No one likes attending random meetings about discombobulated projects lacking clear expectations or processes.
Yet, much of our time is spent attending meeting after meeting, exhausting our productive time and energy with little return. There’s nothing worse than being asked to “collaborate” on the assumption that simply throwing people together makes them more productive.
As the person leading collaborative meetings and projects, you can change that!
Let’s start with a simple definition: True collaboration is an agreed-upon partnership and commitment to deliver results together. If any of those key ingredients are missing, you have collaboration dysfunctions.
Here’s how to make true collaboration happens.
- Agreed-upon Partnerships: Most individuals who are asked to lead collaborations assume everyone is on the same page and understands their roles in the collaboration. To ensure this happens, employ these strategies:
- Agree on roles: Once team members have been selected for a meeting or project, ask which roles they want to play. Remember, it’s a partnership, not a dictatorship. If members have signed up (or have been assigned) to work on a project or attend a meeting, it’s a collaboration.Roles can be informal: “Who wants to take notes?” Or, “I’ll lead the meeting; who wants to be the timekeeper and keep us on track?”
Role assignments ensure everyone attending a meeting or working on a project has a purpose to fulfill. Be sure to rotate roles if you conduct ongoing meetings with the same people.
You also can assign formal, pre-determined roles for meetings and projects. For example, assigned roles might be “timekeeper,” “notetaker,” “co-leader,” or “challenger.”
You might “gamify” roles, complete with expectations. For example, if someone takes on the role of “pro” or “master,” their role on the project is to offer expert insight and perspective. A “rookie” role would be assigned to someone newer to the organization or holding little expertise in the specific project. This can provide a refreshing perspective or out-of-the-box thinking.
It’s important to clearly outline expectations for each role, so people know how to meet them. This works better with projects than one-off meetings.
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- Clarify expectations: Each role should have clearly outlined expectations that all players agree to deliver. For shorter meetings, it can simply be “take notes on agreed-upon action steps, indicating the person responsible.” Or, “challenge ideas and suggestions to avoid groupthink.”
If you’re new to articulating specific and measurable statements, you’ll find this SMART blog helpful. For more formal roles, expectations should be clearly outlined, so each participant can assume a role knowing exactly what they are expected to deliver and how to interact.
- Commitments: When each person in a meeting or project accepts their roles and expectations, you’ve set the foundation for increased commitment and follow-through. That doesn’t necessarily mean all members will deliver flawlessly. But at least you’ve set the foundation. Here’s how to get continued commitment and consistent results when leading teams and meetings.
- Set upfront agreements: Mistakes, miscommunications, conflicts, and disagreements are bound to happen when working together. Upfront agreements are “rules” you set together to address problems BEFORE they occur.
It’s a lot easier to address the challenges of people failing to deliver on commitments or being late with project deliverables IF you’ve agreed how to resolve them a certain way in advance. This can be as simple as saying, “How should we address members making commitments and not delivering?” Or, “I’ll send one reminder. Do we agree that, after that, not delivering is an excuse?” Or, “How should we address strong disagreements or non-participation?”
Having these discussions before a project starts will make a huge difference in how members show up.
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- Set a “10” commitment expectation: This is a great concept that helps us and others follow through on commitments. We call it the “Commitment Scale,” and it works like this. Consider a commitment you’ve made or are making. It could be personal or professional. Keep it small for the purpose of this exercise. Next, ask yourself, on a scale of 1 to 10, how committed are you to executing on it (1=not committed, 10=nothing will stop me)?
There are no right or wrong scores. Here’s the key, though: If it’s not a 10, it’s unlikely to happen or will happen with inconsistent results. A 9, for example, is a high level of commitment, but when faced with interruptions and detours, it will quickly become a 6 or 7. Anything below a 6 is unlikely to happen (no matter what we might believe or hope).
Make it a practice in your meetings and projects to ask members to commit ONLY to 10s. This might seem a bit radical at first, but I promise you’ll get more consistent results if you’re able to help people sort out what they are committed to vs. what they want to be committed to.
- Deliver Results Together: Collaborative meetings or projects should produce greater results than if you acted alone. Sadly, this is not always the case. Let’s carry the torch for making collaboration a powerful standard for getting results together! Here are two key ingredients to make that happen.
- Check-ins, Due Dates, and Drop Deadlines: A major pitfall in meetings and projects is not assigning check-ins, due dates, and drop deadlines. This opens the door to excuse-making, confusion, and miscommunications. Connecting these to clear roles and expectations, upfront agreements, and “10 expectations,” and you have the start of a beautiful collaboration.Check-ins are established dates for providing updates on progress and deliverables. They are pre-assigned and should be clearly outlined to prevent issues close to the final deliverables. Due dates are when project deliverables are expected. Make it a habit to establish due dates to zap excuse-making. Drop deadlines are when you must deliver a project or task. These are non-negotiable. If you’re not able to deliver on this date, the project success is at stake.
- Celebrate accomplishments and “lessons learned” together: Collaboration has its natural ups and downs. Working with other people brings inherent communication challenges, as well as opportunities to grow and develop. Once a project has been accomplished, remember to celebrate. It doesn’t have to be elaborate, but it’s important to acknowledge successes and learn from what didn’t work. People are more likely to collaborate in the future if they leave a project feeling accomplished and proud of the results.
Leading and managing true collaborations is a skill. The more you practice, the easier it becomes. The best way to get consistent results is by having repeatable steps you can apply to any collaboration (meeting or project).
By committing to and executing these three key ingredients, you’ll see remarkable results that invigorate even the most reluctant collaborator.
