The Art and Skill of Collaborative Leadership


Book Description

In today’s super-accelerated business environment and increasingly global marketplace, organizations are recognizing that leaders need to break down barriers among employees and stakeholders to stay competitive. For leaders, the traditional approach of directing and controlling must give way to one of facilitating and persuading to get things done. What traits do collaborative leaders exhibit, and what are the challenges they can expect to face along the way? In this issue of TD at Work, you will learn: • what collaborative leadership is • how to create a collaborative environment • when to use collaborative leadership• the future of collaborative leadership.




The Collaborative Leader


Book Description

In The Collaborative Leader, L. Michael Hall and Ian McDermott answer key questions about leadership. What is collaboration? How does it relate to leadership? How do you do it effectively? How do you pull people together, inspire them with a meaningful vision, and organise them so that a team spirit emerges and peak performance is achieved? The Collaborative Leader is a practical guide to collaborating with others and leading collaboratively. That means learning how to win the hearts and minds of those who we lead. Packed with practical and immediate action points, the book will show you how to turn around a non-collaborative group or environment immediately. You will find assessment questions throughout, step-by-step processes on collaboration, and an invitation to action at the end of each chapter: a personal challenge to step up to the collaborative level of leadership. Learn the core competencies that facilitate a healthy, joyful, and productive collaboration. The foundation of collaborative leadership is self-collaboration. The leader who cannot effectively collaborate cannot effectively lead. If you are to walk your talk, you need to demonstrate collaborative skills yourself, and this book will show you the 'how to's' for developing the critical success elements of leadership. The best collaborators are those who have lots of fun collaborating. The goal can be serious. The collaboration can be fun. Learn how it's possible by understanding the structure and processes of collaboration. Whether you're responsible for team or organisational development, you'll find plenty here to inspire you to transform your leadership into collaborative leadership.




Dare to Lead


Book Description

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Brené Brown has taught us what it means to dare greatly, rise strong, and brave the wilderness. Now, based on new research conducted with leaders, change makers, and culture shifters, she’s showing us how to put those ideas into practice so we can step up and lead. Don’t miss the five-part HBO Max docuseries Brené Brown: Atlas of the Heart! NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BLOOMBERG Leadership is not about titles, status, and wielding power. A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for recognizing the potential in people and ideas, and has the courage to develop that potential. When we dare to lead, we don’t pretend to have the right answers; we stay curious and ask the right questions. We don’t see power as finite and hoard it; we know that power becomes infinite when we share it with others. We don’t avoid difficult conversations and situations; we lean into vulnerability when it’s necessary to do good work. But daring leadership in a culture defined by scarcity, fear, and uncertainty requires skill-building around traits that are deeply and uniquely human. The irony is that we’re choosing not to invest in developing the hearts and minds of leaders at the exact same time as we’re scrambling to figure out what we have to offer that machines and AI can’t do better and faster. What can we do better? Empathy, connection, and courage, to start. Four-time #1 New York Times bestselling author Brené Brown has spent the past two decades studying the emotions and experiences that give meaning to our lives, and the past seven years working with transformative leaders and teams spanning the globe. She found that leaders in organizations ranging from small entrepreneurial startups and family-owned businesses to nonprofits, civic organizations, and Fortune 50 companies all ask the same question: How do you cultivate braver, more daring leaders, and how do you embed the value of courage in your culture? In this new book, Brown uses research, stories, and examples to answer these questions in the no-BS style that millions of readers have come to expect and love. Brown writes, “One of the most important findings of my career is that daring leadership is a collection of four skill sets that are 100 percent teachable, observable, and measurable. It’s learning and unlearning that requires brave work, tough conversations, and showing up with your whole heart. Easy? No. Because choosing courage over comfort is not always our default. Worth it? Always. We want to be brave with our lives and our work. It’s why we’re here.” Whether you’ve read Daring Greatly and Rising Strong or you’re new to Brené Brown’s work, this book is for anyone who wants to step up and into brave leadership.




Leading With Inquiry and Action


Book Description

Enhance learning with a collaborative, inquiry-based system of leadership! This practical guide presents a systematic, ongoing process for collecting information, making decisions, and taking action in order to improve instruction and raise student achievement. The authors illustrate a collaborative inquiry-action cycle within a real-world context and offer questions and exercises to guide individual reflection and group discussion. Thoroughly grounded in research, this book helps administrators: Identify areas for instructional improvement Determine community-supported solutions and build stakeholder commitment Articulate an action plan based on multiple data sources Take steps that support teacher development Systematically evaluate program results




Leadership is Half the Story


Book Description

Can you imagine a choreographer only training one dancer to lead while his or her partner sits in the lobby staring at the wall? Yet we do this all the time in organizations. Half the partnership is missing. Leadership is Half the Story introduces the first model to seamlessly integrate leadership, followership, and partnerships. This research-backed, field-tested book contributes many new ideas and practical advice for everyone in an organization – from CEO to HR director to front-line manager to consultant. All of us lead, not just those with the formal title. All of us follow, not just front-line staff. In great collaborations, one moment we are leading and then we flip to following; in other words, the relationship between leadership and followership is dynamic, context-specific, and ever-evolving. This empowering perspective opens up leadership to everyone, normalizes followership, and enables more productive and innovative collaborations. Candid discussions about both roles allow for better coaching, mentoring, skill development, and interpersonal agility, and result in stronger teams. Marc and Samantha Hurwitz give us a category-busting book that “practically glows with energy and vision,” according to Marshall Goldsmith, executive coach and best-selling author of What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.




