Being collaborative is a guiding principle in many cooperative approaches to dispute resolution and conflict engagement. It is based on an underlying set of beliefs – primarily that certain forms of cooperation will lead to better outcomes for both parties. In this blog, I flush out how I further understand what it means to be collaborative.
Isenhart and Spangle (2000) have written that collaboration involves people working together for solutions that maximize the gains for all parties involved. This doesn’t mean to me that we always achieve win-win. What it does mean is that there is a commitment to making the effort to work together for the best possible outcomes. When some compromise is required, which is often the case, the compromise is usually easier to live with when efforts have been made to maximize gains for all parties.
Being collaborative means that the effort is a joint one. I don’t on my own seek what is good for both of us. I ensure that we are both involved in how we are moving together towards win-win. We share the process of creating the conversation.
This co-creation of the conversation is an important point because when one party begins to control the communication process, they gain possible advantage of being able to shift outcomes in their favour. Therefore, if I experience that the other party is seeming to take over our communication process then I should assert myself to establish or re-establish the equivalence of influence (of power) in creating the dialogue process. Collaboration means to truly share power and allow – even ensure – that the other party has equivalent influence, not only in crafting a consensual outcome, but in shaping the communication process as well.
Parties can take a collaborative approach as they work together without speaking about the approach they are taking, but when circumstances are challenging, they usually gain from checking in over the communication process they will use. In this respect, collaboration is consultative – or at least benefits from consultation.
What if the other party doesn’t cooperate in being collaborative? Then you can advance collaboration to the extent you are able. This could include the creation of a process that is not collaborative because the other party refuses to engage in a cooperative manner.
Being collaborative relies on certain interpersonal qualities. Courses at the Justice Institute of BC promote the idea that collaboration balances empathy and assertion. Working with larger but similar themes in Power and Love, Adam Kahane writes about the need to be loving (empathetic and concerned) and at the same time calling out coercive or manipulative use of power.
To be collaborative one has to grasp and appreciate the other person’s experience. One also has to be in touch with what matters to oneself and be able to advance that persuasively. It’s a self-reflective internal dance during which we have to remain conscious of how we relate to ourselves as well as to the other person.
This picture and the principles articulated above are challenging to embody. Collaboration is an ideal that we work towards, but rarely achieve to the full extent. It is a guiding and empowering concept. Certainly, it is useful to develop a working understanding of being collaborative.
I have written several other blog posts in which I explore what it means to be collaborative, including:
Blog 9: Five questions that test your ability to be collaborative
Blog 16: The use of authority and collaboration in an organizational context
Blog 55: The blending of competition and collaboration in dispute resolution
