Collaboration is our brain's ultimate achievement. It gives us the ability to take ideas from multiple sources and bend or blend them into something new.

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Effective collaboration requires leaders to manage the friction that is a natural consequence of bringing people from different parts of the organization together. This is when leaders need to demonstrate the ability to engage constructively with people who are angry or scared or sad. 

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Good collaboration requires you to step back and see yourself and your emotions as part of the problem and the key to a solution.

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Herman-Miller CEO Max DePree calls it Leadership Jazz. There's the music as printed and the music as played. There's the work as planned and the what the situation demands.

It reminds me of Joe Pass, one of the greatest jazz guitarists of all time, having played with the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Ornette Coleman and Nels Larsson.​

Most nights there were just 20 songs on Pass' playlist; the sheet music was simple and short for each song. But that was as simple as it got.

 

Depending on the audience response, some nights "Bye, Bye Blackbird" would last 4:00; others it would last 25:00. Every performance was a creative adventure that was grounded in structure. The audience was different, even if the musicians were the same. It was Pass' job to manage that friction to get the best from both.

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Leaders at Top Workplaces recognize that there are two types of collaboration and that each requires a different type of leadership and the ability to toggle between the two.