often feel when trying to solve stubborn public policy problems. This also means communicating that they are looking for the best solution, then listening as the group attempts to articulate concerns and understand common interests.
Savvy collaborators strive for good communication between the core group and their own organization (Huxham & Vangen, 2005), while using boundary-spanning language to communicate shared meaning (Getha-Taylor, 2008). They urge the group to move forward, using tact and empathy (Nelson, O'Leary, Vij, & Grayer 2014). The twenty-first-century collaborator is adept at using web-based communication and social networking tools to communicate constructively with the group and the outside world (Emerson & Smutco, 2011).
Group Process Skills and Conflict Management
Practitioners and scholars are united in concluding that group process skills are next in importance for successful collaborators, for example facilitation, negotiation, interest-based collaborative problem solving, and skill in group dynamics. Compromise and conflict resolution skills, including deescalation, consensus building, and mediation, are also important.
The topic of conflict management in collaboration arises repeatedly in the research. Savvy collaborators are not intimidated by conflict. In fact, the conflict management strategy mentioned most frequently by those surveyed by O'Leary et al. (2012) was to “allow conflict to happen.” The most common strategies for managing conflict include identifying common ground, giving all parties at the table a voice, and listening. Another common strategy concerns clarifying the rules, frameworks, goals, and problems the collaborative group faces. This includes refining agreement frameworks, crystalizing goals, identifying the core of the problem, reframing the issues, and focusing on outcomes. Other less commonly cited methods of managing conflict included compromise, breaking down the conflict into smaller issues, and neutralizing opinions through diffusing and depersonalizing the conflict. (See O'Leary & Bingham, 2007, for in-depth discussion of managing conflict in collaborations.)
Interest-based collaborative problem solving is essential for effective collaboration in much of the research. This is an idea that has come to encompass the principled negotiation approach advocated by the Harvard Negotiation Project (Fisher & Ury, 1992; Fisher & Brown, 1988; Ury, 1991; Ury, Brett, & Goldberg, 1989). It includes collaborative win-win bargaining, a process of discussion and give-and-take among individuals who want to find a solution to a common problem. It is usually contrasted with positional, confrontational, competitive, or adversarial bargaining (Lax & Sebenius, 1986). It is an outgrowth of work on integrative bargaining that originated with Mary Parker Follett, an early twentieth-century scholar of public and private organizations and conflict. (See also chapter 28, this volume.)
Many of the public servants surveyed by researchers in the works examined for this chapter use the language of interest-based collaborative problem solving—for example, “focus on interests,” “consider multiple options,” “seek to achieve as many of your interests as you can while giving the other side as much of theirs,” “strive for good process,” and “create the conditions for effective problem solving.” They recommended that leaders and managers learn how to do interest-based collaborative problem solving as a fundamental collaboration skill. (See table 29.2.)
Table 29.2 Steps of Interest-Based Collaborative Problem Solving
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Source: O'Leary and Bingham (2007).
Strategic Leadership
Strategic leadership has been defined as “a person's ability to create a vision” (Ireland & Hitt, 1999). It is currently championed by many who study networks and collaboration (Milward & Provan, 2006). The importance of strategy and visioning is undeniable, but there is some uncertainty about its relative importance when compared with the other parts of the collaborative skill set O'Leary et al.'s (2012) US federal executive respondents, for example, agreed that strategic leadership skills are essential but ranked them second to last in importance. Nonetheless, the description of the ideal collaborator portrayed in all studies includes the ability to see the big picture and the ability to think strategically, while simultaneously developing goals, structures, inputs, and actions with the group.
The ability to be a big picture thinker (O'Leary et al., 2012), including being a systems thinker (Morse, 2008), is a real plus for the savvy collaborator. This includes being able to think politically about who should be involved in a collaboration, what the key issues are that need to be addressed, and being able to see the possibilities for creative approaches to problem solving (Emerson & Smutco, 2011; Nelson et al., 2014). A strategic collaborative leader establishes a shared vision and agreement on the nature of the tasks, identifies resources, and encourages support from superiors outside the network (McGuire & Silvia, 2010). A strategic collaborative leader has a focus on managing the collaboration and does so with a firm understanding of the complexity of doing so (Huxham & Vangen, 2005). He or she is able to see and articulate the connection between organizational goals and public service goals (Getha-Taylor, 2008).
