By: Rae Ritter
Remember in high school when the teacher assigned group projects and also selected who would be in your group? Most groups had some combination of brainy kid, slacker kid, and someone in the middle. I hated these projects because I assumed slacker kid would slow us down, waste our time, and bring down our grade. Can you guess which kid I was? But somehow we always completed the assignment and earned good grades, and maybe–just maybe–that slacker kid had the satisfaction from a job well done and was motivated to earn better grades in the future. Who knows? Good thing we are not forever judged on our high school selves!
Now that I am [well] past high school, I view collaboration in a completely different light, and I see quite a few unique reasons to collaborate with one or more people on a project. Sure, sometimes, I “know” I can just get it done faster on my own. But that’s not always the case. And is fast really the best approach with the best outcome?
In so many aspects of work and life, I feel it’s important to act with purpose. Don’t have meetings for the sake of meetings, collaboration for the sake of collaboration, or walk into Target without a list. You can end up blowing a ton of time in any of these examples! So here are some reasons why collaboration can be valuable and meaningful.
Split up a Heavy Lift
Successful collaboration may mean that some of the tasks of a project are shared and others are split up. You can “divide and conquer” some aspects of the project, and the outcome may be less work for all involved. However, it’s important to identify the areas that will be efficient to split up because some aspects of collaboration may actually take more time than going it alone. When working with others, it will take more time to ask questions together and talk through goals, challenges, ideas, and solutions than just putting your head down and playing it out your way alone. Areas like writing and research or creating visuals may be major time-consuming tasks, made more efficient by assigning among the collaborators.
Build and Strengthen Relationships
By collaborating with others on a project, you will naturally get to know them better, professionally and personally, which will build up and strengthen your relationship with them. A common challenge is a great way to create allies, and this will lay the foundation for further collaboration or support on future projects, referrals, and genuine friendships!
I recently had an opportunity to present on a webinar panel with a professional colleague who I really admire but did not know well. She works for another firm in another region, so the chances of building our professional relationship through networking events or going out for a coffee are slim. Developing content for this panel and then presenting together resulted in a shared sense of accomplishment and a deeper professional relationship.
Earn Project Buy-In
Sometimes the best way to earn buy-in from team leaders or other groups in your organization is to involve them. Enlist leaders or possible supporters of your project early on to hear and incorporate their voices and perspective. When that feedback is applied to the project, those collaborators will feel ownership–and hopefully pride and support. Now they are natural champions of the project who will promote and help earn buy-in more broadly in your organization, so there is a cascading effect.
At our digital marketing agency, we start every website project with a series of questions, including who will be involved in the website project, and how decisions will be made. It opens up the conversation regarding which groups or leaders influence the design and functionality of the website. For example, involve the HR Director on the required functionality and content of the Careers section of a law firm website. The outcome of this type of collaboration is a more functional website for hiring and a leader who will support the website and the website team.
Incorporate More Diverse Perspectives, Experience, Skills
You are probably an expert in your area of work, and you know it in and out. You probably have faced obstacles and overcame them, and you know how to handle challenges that come your way. But it’s possible there is another way of doing it, something that you can’t see from your seat because that is where you sit, and there is something blocking that other perspective. Some of this is your natural bias and it’s not unreasonable to stay the course when it works. However, by collaborating with others who sit in other seats with a different perspective are going to bring experience and skills that are different from yours.
Caption: This Venn diagram illustrates how bringing additional and diverse perspectives to the collaboration, you will naturally cover more ground, with more unique ideas. The sweet spot is not the yellow in the middle–the best idea may come from the far edge of a circle.
Level Up, Learn, and Grow
When you collaborate with others who have different perspectives, experience, and skills than you, the project will probably have a better outcome. And you will probably also learn from the experience. You will hone your communication skills from working with other types of communicators. You will naturally learn (even learning a style that does not work for you) from being exposed to another person’s creative process or workflow.
Raise Up Others
Collaboration is also an opportunity to support one another. You don’t need to be someone’s formal mentor to look out for and include less tenured folks on a team, but you can actively look for ways to give others these chances to grow and learn from a collaborative experience. This will compound all the benefits already described, and also position you as a stronger, more confident leader by raising up others, even peers. Great leaders surround themselves with smart people.
You will only know what you can accomplish through collaboration when you give it a try. There are many compelling reasons to work in concert with others, even if it didn’t work out so well in high school. At least now as an adult, you can probably pick your partner! Just remember, without collaborations, we would not have Breyers Girl Scout Cookies® Thin Mint ice cream, ‘Cold Heart’ by Elton John with Dua Lipa, or legendary tennis doubles champs, Serena and Venus Williams. Collaboration is one of the #FollowFriday pillars, we hope you embrace it and also seek out collaboration because the outcome will probably be better than you expect.
