When contributing gets in the way of collaborating

Hi, I'm Sabina Nawaz. I'm a global CEO coach, where I worked with CEOs on how to be more impactful and how to make the most of their limited time when working under tremendous pressure on seemingly intractable problems. I also offer leadership classes and right for Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and Forbes and therefore today's topic is about collaboration and when contributing ironically gets in the way of collaborating. When we have so much on our plates, how can we save time, be more effective collaborators by doing less?

As we explore the world of isolation and hybrid work, collaboration is needed more than ever, but there is a big problem, it turns out that there is such a thing as too much collaboration, and this too much collaboration comes at a steep price. We all collaborate because we want to create a whole that's greater than the sum of its parts. Yet, so many collaborations fail and instead of being additive, we become divisive. Our attention goes to managing each other, and the politics between us. Our energy dreams out with increasing levels of conflict and demotivates us. It keeps us from the very results we're looking to create.

In this session, we'll explore how to make the most of collaborations and uncover a surprising secret that we can be better collaborators, not by doing more, but by doing less. Let's start with Oliver's story. Oliver is the CTO of a healthcare company, he is smart and helpful, and helpful to the point of even helping those outside of his department. Oliver often is the first to offer up ideas and help others including his peers. He churns out great work at high volume. At first, when you look at Oliver, you think here's someone who´s not only smart, but always has time for others. Someone who's optimistic and cheerful. I'm so glad he's my colleague and he has my back. But the reality of Oliver's contributions in his real company played out differently. Oliver's started to eclipse the contributions of others. He took up so much time speaking and always being the first to do so that his co-workers felt squeezed out of the conversation. They felt shown up by Oliver and they started to shut down. The less his peers participated, the more Oliver over-participated. Secretly judging his peers as lacking energy, ideas, and work ethic. Finally, people started complaining to the CEO who informed Oliver of the imperative to change.