Nature, Nurture, and Collaboration

The next few posts are "Coach's Choice." Each coach selected what she wanted to write about.

Today's post is brought to you by Barb.

In preparing for a meeting that had the potential to be, um, very challenging, a most-favorite (and very wise) colleague reminded me that collaboration is a learned behavior. She was suggesting - in a soft and helpful way that she is a master at - that the meeting might be more productive if the group learned how to collaborate.

This quick conversation has spiraled me into thinking a whole lot about exactly how people learn to collaborate. 

For a chosen few, it does seems natural; collaboration can be a function of nature. We all have those people in our personal and professional lives who just know how to function on a collaborative team. Maybe it's a function of being a middle child. Maybe it has something to do with their zodiac sign. Maybe it's genetic. Maybe it's the result of many years of therapy. I'm not sure. I am sure, though, that I appreciate having the "natural" collaborators as part of my team.

It seems, though, that for many people - me included! - effective collaboration is more a function of nurture than nature. Collaboration is something we learn to do. How, though, do we learn?

We can learn to collaborate by observing those around us. We watch others for cues about expected and accepted behavior and language, and we mimic their behavior. It's a way to be part of the group, and a way to help the group continue moving forward. 

What happens, though, if what we observe and mimic is not productive? Worse yet, what happens if it's toxic? 

I would argue that learning to collaborate needs to happen through explicit teaching and learning.

I have been part of more meetings than I can count that were dedicated to learning to collaborate. Primarily, these meetings were about establishing norms. I'm part of one group that even prints the norms on the back of each team member's nameplate, so the norms stare at the person through each and every meeting. The sad truth, though, is that the team with the nameplate norms rarely follows those norms!!

How, then, do we explicitly learn to collaborate successfully? I recommend a professional learning module - Facilitating Learning Teams - from Learning Forward. I used the module with a struggling learning team with great success. The team established norms, discussed potential challenges to those norms, and were explicit about communication expectations. 

The team also devised a meeting schedule that included specific times for checking-in on application of its norms and procedures. (That's right - there are regularly scheduled meetings about how the meetings run.) Those meetings - which include equal amounts of celebration and honest feedback -  keep the team honest and committed to its norms and procedures.

Explicit teaching and learning about collaboration helped that team be more productive and healthy (nurture over nature).