PARTNERSHIPS:
LEVERAGING TEAMWORK
© 2013 Mike Hawkins
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
The SCOPE of Leadership Book Series
A Guide to Coaching Leaders to Lead as Coaches
Partnerships: Leveraging Teamwork
Brown Books Publishing Group
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ABOUT THIS SERIES
Welcome to the SCOPE of Leadership book series. The six books in this series are designed to build your knowledge of the thirty-eight competencies of great leaders who lead as coaches. These books provide the insights and principles great leaders as coaches use to practice great leadership—the ability to achieve a desired result through the influence of people who follow and perform by choice.
By reading the SCOPE of Leadership book series, you will learn how to set the example you expect others to follow. You will learn how to coach and develop others, build trust and high-performance teams, and foster collaboration and innovation. You will understand what it takes to motivate and inspire others and discover how to impart ownership and stimulate engagement. You will learn how to develop engaging presentations and speak with confidence. You will understand how to craft win-win partnerships and manage conflict. Most importantly, you will learn how to shape organizational culture, operate with excellence, and deliver exceptional results.
The SCOPE of Leadership is for anyone who aspires to be a great leader. It is for business professionals who want to advance in their career as well as community leaders who want to make a positive impact on society. It is for parents and grandparents who want to be better examples to their children and raise them to be great leaders. It is for athletic coaches who want to help athletes become their best. It is for teachers, principals, church leaders, and others in positions of influence who aspire to influence people positively in order to reach a desired result.
CONTENTS
Introduction
Competency 26: Socializing for Synergy
Competency 27: Creating Alignment
Competency 28: Building Community
Competency 29: Stimulating Engagement
Competency 30: Managing Conflict
Competency 31: Collaborating
Appendix:
The SCOPE of Leadership Scorecard for Book 5
About the Author
Books by Mike Hawkins
FIGURES
Figure 5.1: Six Stages of Team Collaboration
Figure 5.2: Project Roles and Responsibilities
Figure 5.3: Performance Versus Stress Curve
Figure 5.4: Two Types of Conflict
Figure 5.5: Levels of Collaboration
TABLES
Table 5.1: Seven Levels of Relationships
Table 5.2: Needs Fulfilled Through Partnerships
Table 5.3: Questions to Use in Initiating Small Talk
Table 5.4: Networking Venues and Opportunities
Table 5.5: Methods for Garnering Publicity
Table 5.6: Items to Offer Someone When First Meeting
Table 5.7: Partnership Alignment Areas
Table 5.8: Negotiation Framework
Table 5.9: Elements of a Good Job Description
Table 5.10: Considerations When Deciding on Local Versus Remote Employees
Table 5.11: Project Resources and Roles
Table 5.12: Causes of Employee Disengagement
Table 5.13: Employee Career Progression Opportunities
Table 5.14: Five Approaches to Persuasion
Table 5.15: Six Approaches to Dealing with Conflict
Table 5.16: Coolheadedness Assessment
Table 5.17: Sources of Conflict
Table 5.18: Four Levels of Hostility
Table 5.19: Eleven Steps to Overcoming Conflict
Table 5.20: Best Practices in Managing Up
Table 5.21: Indicators of Maximum Productivity
Table 5.22: The SCOPE of Leadership Scorecard for Book 5
INTRODUCTION
One man may hit the mark, another blunder; but heed not these distinctions. Only from the alliance of the one, working with and through the other, are great things born.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Leveraging Teamwork: Gaining capacity and ability through synergistic relationships.
The nineteenth-century industrial revolution was one of the most significant events in human history. Never before had there been such a shift in how people lived and worked. New products, processes, and inventions transformed and improved the standard of living at an unprecedented pace. Agricultural and manufacturing productivity advanced more rapidly than ever before. Average worker income and per capita production increased 1,000 percent in the two hundred years of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, compared to virtually no growth during the preceding two millennia. Life expectancy, literacy, and numerous other aspects of society dramatically improved during that time.
The industrial revolution also created hardship for many people. Many lost their jobs as new methods and customs made old methods and customs obsolete. Large factories and agricultural machines displaced many trade and laborer jobs. For the people who reskilled and adapted to the new industrial era, however, there were plenty of jobs available and unprecedented levels of prosperity.
There is another unprecedented transformation occurring in the world that started near the end of the twentieth century. Some refer to it as the era of globalization, or the death of distance. It is also called the Information Age or the Digital Revolution. Those who see it from an employment perspective call it the era of off-shoring, outsourcing, or virtualization. Some who think of it from a political perspective see it as global democratization. It has many references and dimensions because of its far-reaching effects on how the world works and lives.
