The Significance of Collaboration at Work

Gosling and Mintzberg describe the Collaborative mindset as a way to manage relationships. Collaboration is not necessarily the management of others but rather the working with other's or with other's input. The collaborative mindset is an active mindset. Managers can utilize this type of management mind in the following ways: influencing team building, communication, conflict resolution, providing/offering feedback, coaching and development and effective conversation (Gosling & Mintzberg, 2003).

The collaborative mindset is characterized by the effort to include oneself in activities rather than sitting back and watching (Gosling & Mintzberg, 2003). Unit 1 discusses the importance of managers to engage themselves to gain knowledge of effective management through experience. From day one managers need to stop thinking singular and start thinking about the collaborative whole. The team and the manager's role in the team are all contingent on the weakest link so team building and collaborative exercises are needed (Hill, 2004). Another important part of being of the collaborative mindset is influencing others to want to succeed as you have. Managers need to be able to influence others to strive for greatness and they can learn from each other (Caproni, 2005).

Thomas and Osland, (2004), discuss communication with people of different cultures and background. Communication is a huge part of the collaborative mindset. Effective communication is needed for effective collaboration. A manager should know how to appropriately communicate with various types of people. Managers should also know their own stereotypes so they know where their perceptions are rooted from and thus how to work around those biases (Thomas & Osland, 2004).

Giving and receiving feedback is also an important part of collaboration. The best way to rate your performance is to listen to how other's perceive your actions (Caproni, 2005). Receiving feedback is proven to be easier than giving it. In fact, many manager's lose out on the benefits of providing feedback because they feat offending someone. How do you expect your employees to learn from feedback if you're not willing to give any? The best way to establish an environment that is conducive to feedback is to remove all penalties for truthful insight and welcome all forms of criticism that will benefit the recipient (Caproni, 2005).

Conflict will be a part of almost every team collaboration effort; therefore, the management of such is needed for effective collaboration. Conflict management can be successful if managers develop a standard method of conflict resolution. If there is a different management style used every time, people will perceive the manager to be inconsistent thus will not respect the manager's decision. Conflict shouldn't be perceived as always being a negative thing ( Weiss& Hughes, 2005). Conflict is the expression of people's differing opinions and ideas. These ideas could be creative solutions to a common problem. Manager's should be open-minded and allow each team member to voice their view; you never know when one of their ideas could be company changing. Conflict also offered opportunity to coach team members. These coaching sessions could cover topics in which managers needed a reason to discuss anyways (Weiss& Hughes, 2005).

Overall, conflict is inevitable so managers should be prepared for it with a standardized plan. Managers should also take advantage of these opportunities. The very fact that team members are arguing over a topic shows that they are passionate and this is the very thing that managers strive to instill in their subordinates ( Weiss& Hughes, 2005).

From the case study we learned that collaboration can be used in analyzing how a jury of your peers thinks of your job performance. Collaboration used in this manner can be a beneficial management tool. Other people may see things, in the employee in question, that you do not. The employee may act a certain way in front of you but to analyzed by people they didn't expect to be analyzed by will expose their real work habits and personality (Isabella & Yemen, 2007).

A lot of retention efforts also engage the use of collaboration strategies. Being involved in volunteer programs and team building exercises are examples of activities that through collaboration help keep employees with the company (Brenner, 2010).

Managers use coaching and development techniques which are the culmination of collaborative efforts of research on the best methods. An employee will be coached by every manager they have, therefore each manager plays a strategic collaborative role in molding the employee into the performer they are today using various methods of coaching and development. If one manager in the chain doesn't do their job, the employee will begin to develop bad habits that could be rewarded (Mackintosh, 2002).Each manager needs to play their part knowing that regardless of the fact that the employee may or may not be a part of the same company over the years. Managers need to coach and develop each employee regardless because that employee will move onto another manager's team and bring with them what you have taught them. Being a manager, you expect to hire employees who have learned good habits from their previous manager, so set them up for success not failure. Some methods of coaching and development that were developed to standardized coaching include the GROW model and appraisals. GROW stands for Goal, Reality, Options and Wrap-up (Mackintosh, 2002).

The overall importance of collaboration in any organization is huge. Managers should learn to work with people in many dynamic ways. This is what Gosling and Mintzberg mean by being of a 'collaborative mindset' (Gosling & Mintzberg, 2003). With practice, managers can learn to use their team to provide and use feedback, develop effective communication and crucial conversational techniques and learn to coach and develop productively.References

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