It Takes a Village: The Case for Collaborative Leadership

The 'It Takes a Village' concept of successful, cross-cultural, cross-role, cross-functional support of critical societal and business issues are a fundamental requirement for making sustainable progress and changes. This month's 'When She Speaks' event will profile women who have successfully taken a stand on a key issue of critical importance, coalesced a following around the initiative, and forged ahead in making real changes for people in need.

Our facilitators and panelists for this event included:

• Rosemary Straley National Coordinator of the HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON SUPPORT NETWORK
• Facilitator Katharine Fong, Deputy Managing Editor for the San Jose Mercury News, www.mercurynews.com
• Panelist Patricia Burbank, psychologist, community activist and co-founder of One World Children's Fund http://www.owcf.org/
• Panelist Dyan Chan, partner at communication and community relations consulting firm Lighthouse Blue http://www.lighthouseblue.com
• Panelist Mona Hudak is the Women’s Action Network and Diversity Program Manager for Cisco Systems http://www.cisco.com/

Below are comments from the facilitators as well as input from the attendees for the October 13, 2006 event.

Qualities of Collaborative Leadership

• Engagement and Empowerment, Belief in a common mission.
• Open you mind to perspectives different than your own
• Be part of the village - help others, seek help yourself; Grow your village
• Engage people of diverse talents and perspectives; Draw out the best in others, be around people who bring out the best in you
• Develop Shared Values and Shared interest in getting common results
• Consensus/Collective voices heard
• Rally people to a common cause
• Relationships with Trust, Honor and Integrity, Loyalty. These are not negotiable.
• Direct, clear, honest, open communications
• Humility
• Let the best ideas win, not just your idea - Park your ego for the greater good!
• Avoid having your ego too closely tied to your position
• Continuous Improvement
• Be better tomorrow than today
• Recognize that there will be a time when you don't have to compete with yourself
• A measure of success is whether the problems you're solving today are the same problems as yesterday

Be a Collaborative Leader!

• Seek Leadership Opportunities
• Share your stories. Listen to the stories of others.
• Involve others in decision-making.
• Get along first. Nobody will go along if they don't get along!
• Provide consistent, gentle, persistent nudges in the right direction
• Build a community of support, encouragement and engagement to a common purpose

Obstacles to Collaboration

• What they say (be collaborative) is not what we get rewarded for (individual performance)
• It takes time to create successful relationships
• The foundation of every collaborative effort are deep relationships based on trust and openness, focused on common values and common goals

For more information, visit http://www.FountainBlue.biz.