United We Stand: Why Collaboration and Identifying Your Strengths is Key
Successful collaboration brings all the good things Corporate America has to offer:
- Promotions
- Salary Increases
- Great year end bonuses
- Stock Options
- Fun at work
So it’s surprising that more people don’t practice collaboration at work on a more consistent basis. Perhaps there are not enough role models out there. If you are lucky enough to have a manager that collaborates well, take note and try to learn from his or her behavior. On the chance that you don’t, here are some behaviors you may want to think about developing, in order to improve your capacity for collaboration:
- Be open and honest in all of your dealings with people.
- Try to build consensus and agreement among the appropriate stakeholders (and make sure you identify them in advance).
- When a conflict presents itself, think about an innovative solution.
- Decisions should benefit your group and other groups as well. It shouldn’t always be about developing your own high profile.
- Key learning should be shared with others. If something worked in your group, volunteer to show others so they can leverage your success. It will only help you in the end.
In addition to these tips, in order to improve your collaboration skills, it’s important to know what your strengths and your weaknesses are so you can “build muscle” where needed.
All of us have both strengths and weaknesses. To grow as a professional, we should address both well, by maximizing strengths and building up weak areas. This is the key to professional and personal growth. If you don’t know your weaknesses and own up to them, they will remain areas of deficiency. By the same token, if you overdo your strengths to the “nth” degree, they can become your weaknesses. It’s a delicate balance and one that each person needs to strike for herself.
And here is a fun twist: it’s vital to know that all strengths can be healthy, and at the same time, all strengths have the potential for failure. Case in point –“I’m a perfectionist.” A great strength, right? Yes … but it can also be a trait that gets you so stuck in the details that you can’t see the big picture. This is also a very cliché “strength couched as a weakness,” that many employers have heard before and are wary of, so try to think up a more original answer to the weakness and strength question.
Another example: “I’m very creative.” Another terrific strength. But on the flip side, you may have so many ideas that you rarely implement them. Perhaps you are lacking in your follow-up skills. You have to parlay this strength into action.
The key to success is being aware of both your strengths and weaknesses. Only then can you do something about building up skill in the areas where you are already enjoying success and recognition, and building some muscle in those weak areas.
For example, if you are a perfectionist, practice seeing the big picture. Switch roles with a teammate so they can crunch the numbers and you can see the trends in those numbers. If you excel at the creative side of your business, try to take on more quantitative tasks to broaden your skill set. Overall, these exercises will help you to realize that your weaknesses, as well as your strengths, can be developed into traits that can propel you to succeed and become a well-balanced, multi-faceted individual.
