Intentional Leaders Podcast with Cyndi Wentland

Collaborative Leadership: What It Means for You as a Leader

• Cyndi

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Forget everything you thought you knew about collaboration. It's not about getting everyone to agree—it’s about creating something entirely new together. In this eye-opening episode, we explore the misconceptions that hold teams back from practicing collaborative leadership and uncover what it really takes to lead effectively in today’s environment.

Most people score surprisingly low on collaboration skills when assessed with tools like the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Inventory. Why? Because true collaborative leadership is a learned behavior that many of us were never taught. Instead, we default to giving in, taking charge, or seeking compromise—none of which create innovative solutions. Real collaboration requires understanding what people truly need, value, and worry about, then building a shared vision that honors diverse perspectives.

One of the biggest myths we dispel is the need for 100% consensus. That painful process where everyone sits in a room until complete agreement is reached? It’s unnecessary and often counterproductive. Collaborative leadership thrives on healthy conflict—where reserved team members speak up authentically and outspoken individuals practice deep listening. Especially in distributed teams, intentional practices are needed to foster this kind of productive exchange.

As leaders, our challenge is to create the safety and structure that allows true collaborative leadership to flourish. Can you set clear expectations that welcome diverse viewpoints? Can you respond to disagreement with curiosity rather than defensiveness? These are the skills that separate teams that simply coordinate tasks from those that deliver breakthrough solutions.

Share this episode with colleagues and let us know how these ideas have shifted your view of collaborative leadership in action.

Download the Collaborative Conflict Guide

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Speaker 1:

Welcome back to the Intentional Leaders Podcast, and today I just want to share a few thoughts about collaboration. There was a recent blog article that I did around collaboration really what it is and what it isn't. I do a lot of work with conflict and people resolving conflict and taking conflict assessments. People resolving conflict and taking conflict assessments, and there's one particular tool that I use, which is the Thomas Killman conflict inventory, and what it tends to highlight is five conflict styles avoiding, accommodating, compromising, competing and collaborating. And it is so fascinating because most people who take this assessment score very low in collaboration. Well, why is that? Because that is a learned behavior.

Speaker 1:

Collaboration is learned and many of us do not learn how to do it. What we learn how to do is give in, take charge or compromise. Learn how to do is give in, take charge or compromise, and when we get together at work and collaborate, I think it makes a huge difference in terms of what are the behaviors and the practices that we're embracing. But absolutely, collaboration means we're bringing something together, we're creating something new together, and a lot of times in teams we're not doing that right. We're just coordinating tasks or we're kind of cooperating with each other to make something good, but collaboration is developing something new, and I think there's a perception that we have to have 100% consensus to get to collaboration, that that's the goal, but it's not Really. The process of collaboration is discovering what do people need and want, what do they value, what are they concerned about? And can we come to a shared vision, a shared goal, a shared purpose that is inclusive of everyone, without being 100% consensus with what everyone wants, which is virtually impossible?

Speaker 1:

If you know, if you've been in a group trying to achieve some kind of consensus, how painful is that, and I bet you can think of one right. Think back to a situation where everyone was trying to get there, but then maybe there wasn't a clear strategy or path of how to get there, or people were just so different, the diversity in the group was so apparent that getting to some kind of consensus was difficult, and if you've had that experience, you probably didn't like it because it's uncomfortable and it's awkward and some people are super outspoken and some people aren't. So now we got a group full of okay, am I just going to give in and say I agree, even if I really don't, because if we don't get consensus, we're never going to leave this room. If you're in a meeting or you're in a planning session or you're in some kind of experience with multiple people, that shifts our behaviors. So we may veer more towards accommodating or compromising, because we don't want the awkwardness of having to deal with the key differences and how do we overcome those differences to get to a good solution.

