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About this lesson
In this module we look into the collaborative style of leadership and how it impacts your team.
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Quick reference
Collaborative
When leaders are aware of the different leadership styles, they can choose the style that suits them best or integrate the styles together to reach a desired outcome. Different leadership styles can create the same results, but will have a different effect on team members. Someone with a “Collaborative” leadership style solicits input from team members.
When to use
The collaborative leadership style works well when you have a really great team around you and you don’t need to be super structured.
Instructions
The collaborative leader solicits input from their team. This allows their team to help make decisions, to craft a vision, to direct action plans.
Examples of companies with collaborative leadership
- Wordpress – This is an open platform where people can collaborate and add things to make the product better.
- Zappos – The leader of Zappos took the collaborative leadership style to a whole new level. Zappos does not have middle management. They practice something called holacracy, where the individuals are more responsible for their actions. They take out middle management. They put their A players on a team and let them know their goals and objectives and they hold each other accountable.
- Google – They have an open team culture.
- Ford – Henry Ford prided himself on having people smarter than himself around him, so he was able to lead using the collaborative style.
Positives
- Sparks creativity and innovation.
- Team members really buy into projects because they have a voice.
- It is a very positive culture.
Negatives
- Lack of structure.
- Some people take advantage of the freedom.
- A lot of grey area.
- 00:04 In this video, we look into the second leadership style which is
- 00:08 the collaborative style of leadership.
- 00:11 And how it impacts your team.
- 00:14 So soliciting input from your team, it's great,
- 00:17 because now they're helping you make decisions.
- 00:20 They're helping to craft a vision.
- 00:22 They're helping to direct action plans, right, in a collaborative effort.
- 00:28 So if some great companies, some really great companies,
- 00:30 use this collaborative style of leadership, for example, Google.
- 00:36 Collaborative.
- 00:37 Zappos, the shoe company, they're amazing.
- 00:41 WordPress, it's an open platform where people can collaborate and
- 00:45 add to make the product better.
- 00:48 So Tony Hsieh the founder of Zappos he has, he took it to a whole new level.
- 00:54 So their management style doesn't have middle management.
- 00:57 What? David, that's crazy.
- 00:59 Who could do that?
- 01:00 Well, Zappos can.
- 01:02 Multibillion dollar company and they practice something called holacracy.
- 01:07 H-O-L-A-C-R-A-C-Y, holacracy.
- 01:12 That's where the individuals are more responsible for their actions.
- 01:16 They take out middle management.
- 01:18 And the team members, they pick the A players,
- 01:20 we're gonna talk about that, as well.
- 01:22 They put them together, they all know what their goals are,
- 01:25 what their objectives are.
- 01:27 And they know the guidelines within to work.
- 01:29 And they hold each other accountable.
- 01:31 It works great for them.
- 01:33 So that's one extreme.
- 01:35 Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, right, they have that open team culture.
- 01:41 The open team culture.
- 01:43 I love this example.
- 01:44 Henry Ford, he really prided himself
- 01:48 on having people smarter than himself always around him.
- 01:52 He used to brag about this panel of buttons that he had, and
- 01:55 he could just push any button he wanted to get any answer that he wanted.
- 02:00 So here's the positives of the collaborative style of leadership.
- 02:03 One, it stokes creativity and innovation.
- 02:08 Because the team members really buy into projects because they have a voice.
- 02:12 It's a very positive culture.
- 02:15 And you get to bounce ideas off each other.
- 02:17 Now, there are some negatives to it.
- 02:20 There's lack of structure a lot of times.
- 02:23 Some people take advantage of the freedom, and there's a lot of gray area.
- 02:27 There's a lot of gray area, so
- 02:28 you have to build in some safe guards when you're using this style of leadership.
- 02:33 So many years ago, I owned a special events company, and we were
- 02:38 doing a lot of special events for the movie studies, a lot of celebrity events.
- 02:42 And we were lucky enough to get the all star game that was coming to LA, and
- 02:47 we were gonna have celebrities and athletes.
- 02:50 It was a really big deal.
- 02:51 So we had a really big crew of people that were coming to put this on.
- 02:55 Everybody from the security, to the caterers, to the entertainers.
- 03:00 Everybody had to know what they were doing, and so
- 03:03 we'd bring them all together.
- 03:04 We'd all meet and have creative sessions.
- 03:07 And everybody, from the security, to the catering, to the entertainment,
- 03:11 got to put in their two cents of, hey, how to make this a great event.
- 03:16 And at the end It was absolutely spectacular.
- 03:19 The clients were happy, everybody had a good time.
- 03:22 So we all came up with ideas to make the events spectacular.
- 03:27 Even though I was the leader and had the final say, I wanted to hear from
- 03:31 all these great people, all these talented people in this collaborative style.
- 03:35 Makes sense?
- 03:36 Awesome.
- 03:37 So now you guys have got it.
- 03:39 Just to recap the positives are really stokes creativity and innovation.
- 03:44 Team members buy into the products because they have a voice, positive culture.
- 03:48 The negatives?
- 03:49 Well, there's a lack of structure.
- 03:51 Some people could take advantage of that freedom.
- 03:54 Lots of grey area.
- 03:56 So there's some really good examples,
- 03:57 and you ask yourself, what kind of leader are you?
- 04:01 Are you authoritative, collaborative, and
- 04:03 then we're gonna look at the third style as well, coming up in the next video.
- 04:07 We'll see you there.
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