If collaboration is about doing things with others, and command and control is doing things to others, what would you call doing things for others?
In my work helping leaders and teams collaborate, this question has emerged as a very important one, with real consequences for the practice. Collaborators know that they can’t do things to people and that working together means just that – doing things with. But what I see clients struggle with is the desire to help others, to do things for them.
That urge to summarise the discussion or to put together and circulate the agenda or to source the experts or find the next venue or to show them how to make decisions together or to stop them arguing or…. you name it. It’s a powerful inclination, but it comes with a risk.
Every parent knows that to rescue your child from any struggle is to limit their opportunity to learn and grow the skills they need. The learning comes from working it out, not from having Mum and Dad do it on your behalf, unless the learning is about how to be helpless.
It’s much the same with collaborative groups. The more they are rescued from their struggles the more they risk being denied the very opportunity they need to learn what this collaboration thing is all about and how to do it together. Every time we make a decision on their behalf or take an action to help them along, we may be undermining the very thing we seek to grow; the collective capability to solve problems together.
Watching clients struggle with this I have learned the power of stepping back. For when we step back we create the space for others to step forward. In stepping forward the group assumes control and the accountability and ownership control brings. They build their confidence and capability to do this work together. They may even decide they don’t need you anymore.
If you want your collaborators to learn to depend on you and to sit back and let you do it, just keep rescuing them. But if you want your collaborators to build their muscles and their mindset, let them work it out. Doing things for others feels right, but letting them do it can be much more empowering.