Five Star Performance


 
Effective collaboration is essential if your company is going to achieve its full potential. Collaboration is much more than the sum of its parts, and even a group of great minds is not destined for success unless they can learn to work together toward common goals. Collaborating effectively can produce amazing results and change the way your team thinks and behaves.

Below you will read about "Collaborating for Results" and learn how collaboration is a way of energizing people to work and think together.

Successfully,
Patrick "Coach" Frazier


Patrick S. Frazier, CBC 
Five Star Performance, LLC
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Collaborating for Results        


"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead

 

You will discover many advantages of leveraging several individual contributors' thoughts into greater collective thinking. Collaboration is a way of energizing people to work and think together. It is the exploration of multiple options from various perspectives. Collaboration is the process of people thinking and working together to discover ways to solve problems; address complex or cross-functional issues; improve processes, products, or systems, or invent new ones. Creative, collective thinking applied to the work we do leads to examination of how we do it, and how we can do it better. This means discovering new ways that are better, simpler, more efficient, or faster.

 

You will discover many advantages to getting the individual contributor's thoughts for greater collective thoughts. The benefits are enormous. In the words of Dee Hock, founder and former CEO of Visa USA and Visa International, "Given the right circumstances from no more than dreams, determination, and the liberty to try, quite ordinary people consistently do extraordinary things. With collaboration, the whole is not the sum of the parts. The whole is exponentially greater than all of the parts. Individuals join the cooperative effort by pooling their personal resources for superior results. Shared knowledge earns knowledge in return, and pooled knowledge consistently leads to better outcomes. In the information era, sharing information is important because it leads to understanding and keeps you in the loop of what is happening. Sometimes just being in the know opens a wider range of opportunities for action."

 

When problems are complex, seemingly insurmountable, or just frustratingly difficult to solve, answers and breakthroughs are more likely to be discovered through a collaboration of diverse capabilities or divergent viewpoints. The process of collaboration can transform conflicting points to common goals. Collaborations provide an abundance of ideas and options in a short period of time.

 

Searching for new and better ways in today's morass of possibilities is more than one mind can handle, or at least more than one mind can handle as well in the same time frame. There are countless tasks and complexities that are beyond the capability of one person alone which can be handled by the concentrated efforts of many. There are additional reasons for collaboration. It will help improve production and product quality in shorter time frames while contributing to profitability.

 

Even contributors who do the same job but do not ordinarily work together can benefit from sharing tacit information. This is the kind of information that is often not written anywhere, but learned through experience and passed on by word of mouth. The knowledge of how to perform tasks they all do separately can be profitably shared. The result is that each party in this collaboration gains personally from the collective knowledge of the group.

 

Most often the main obstacles to successful collaboration lie with the collaborators. One of the most common obstacles is a negative or self-serving attitude. Careful consideration must be given to the attitudes of the collaborators. Collaborators need to respect each other for their talents and skills, and they need to focus on outcomes, not personalities. Positive, solution-oriented attitudes should either be part of the selection process or the collaborators' development process. Training collaborators in conflict resolution and goal setting strategies will also pay rich dividends.

 

Contact The Coaching Authority to learn how we can help collaborate with your business!


Tammy A.S. Kohl is President of Resource Associates Corporation. For over 30 years, RAC has specialized in business and management consulting, strategic planning, leadership development, executive coaching, and youth leadership. For more information visit www.resourceassociatescorp.com or contact RAC directly at 800.799.6227.
September 3, 2013
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How would your employees answer these questions below?

* Do you know what is expected of you at work?

* Do you have the materials and equipment to do your work right?

* At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?

* In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise for doing good work?

* Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person?

* Is there someone at work who encourages your development?

* At work, do your opinions seem to count?

* Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important?

* Re your associates (fellow employees) committed to doing quality work?

* Do you have a best friend (someone you can trust or confide in) at work?

* In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your progress?

* In the last year, have you had the opportunity to learn and grow?

How your team answers these questions may determine the engagement level of your team. Increased engagement leads to improved productivity, lower labor costs, better customer service, lower turnover, increased financial performance and many other performance measures.

Brought to you by:
Five Star Performance, LLC

Five Star Performance
51818 Bonanza Dr.
Granger, IN 46530
(574) 286-1123
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"Playbook for Success" Workshop 

From The Coaching Authority's Leadership Workshop Series -  A Champion's Guide for Building Teamwork is a 1.5-hour, interactive workshop for up to 20 participants at a single location.

Offer Expires: September 16, 2013