Initial forecasts are that this transformation will be as impactful on the world’s economies, societies, and standard of living as was the industrial revolution. Its impact has already been felt by every human on earth. As with the industrial era, many people have benefited greatly. There have also been many who have lost their jobs and found their lives in upheaval. It has caused chaos in many industries and societies.
The new era of globalization has dramatically changed the way companies operate. The production of goods now moves around the globe fluidly as the availability and cost of labor changes. The jobs that remain onshore now require higher skills. They are based on supplying value-added services, providing specialized knowledge, and cultivating relationships. As in the industrial era when a high percentage of work shifted from agriculture to manufacturing, the globalization era is shifting the focus of work again.
This change in the nature of work has resulted in a dramatic increase in partnering. Organizations in the industrial era performed much of their work internally, but now organizations partner with other organizations and perform much of their work externally. Some companies have virtually no internal operational capacity at all. They rely on others for significant parts of their business including their production and distribution. Many companies that historically relied on production as their primary source of value now create more value through their research, engineering, marketing, and supply chain management competencies. Some companies go even further and outsource nonproduction functions including engineering, marketing, and customer service. Some outsource all of their operations, leaving them with two remaining internal core competencies—their leadership and partnering competencies. Their abilities to lead their small core team and collaborate with their network of external partners constitute their primary sources of value.
One of the most important skills leaders need in the era of globalization is the ability to partner and work effectively across organizational boundaries. Surveys of senior executives consistently confirm that working across organizational boundaries is one of their primary success factors. Yet less than 10 percent give themselves satisfactory marks in doing so. Most managers give the majority of their attention to their own team. They largely miss out on the benefits of collaboration with external organizations, as well as other teams within their own organization. They concentrate on what they can control rather than on what they can influence. They forgo the extended capabilities that come through intra- and interorganizational teamwork.
No team or individual is successful without assistance from others. No one works in isolation. No one person or team has all the skills, capacity, and resources required to be successful and compete in the modern world. Eating, sleeping, commuting, working, playing, leading, and all the other activities people do are only possible because of the efforts of others. Even the most self-made people rely extensively on others. No one is omni-competent, being self-sufficient in every facet of their life or business. Successful people and organizations fully utilize their own core competencies, but they also leverage others. They partner to add to their capacity and ability. They depend upon others inside and outside of their organization.
Based on the research conducted by Robert Kelly of Carnegie Mellon University, people in 1987 could contain within their own mind 75 percent of what they needed to know to perform their job compared to less than 20 percent just ten years later. More recent studies find that mankind now creates more information every two days than we did from the dawn of civilization through the end of the second millennium AD.
As the world’s body of knowledge continues to grow and with the pace of change showing no signs of slowing down, the information and abilities people need continue to increase. Correspondingly, the percentage of ability and knowledge people can possess on their own continues to decrease. Now people’s ability to perform is based as much on who they partner with and have access to as it does the competence and knowledge they have themselves.
Organizations that perform at the highest levels in the new era concern themselves with three levels of performance—individual, team, and cross-team. They not only have top performing individuals, they leverage internal teamwork and the knowledge, abilities, and resources external to their team. They leverage local, regional, national, and global resources. They work across team, organizational, and geographical boundaries.
You may prefer to work individually or as an independent team, but independence produces suboptimal performance. Just to maintain mediocrity, much less top performance, requires the help of others. You depend on the knowledge and services provided by other departments and business units in your organization. You depend on suppliers and external partners. You rely on good working relations with government officials and the media. You benefit from the support of your community and industry. You benefit from bosses and mentors, those who worked in your job before you who paved the way, and new and existing customers. You live and work in an interdependent environment, making your ability to team, partner, and work with others collaboratively one of your most critical competencies.
When you think only about what you or your team can do, you severely limit your effectiveness. You limit your abilities, capacity, and perspective. You limit your options and opportunities. You might have a highly talented team with tremendous capabilities, but you won’t reach the highest levels of performance that are possible only by working with others.
The word “partnerships” in the SCOPE of Leadership refers to relationships that you have influence in. Partnerships include interactions between people on your team, interactions between your team and other teams inside your organization, and interactions with external organizations. This is not to say that all interactions are partnerships. Not every purchase you make or institution you work with represents a partnership. Some are simple transactions. Your traditional transactions, however, might be candidates for partnerships. If the reliability of your electricity is critical to your success, you might consider creating a partner relationship with your electricity provider.
Great leaders build relationships and assemble teams of people both within and outside of their direct control. Because they are adept at leading people, great leaders work as well with those who are directly on their team as they do with those external to their team.
