The Collaboration Ladder
Welcome back to this first blog post after a bit of a break and I’m glad to be back after a hot (and smoky) July.
I’ve been thinking about different kinds of collaborators, or levels of collaboration if you will, and this thinking is building onto something I wrote about earlier in a blog post on Sparkplugs. Not everyone is a Sparkplug (the person who will be the catalyst for a collaborative project), which got me to thinking about the different types of collaboration and collaborators from Sparkplug all the way through to Opponents.
The Collaboration Ladder looks like this:
The bottom three levels of the ladder offer a lower level of value to collaboration and typically require a higher level of effort from the group to sustain their participation (sustaining effort).
Opponent: At the bottom of the scale are those who are opposed to collaboration, or perhaps there is a lack of awareness of what collaboration is and what it can do. This level will include those who actively avoid collaboration so they can work solo.
Skeptic: This level has those who are uncertain about whether collaboration is all that it is cracked up to be and that have likely not yet been part of a successful collaboration. In some cases, the skepticism comes from uncertainty about the purpose of the group or the other participants.
Participant: These folks are along for the ride, often because they feel their interests and needs will be met along the collaborative journey.
The upper three levels are where the magic starts to happen, and collective intelligence begins to bloom.
Collaborators: The biggest difference between participants and collaborators is their level of energy. While a participant sees the value of collaboration for themselves, a collaborator begins to see value through the lens of the group.
Advocates: Advocates begin to take collaboration to another level, as they carry the value of one collaboration into another, or they work actively to sustain an ongoing or long-term collaborative effort.
Sparkplugs: For sparkplugs, collaboration is ‘the way’. They seek out the collaborative approach for almost every complex problem.
People can fall on different levels of the ladder depending on the purpose of the collaboration and their level of familiarity with the particular group. Until they get the feel of the group, people who are naturally above the line may begin as skeptics and then move up or down depending on how well the group runs.
In my experience, people who are higher up the ladder will not slide down as far in new collaborative projects, which in turn will bring the entire group up more quickly.
Share your thoughts on the collaborator ladder by putting something into the comments or emailing me at scott.millar@collaboration-dynamics.com.
Happy Collaborating.
Scott Millar, through Collaboration Dynamics, often works as a "peacemaker" by gathering people with different experiences and together. As the host of the Cool Collaborations values and helping them navigate beyond their differences to tackle complex problems podcast where he explores fun stories and insights of successful collaboration with guests from around the world, and then dives into what made them work. Cool Collaborations is currently available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify.