Substantive and Technical Knowledge
Another area of contention in the literature concerning the skill set of effective collaborators has to do with the importance of substantive and technical knowledge. All studies point to the conclusion that substantive knowledge is important, but three of the studies ranked expert technical knowledge of the subject area, project management, and time management as last in important skills for achieving the goals of a collaboration (O'Leary et al., 2012; O'Leary & Gerard, 2013; Nelson et al., 2014). These researchers, who studied top-level leaders and managers, conjecture that substantive and technical knowledge is assumed by the collaborators they studied, provided by lower-level employees, or obtained through outsourcing.
In contrasted are three other studies that emphasized the importance of technical and substantive knowledge (McGuire & Silvia, 2009 2010; Silvia & McGuire, 2010). These researchers, who studied local government emergency managers, found that a successful collaborator will be very task oriented. This includes selecting performance measures, deciding how tasks will be performed, and scheduling the work. Perhaps the difference in two groups of studies has to do with the seniority of the collaborators surveyed. Another possible reason is that emergency managers' effectiveness may depend first on their technical and substantive knowledge given the nature of what they do and the time pressures they face.
Implications for Applying This Knowledge to Public Administration Practice
To paraphrase Salamon (2002), collaborative governance shifts the emphasis from management skills and the control of large bureaucratic organizations to enablement skills, required to engage partners arrayed horizontally in networks and bring multiple stakeholders together for a common end in a situation of interdependence. The lessons from the literature concerning the importance of a collaborative mind-set and individual attributes, communication and interpersonal skills, as well as group process skills and conflict management skills, are important because those are the skills that enable collaborators to do what Salamon describes.
The most frequently cited reason for collaboration in the literature is to improve performance. This is often presented by practitioners in very hard-nosed management terms, as collaborators look for superior ways to implement a program, increase possible solutions to a problem, increase economic benefits to the government, and better serve the public (O'Leary et al., 2012). Public administrators report that they collaborate primarily when their personal and organizational cost-benefit analyses indicate that it will be a savvy management decision to do so (O'Leary & Gerard, 2013).
Given this rationale, one might hypothesize that strategy, visioning, and technical skills like cost-benefit analysis would be those most highly touted in the literature on the skill set of collaborative managers. Instead, it is individual attributes—a collaborative mindset—that are ranked first. This is highly significant. These findings are in part similar to those of Daniel Goleman (2004), who found that IQ and technical skills were “threshold capabilities” to effective leadership (p. 2) but that emotional intelligence, comprising self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy), and social skill, was of the most important quality for leadership (table 29.3).
Table 29.3 Emotional Competence Framework
| Personal Competence | Social Competence |
| Self-awareness: Emotional awareness, accurate self-assessment, self-confidence | Empathy: Understanding others, developing others, service orientation, leveraging diversity, political awareness |
| Self-regulation: Self-control, trustworthiness, conscientiousness, adaptability, innovation | Social skills: Influence, communication, conflict management, leadership, change catalyst, building bonds, collaboration and cooperation, team capabilities |
| Motivation: Achievement Drive, commitment, initiative, optimism |
Source: Goleman (1998).
The correlation of the findings in the public administration literature with Goleman's emotional intelligence model is striking: persistent, open-minded and honest (self-regulation), humorous (self-awareness), friendly, and unselfish (empathy) are without a doubt important. And yet much of the public administration research ranks technical skills lower. This may be because of the use of contractors who provide specific technical skills, with many pubic administrators being management generalists. Another explanation may be that public administrators work in political environments that call for individual attributes, interpersonal skills, and group process skills more than technical skills.
It is one thing to possess skills and attributes and another to use them consciously and strategically. O'Leary et al. (2012) found that both the federal executives and local government managers they studied are situational leaders who analyze the environment in which they find themselves, consider the skills and attributes that will contribute to success, and use those they deem appropriate. One executive described it this way: “Depending on the environment, I will work one way. If I am dealing with a different bunch of folks (from local government, as opposed to federal), I will work in a different way because their interests and concerns are different” (O'Leary et al., 2012, p. S79). Another commented, “I think that traits are applied strategically, but in a sense they are part of the tool kit of who we are as leaders. You assess the situation and you have to do the right thing and you have to apply the right trait or attribute (e.g., patience)” (O'Leary et al., 2012, p. S79).