Great leaders don’t expect to reach their highest levels of performance on their own. They don’t expect to have all the expertise or capacity on their own team that is needed to do everything they expect to accomplish. Great leaders work across organizational boundaries. They have strategic partners and key suppliers. They leverage the relationships, assets, abilities, capacity, reach, and expertise of others.
It is easy to think of people outside of your team as a collection of nameless individuals. Even if you know their individual names, you might refer to them by the name of their organization such as headquarters, human resources, or the marketing department. However, you don’t work with other organizations. You work with people. People partner with people.
The competencies you use to foster teamwork within your own team are the same competencies you use to work with others outside of your team. For this reason the competencies in this level of the SCOPE of Leadership hierarchy enable both great internal teamwork and external partnering.
Take a few minutes to assess your current partnering focus and ability. Are there a significant number of competent people outside of your immediate organization and control who are helping you reach your goals? Are there numerous people who feel a sense of indebtedness to you and to whom you feel you owe something? Make a list of the people who probably think they owe you something and the people to whom you feel you owe something. If you take the time to think through everyone, there should be hundreds of people’s names on both lists. If not, partnering is an area you can improve in and benefit from.
Great leaders consider most everyone a potential partner. They treat their customers and suppliers as partners. They build relationships with their customers and suppliers that go well beyond buy–sell transactions. They ensure their customers are satisfied and their suppliers are treated respectfully. They negotiate win–win contracts with terms and conditions that serve everyone’s best interests.
Partner-focused leaders have customer and supplier advisory boards. They involve customers and suppliers in their product planning and requirements analysis. They involve their partners in their product development, testing, and supply chain optimization. They collaborate with their partners to take advantage of each other’s services. They create partnerships that help increase each other’s sales, product quality, and productivity. Partner-focused leaders view other organizations as extensions of their own organizations.
Partner-focused leaders regularly seek outside perspectives. They look for people with fresh ideas who challenge them to think in new ways. They seek others’ perspectives to expand their knowledge and offset their biases. They value diversity of opinions. They build relationships with educational institutions, consulting firms, and other external service providers.
Studies find that two out of three ideas that organizations use come from people outside the organization. Leaders who expect to capture the best ideas and keep up with the pace of change stay connected with people outside of their organization. They keep up with what others are doing in their industry and area of responsibility.
Partner-focused leaders seek partnerships with government officials, trade organizations, the media, and advocacy groups where it is important to do so. They get to know the elected officials and industry groups that impact the policies affecting their organizations. They proactively build positive relationships before they are needed, rather than wait for a potential compliance issue or negative event to crop up.
Great leaders also build positive relationships with their superiors. They manage up. They cultivate collaborative relationships with their bosses, board of directors, and investors as appropriate for their position. They view those in the management hierarchy above them as potential partners who can help enable them and provide access to valuable resources. They ensure that good communication flow exists between them and there is good alignment of expectations. They effectively work through the inevitable differences of opinions that come up with their superiors because they have good relationships with them.
Step 1 of effective partnering is having good relationships with others. Step 2 is gaining synergy from the relationships. Many people never get past step 1. The business world is full of meaningless letters of intent, teaming agreements, and plans for future collaboration that are never implemented. Great leaders don’t partner for the sake of partnering but for the sake of extending their organization’s effectiveness. Partnering is not simply about building partnerships. It is about leveraging them.
In this fifth book of the SCOPE of Leadership book series, the leadership focus turns to effective partnering where you will build on the competencies of setting the example, communicating effectively, and developing others. You will develop six additional competencies great leaders use in leveraging partnerships and teamwork. Great leaders who leverage teamwork
These competencies facilitate deeper relationships with customers and suppliers. They improve alignment of goals and activities with bosses and other departments. They enable seamless cooperation within teams and cross-functionally with other teams. They enable increased operational efficiency and capacity by effectively utilizing contract labor and outsourcing. They help build broader perspectives, knowledge of best practices, and deeper domain expertise by leveraging industry experts and external advisors. They enable collaborative relationships with the media, government officials, and others who have influence over an organization’s performance.
In the background of every success story are partners. Behind every award, achievement, trophy, industry acclamation, and accomplished goal are people and institutions that help make it possible. As Sandra Day O’Connor, the former associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, said, “We don’t accomplish anything in this world alone . . . and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one’s life and all the weavings of individual threads from one to another that creates something.”
PARTNERSHIPS:
LEVERAGING TEAMWORK
Competency 26: Socializing for Synergy
Competency 27: Creating Alignment
Competency 28: Building Community
Competency 29: Stimulating Engagement
Competency 30: Managing Conflict
Competency 31: Collaborating