Essential Skills #3 Collaboration

Critical Thinking, Communication skills, Collaboration and Creativity - the 4Cs of the workplace skills considered most essential in the next few years. 

In the third of our series on the 4Cs we turn to Collaboration skills. Post lockdown, remote working has become widespread. Most office-based people now work from home around 2-3 days per week. Whilst this brings many advantages, it complicates the ability for people to collaborate well – and collaboration is a critical contributor to an organisation’s performance.

Collaboration skills play a crucial role in building productivity, innovation and teamwork. For effective performance these skills need to be developed and then optimised to overcome the challenge of remote technology-based working.

When assessing and developing collaboration skills, the following underpinning competencies are key:

1.       Teamwork: the ability for people to work well together obviously requires that they communicate productively. Their way of doing that will depend on the team’s culture – effective teams are not necessarily full of friendly, benevolent lovers of harmony. Some teams operate well in a challenging, competitive fashion and when all team members are comfortable working in that way it can be very effective. Collaboration requires good dynamic and agile teamwork – that is, the ability of people to be able to quickly form teams or workgroups which may be very short term. In this way good, wider relationship building (networking skills) come into their own, with skilled networkers tending to be more at ease in this area.

2.       Handling conflict: conflict occurs in all collaborative settings and can be destructive if not handled effectively. When conflict is handled well it can further team cohesion, build greater trust and enhance creativity. The ability to address conflict constructively and maintain positive working relationships is an indicator of emotional maturity (EQ) and can be both assessed and developed.

3.       Feedback and continuous improvement: Being receptive to feedback and able to offer it constructively is a sign of emotional maturity/sensitivity and trust within the team. These are a key feature of learning environments and no-blame cultures. When handled well they enable organisations to keep improving and make progress in a sustainable way.

Underlying all of these skills are competencies of emotional intelligence, particularly self-confidence and self-awareness, empathy and relationship skills. Cultivating these competencies can lead to greater collaboration outcomes for organisations and personal fulfilment for individuals.

If you would like to assess and/or develop collaboration skills in your organisation, get in touch to see how coaching can help: email enquiries@managingchange.org.uk

[In a 2022 survey*, the key drivers for identifying these specific "4Cs" were: the pace of change in business today (91%); global competitiveness (87%); the nature of how work is being carried out today (78%); and the way organisations are now structured (66%).

• American Management Association, 2022]