Collaboration is the essential process when we are facing high uncertainty and the need to create something new together. That means we collaborate when we don’t know the answer. In such situations it is easy to focus the energy on trying to find answers and solutions, but collaborators know that the path to solutions is paved with smart questions.

But not just any questions. While our usual practice is to ask questions about the problem, collaborators know they must ask questions about the process. Put another way, the tendency is to ask ‘content’ questions – what is the problem? what is going on? how does it work? what is causing this…? And these are important, but successful collaboration requires us also to ask ‘process’ questions designed to help us focus on the state of our collaboration.

Here are some simple process questions you can use to reflect on and nurture your collaboration. If reflecting alone the questions are ‘am I…” questions. If reflecting as a group use “Are we…” questions. Note that as a group we might be reflecting on how are we collaborating together, or on how are we collaborating with others:

  1. Are we thinking ‘with’ or ‘to’ and how would we know?
  2. How would doing this ‘with’ look different from what we are doing now?
  3. Are we all building commitment through co-defining the dilemma and co-designing the process together?
  4. Are we all getting our fingerprints on this work? How do we know?
  5. Are we experimenting or solving? That is, are we trying to solve our complex problem (as though we can work out in advance how to do that) or are we learning together through hypothesis and testing?
  6. Are we letting go and sharing control?
  7. Are we sitting with uncertainty or rushing to find answers?

This isn’t an exhaustive list but it’s a great set of questions to start with. And of course it generates the need for one more over-arching question collaborators must regularly ask themselves: Are we stopping to ask ourselves about the state of our collaboration in order to improve our practice?

When collaborating, reflection on process is essential, for without it we revert to business as usual. The constant temptation will be to dive into the detail and trouble-shoot the project, but with good process questions we can coach each other to continually build our collaborative muscles. If we hear lots of content, stop!…. and reflect on process instead. Only in this way will our collaboration thrive and great results follow.

Any questions?