Speaker 1:

But I think that journey is so interesting because we do not have to achieve 100% consensus in order to collaborate. What we need to do is each have a voice, each share, each talk about what we care about, which means, for the people that are more reserved, speaking up, having a voice, having a perspective and being authentic and transparent with it. It also means people in the group that are more expressive and more outspoken may have to step back and be in listening mode a lot more than maybe they want. But collaboration is something we all need to do and I bet in your company someone's telling you we got to do this right. We got to break down silos, we got to be and so many companies I work with that are cross-functional in nature, cross-discipline in nature, across the country with different kinds of work environment we're not physically all together all the time that we kind of get to know what someone cares about or what their concerns are. Now we have moved a little bit away from that in terms of physical time, maybe physical space, and so now we have to bring more energy to the collaborative process. We have to bring more energy to the collaborative process, but what I want you to really recognize and check out our blog article about this and also about the connection of collaboration and conflict. So we don't want to fear conflict and collaboration, we want to fully embrace it.

Speaker 1:

And when someone disagrees or maybe shoots down your idea, which does not feel good, can you lean into curiosity? Can you be really open to find common ground? Can you be open-minded enough to do that? So the opposite of closed-mindedness is, of course, curiosity, trying to understand where someone's coming from. But we have to speak up as well, and this requires great listening skills, not just to be physically there with noise going between our two ears. But what are people not saying? What are people saying that they care about? What is the unspoken message? What are you observing in people's body language or tone that they may be too uncomfortable to say out loud?

Speaker 1:

And, as leaders, if we can foster a good foundation of collaboration with clear intention. Right, that's what we're doing is. We're coming here to collaborate, which means we're sharing, we're trying to find a shared goal and a shared outcome, and it requires all of us to fully participate. Can you set the stage to do that? Can you create the kind of safety and the kind of discipline required to achieve a great outcome of collaboration? And when I think back to all the opportunities I've had to do this, I know early in my career I didn't know how to do that and I was intimidated by people who were loud and outspoken and I was probably I know you won't believe this but passive in not wanting to say something or rock the boat in some situations, and I wasn't speaking my mind right, I wasn't sharing my perspective as much as I probably could have, and so going through that journey ourselves requires awareness and practice and discipline. But you know what, when we can do that and we can find a great outcome where we've demonstrated courage and authenticity and vulnerability in the collaborative practice, then we know what it feels like and we know what can be achieved, and that makes us unstoppable.

Speaker 1:

So think about that as you go forward around the next time you're in a team or leading a team to collaborate, and what are the dynamics, what are the practices, what are the rules of engagement that you can put in place to ensure that collaboration is the goal and it is the outcome, and that there's not this need for consensus where we grip tightly to. Everyone must agree, which is very difficult, but we don't also lean in towards overly accommodating or overly compromising before everyone has had a voice. It's something that is great to work on, because if you can do this well and if you can lead this well again, you will be unstoppable. So I will be sharing some tools for how to do this and just notice those opportunities for you and how you're doing, create self-awareness for you and encourage others to do the same. I know that was a less than 10 minutes discussion on collaboration, or me talking about collaboration and you thinking about it. However, you may want some additional resources, and one is to share this podcast with other people. You know other people on your team who you want to discuss collaboration with.

Speaker 1:

The best opportunity to enhance the performance of the whole team is to share and elevate and upscale people's collaborative behaviors and mindsets. Number two in the show notes there are two free resources for you to take a peek at. One is called the Collaborative Conflict Guide, and it is a way to think about how you collaborate, how you lead it, how you process it and how to enhance it. And then, secondly, there's also a blog article on our website called how Conflict Drives Collaboration, and it is about the ease of thinking about conflict as a helpful thing, as opposed to trying to achieve consensus. I know it isn't easy, but it becomes easier once we stop fearing conflict in our collaborative efforts. So again, please rate and share the podcast with others, download those two resources, and I would love to hear comments about how your collaborative efforts have been enhanced or changed, because you are continuing to evolve as an intentional leader.