Leadership through a single gigantic brain has become a passé. Be it organisations, countries or relationships — in today’s dynamic and competitive world the only way one can last is through collaboration. While it is an essential pre-requisite, it’s probably not sufficient if it’s not driven through leadership. It’s one of those obvious, in your face thing, which is painstakingly difficult to execute. But once it is executed and a culture built around same, an organisation’s growth trajectory changes.
The most crucial challenge is to evolve and create the atypical behaviours required to inspire people and teams to genuinely break through organisational compartmentalisation and make collaboration a competitive advantage. It’s essential for today’s leader to demonstrate the following qualities to build a collaborative culture.
Encourage cross functional exchanges: This involves sharing of ideas and involving teams across functions to contribute in each other’s development and improvements. It also entails holding each other accountable. Spirit of combining each other’s strengths and resources becomes a key driver to the organisation’s success. This also ensures that each function and division takes responsibility for the growth of the organisation and too much load is not put on a few people.
Take ownership of mistakes openly: He or she should acknowledge the mistakes made and communicate the factors that led to a decision as well as the assumption made. The leader should also seek feedback from others on how things could have been executed differently or how resources could have been better utilised.
Establish clear veto rights: It’s important to clearly identify who has the last say in a collaborative framework to keep things under control at any given point of time. Many collaborative outcomes can turn counterproductive and, hence, it is essential to have well-accepted rights assigned to certain people within the organisation to keep a check and to rein in disputes.
Reward and incentivise team work: Companies should align accountabilities through rewards and incentives to encourage working together effectively. It’s essential for an organisation to design metric in such a way that there is cohesive balance between their individual outcomes and collective outcomes.
Sharing information: Information dissemination in an easy-to-understand manner spurs imagination and throws up ideas, which help organisation gear up for the future. Connecting with internal employees and teams through platforms like Facebook and Google Plus is actually more meaningful, real time and cost-effective ways of breeding a culture of inclusivity.
Staffing as an industry is new to India. When we started out eleven years back we were a team of vibrant youth with energy and ideas and very little knowledge about the service we were about to offer to corporate India. We have one of India’s fastest growing companies and we have achieved this milestone through imaginative yet structured, collaborative leadership. While on one hand we made everyone working with us participatein shaping the future of the organisation, on the other we ensured that we walked the talk and provided them with the right tools, metrics, and soundboards to collaborate in the company’s growth. Balance between the two differentiates us from the rest.
(The author is Senior Vice-President and Co-Founder of TeamLease Services.)