Meaningfully connecting and collaborating with your colleagues and teams is an important aspect of success, and your interactions can’t be about just “checking a box.” According to John Maxwell, the difference between thoughtful and intense teamwork and going through the motions is collaboration versus cooperation.
The agreeable and polite group work that’s simply required of your project environment is called cooperation. Cooperation is transactional – it’s focused on the action of getting a task done in a structured way. Cooperation isn’t a bad thing, but collaboration goes much deeper.
Collaboration is working together aggressively, dynamically, and fiercely. Collaboration is relationship-based and focuses on the essence and tone of your project environment. In collaboration, team members can comfortably and confidently identify each other’s weaknesses, or Achilles’ heels, and work together to combat them.
Collaboration requires that you challenge each other, while you also cultivate connection and synergy. Therefore, for collaboration to be successful, you need to be empathetic about how you are relaying and receiving messages to and from your team.
At Siegfried, we focus on collaboration over cooperation. Through enhanced collaboration, where everyone supports and complements each other’s strengths and weaknesses, delivering an exceptional final product is not only possible, but probable.
About our CEO Perspectives series: These insights and perspectives were adapted from sessions and conversations hosted by our CEO and Founder, Rob Siegfried.