Can the mind-set, skills, and attributes that promote successful collaborations be taught? Or is it just the lucky few who are born with certain personality traits who can and should participate in collaborative activities? Goleman (2004) maintains that while certain people are born with greater levels of emotional intelligence and that emotional intelligence increases with age, it can be taught. He uses the example of an executive who does not listen; she interrupts people and does not pay close attention to what they are saying. Goleman emphasizes that such an individual can learn emotional intelligence, but she “needs to be motivated to change, and then she needs practice and feedback from others… A colleague or coach could be tapped to let the executive know when she has been observed failing to listen. She would then have to replay the incident and give a better response; that is, demonstrate her ability to absorb what others are saying. And the executive could be directed to observe certain executives who listen well and to mimic their behavior” (p. 4). Goleman describes other ways to increase emotional intelligence, including asking those who work for and with you to critique your ability “to acknowledge and understand the feelings of others” (p. 4).
Goleman advises organizations to be cautious of traditional training techniques for developing emotional competencies in executives and provides the set of comprehensive guidelines in table 29.4. They include assessing the job to be done, assessing the strengths and limitations of the individual, delivering assessments with care, and motivating with clear payoffs.
Table 29.4 Guidelines for Emotional Competence Training
| Assess the job, and focus on competencies that matter. |
| Assess the strengths and limitations of the individual. |
| Deliver assessments with care. |
| Gauge readiness, and focus training on those who are ready. |
| Motivate with clear payoffs. |
| Help people choose their learning goals. |
| Focus on plan and specific changes. |
| Help when people relapse. |
| Give feedback and support. |
| Encourage practice. |
| Provide models and examples. |
| Encourage change that fits with organizational values. |
| Reinforce change. |
| Evaluate successes and failures. |
Source: Goleman (1998).
O'Leary et al. (2012) believe that the skills of the successful collaborator can be taught to most individuals. O'Leary et al. (2010) offer the theoretical and pedagogical underpinnings of a course that teaches professional students how to work successfully in a collaborative network, including facilitation, communications, and collaborative problem-solving skills. Leadership education programs have long emphasized the role of self-assessment and awareness as the foundation for executive development. The Center for Creative Leadership, Federal Executive Institute, and National Training Lab (to name a few) all feature extensive assessment centers. This approach is grounded in the work of many who argue that leadership education should promote the understanding of personality attributes and an understanding of which attributes are appropriate for a given situation (Boyatzis, 2002). Others claim that leaders cannot be open to new ideas unless they understand their own hidden mental models (Senge, 2006) and espoused theories (Argyris, 1985). Bingham, Sandfort, and O'Leary (2008) point to the work of Donald Schön and others to introduce reflection into teaching professional students through case studies and situational exercises. Similarly, Morse (2008) forcefully argues that leadership development begins with personal self-awareness, reflection, and mentoring: “A focus on skills or tools will be useless if the personal attributes are not in alignment. The attributes must come first” (p. 97).
Summary
The literature that captures the latest research and practitioner reflections indicates that having a collaborative mind-set is the most important attribute of an effective collaborator. This means being open to new ideas, the ideas of others, change, and helping others succeed. This also includes being interested in achieving results for the greater good and being convinced that a collaborative strategy will yield the best result for all in this particular situation. In order to do this, effective collaborators preferably are self-confident, decisive risk takers with a passion for outcomes. They must have high emotional intelligence and be able to manage their presentation of self and exchanges with others. This includes sharing leadership, credit, resources, and power.
Excellent verbal, written, and web-based communication skills are desired. Effective collaborators must be able to communicate clearly and competently and be good listeners. Collaborators who are perceived as trying and are sincerely acting with integrity will often be positively received by partners even if they fall short of having all the desired attributes.
All research points to the need for group process skills, including facilitation and mediation, in collaboration. Interest-based collaborative problem solving is growing in acceptance as a skill to be mastered by those who seek to be competent collaborators. Conflict management is considered an essential part of group process skills.
Effective collaborators are strategic leaders, often leading when they are not in charge. They can create a vision with others, see and communicate the big picture, and work with others to develop goals. Systems thinking is important.
All collaborations must be based on solid facts, science, and knowledge. Whether an individual collaborator will be tasked with mastering that knowledge is situation dependent. Therefore, the importance of substantive and technical knowledge as part of the skill set of the effective collaborator varies.
The literature suggests how to become a competent and effective collaborator—for example, take a course on interest-based collaborative problem solving, practice collaborative skills at home and in the office, ask for and remain open to feedback as to how effective different collaborative approaches are under different circumstances, and seek continuous improvement. Given the growing complexity of public administration around the world, the odds are good that the opportunities to use collaboration as a management and leadership strategy will only grow.