Strategic Doing


Book Description

Ten skills for agile leadership Complex challenges are all around us—they impact our companies, our communities, and our planet. This complexity and the emergence of networks is changing the practice of strategic management. Today’s leaders need to understand how to design and guide complex collaborations to accelerate innovation and change—collaborations that cross boundaries both inside and outside organizations. Strategic Doing introduces you to the new disciplines of agile strategy and collaborative leadership. You’ll learn how to design and guide complex collaborations by following a discipline of simple rules that you won’t find anywhere else. • Unleash the power of true collaboration • Learn and master the 10 skills of agile leadership • Apply individual skills to targeted situations • Introduces a new discipline of leadership strategy Filled with compelling case studies, Strategic Doing outlines a new discipline of leadership strategy specifically designed for open, loosely-connected networks.




Leading in the Global Matrix


Book Description

Enter the matrix . . . and discover a whole new reality for your organization. In today's global business world, many organizations are shifting away from decentralized, vertical structures—with silo functions such as finance, HR, or operations—to a "matrix" model of cross-functional teams that work across a number of business units. When executed successfully, a matrix structure helps companies thrive in the modern market by better leveraging internal resources, eliminating duplication, spurring innovation, and driving enterprise-wide strategy. However, integrating matrix structures is often a challenge for organizations. John Futterknecht and Marty Seldman, PhD, have worked with some of the world's largest companies—including PepsiCo, Disney, McDonald's, and Microsoft—to investigate and conquer the challenges that arise with these highly integrated organizational structures. Through coaching hundreds of leaders and training thousands for on success in a matrix environment, they have witnessed first-hand which skills and strategies are most critical for matrix success . . . and now they're sharing these breakthrough, field-tested tips with you. Leading in the Global Matrix offers a real-world perspective of working in a matrix while using examples from the authors' actual coaching of business leaders. This book tackles the critical, "unspoken" dimensions that are often underestimated and unaddressed in the global business world, helping readers learn: • specific skills and insights that can help them be successful in the trenches • how to deal with day-to-day realities—which include complexity, pressure, and demand to deliver results with speed • what to do, why it's important, and how to accomplish each task With concrete action plans, readers can implement what they learn in the book into their everyday work lives. Leading in the Global Matrix encapsulates field-tested advice to help individual professionals and their teams unlock their full potential, allowing the matrix to finally deliver on its promise.




Collaboration for Impact


Book Description

Collaboration is often seen as a palliative for the many wicked problems challenging our communities. These problems affect some of the most vulnerable and unempowered people in our community. They also carry significant implications for policy processes, programs of service and, ultimately, the budgets and resourcing of national and sub-national governments. The road to collaboration is paved with good intentions. But, as John Butcher and David Gilchrist reveal, ‘good intentions’ are not enough to ensure well-designed, effective and sustainable collaborative action. Contemporary policy-makers and policy practitioners agree that ‘wicked’ problems in public policy require collaborative approaches, especially when those problems straddle sectoral, institutional, organisational and jurisdictional boundaries. The authors set out to uncover the core ingredients of good collaboration practice by talking directly to the very people that are engaged in collaborative action. This book applies the insights drawn from conversations with those engaged in collaborations for social purpose—including chief executives, senior managers and frontline workers—to the collaboration challenge. Backed up by an extensive review of the collaboration literature, Butcher and Gilchrist translate their observations into concrete guidance for collaborative practice. The unique value in this book is the authors’ combination of scholarly work with practical suggestions for current and prospective collaborators.




Eisenhower and the Art of Collaborative Leadership


Book Description

"Eisenhower and the Art of Collaborative Leadership" examines the theory and practice of collaboration, and collaborative leadership, in the life and career of Dwight Eisenhower. It relates his collaborative style to his ideas about friendship, his Kansas upbringing and his family, his military training and career, and his particular practice of presidential leadership, which operated through teams and a deliberate, sophisticated system of bureaucratic consensus-building. "Eisenhower and the Art of Collaborative Leadership" elaborates an alternative interpretation of such leadership, describing Eisenhower not merely as a “hidden-hand” president, but also as a visible one at the head of a well-managed team. It is a concise portrait of one of America’s most important and talented leaders, and a case study in sound leadership.




The Art of Relevance


Book Description

What do the London Science Museum, California Shakespeare Theater, and ShaNaNa have in common? They are all fighting for relevance in an often indifferent world. The Art of Relevance is your guide to mattering more to more people. You'll find inspiring examples, rags-to-relevance case studies, research-based frameworks, and practical advice on how your work can be more vital to your community. Whether you work in museums or libraries, parks or theaters, churches or afterschool programs, relevance can work for you. Break through shallow connection. Unlock meaning for yourself and others. Find true relevance and shine.