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collaborative leadership

What is Collaborative Leadership?

Collaborative leadership can help decision makers better manage complex issues. Here’s what that can look like in a negotiation.

Organizational leaders, from middle managers to heads of state, often face the difficult task of overseeing mission-critical negotiations and managing individual negotiators and negotiating teams. Collaborative leadership—a focus on giving employees autonomy and a voice in key decisions—is often key to managing negotiators effectively.

As part of that management, effective leaders tolerate and even promote constructive dissent—disagreements that respectfully and productively challenge others’ viewpoints. We often wrap up negotiations too quickly and leave value on the table because we fear disagreeing with others. By contrast, when we not only feel free to disagree with others but are encouraged to do so, through collaborative leadership, we open the door to different perspectives and foster a more rigorous decision-making or negotiation process.

Additionally, there are four important components of collaborative leadership:

  • Combine your strengths. Strategic leadership often involves recognizing when you can make a better impact by teaming up with other leaders who have compatible knowledge, skills, and connections.
  • Plan ahead. By networking, you encourage future counterparts to enter negotiations with a spirit of reciprocity.
  • Stir up excitement. Effective leadership involves painting a compelling picture of your ultimate goal to inspire negotiators to want to be part of it.
  • Get the sequence right. Seek early agreements with influential parties in your field whose buy-in could compel others to get on board.

To learn more, download a complimentary copy of our special report, Real Leaders Negotiate: Understanding the Difference Between Leadership and Management, from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, right now!

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The following items are tagged collaborative leadership:

What Is Facilitative Leadership?

Posted by & filed under Leadership Skills.

These days, work can often feel chaotic and unfocused. Leaders and followers alike struggle to keep complex group projects moving forward in the face of seemingly insurmountable economic, technological, and logistical challenges. One tool that can help is facilitative leadership—a management strategy that empowers employees to make decisions, address conflict, and take on greater responsibility.  … Read What Is Facilitative Leadership?

How an Authoritarian Leadership Style Blocks Effective Negotiation

Posted by & filed under Leadership Skills.

Those who favor an authoritarian leadership style, also known as an autocratic leadership style, tend to believe their approach to management is more efficient and decisive than a more collaborative leadership style. But because a top-down approach can heighten the power differential between leaders and those who report to them, it often backfires, generating resentment … Read More

Teaching Critical Leadership Skills

Posted by & filed under Teaching Negotiation.

Running a multinational corporation, starting a small business, or leading a diplomatic mission all require critical leadership skills. Being an effective leader necessitates negotiating both within your organization and with external partners. In Real Leaders Negotiate, author Jeswald Salacuse explains that leaders can increase their effectiveness by using negotiation in each of the three phases … Read Teaching Critical Leadership Skills

Collaborative Leadership at the Louvre

Posted by & filed under Leadership Skills.

When faced with conducting a series of negotiations with numerous counterparts, we often benefit from teaming up with colleagues. There’s much to learn about collaborative leadership from the deals that curators at France’s Louvre Museum conducted to secure loans of Leonardo da Vinci works for a major exhibit that opened in October 2019, as Kelly … Read Collaborative Leadership at the Louvre

The Value of Collaborative Leadership During Crises

Posted by & filed under Leadership Skills.

The United States and South Korea were both hit hard by the coronavirus. Yet while South Korea swiftly limited the virus’s impact, infection and death rates have soared in the United States. What can the United States and other countries learn from South Korea’s coronavirus response and how can they better prepare for future pandemics? … Read More

Collaborative Leadership: Managing Negotiators

Posted by & filed under Leadership Skills.

Organizational leaders, from middle managers to heads of state, often face the difficult task of overseeing mission-critical negotiations and managing individual negotiators and negotiating teams. Collaborative leadership—a focus on giving employees autonomy and a voice in key decisions—is often key to managing negotiators effectively. We often overlook the important role of leadership in negotiation. But as … Read Collaborative Leadership: Managing Negotiators