Collaboration and cooperation is essential to making greater progress on sustainability within organisations, supply chains and sectors – and across society globally. In our Sustainability leadership and collaboration – a how to guide, we explore the skills and strategies you need.

The importance of collaboration is recognised by the UN Sustainable Development Goals, in SDG17 ‘Partnership for the Goals’. Collaboration is also one of the five dimensions identified by the Inner Development Goals as essential to achieving the SDGs.

And the fifth call to action in our sustainability leadership manifesto for 2024 is “Seek out opportunities to collaborate and cooperate”.

Identifying the need is one thing, doing something about it is another. 

Here’s Alan Hendry, Sustainability Director, at Mott MacDonald talking about the challenges of delivering sustainable and net zero infrastructure in Scotland:

There is a huge frustration that we can’t seem to get our hands around the good stuff. In the last year or so, there’s the Institute of Civil Engineers’ report we did, Committee on Climate Change did a report, Edinburgh Centre for Climate Innovation did a report, the Net Zero Committee of Scottish Parliament did a report. And key themes are we need better collaboration.

The need, even hunger, for more and better collaboration also came up a lot in our recent Roundtable where we discussed the Sustainability Leadership Manifesto.

So, all of that is to explain why we decided to make collaboration the focus of this guide.

To prepare for this podcast and guide I sat down with Morag and Rich, my Realise Earth co-founders, to discuss how we could draw on our collective experience to offer you some really useful guidance on collaboration.

Here’s what we came up with:

• First I’ll talk about what we mean by collaboration in the context of sustainability leadership
• Then I’ll get into the skills required for successful collaboration and the characteristics of effective teams
• And then we’ll explore the nitty gritty of collaborating better, ending with specific actions you can start taking tomorrow – whatever your current experience.

What do we mean by “collaboration”?

According to the dictionary collaboration simply means “the act or process of working together or cooperating”, so it covers a wide range of activities and situations. 

In terms of collaboration and sustainability leadership, a two by two matrix is useful to think about contexts for collaboration:

	Internal	External
Informal	Day to day working with colleagues. Working with your sustainability allies in the organisation.	Working with peers in the sector, and people in the supply chain, to make progress on sustainability.
Formal	An internal initiative or programme with different departments or across the organisation.	An initiative or programme with organisations in the sector or supply chain.

My thinking about collaboration has been very influenced by psychologist and creativity expert, Keith Sawyer’s book: Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration. His message is that working collaboratively isn’t just a way to get stuff done, or that is more efficient and effective than working alone, he also demonstrates how collaboration is absolutely essential to innovation.

In his view, which I subscribe to, collaboration isn’t really about plans and procedures (although they can be relevant), instead collaboration is essentially a creative process. 

Sawyer highlights two kinds of collaboration: problem finding collaboration and problem solving collaboration.

For sustainability leaders “problem finding collaboration” would include bringing people together to explore how the organisation impacts, or is impacted by, climate change or the various Sustainable Development Goals. 

The question, the inquiry is: “What really is the problem here?”

“Problem solving” would include working together to develop a strategy in response to the problems, and opportunities, that have been identified.

The question, the inquiry is: “How do we solve this problem?”

There’s also a third type of collaboration that Sawyer doesn’t mention; we can call this “solution delivery”.

In this example, working together to actually implement the sustainability strategy or initiative to bring about real change.

The question or inquiry here is: “How will we deliver this solution?” And this is an ongoing inquiry as you deliver the initiative, adapting and evolving over time.

Each of these three types of collaboration will have their nuances, but in terms of the skills and approaches needed, they have a great deal in common.

The Inner Development Goals and the skills needed for collaboration

We’ve talked before about the Inner Development Goals, but in case you’re not familiar with the them, the IDGs sets out the skills and qualities that are considered essential for delivering the Sustainable Development Goals. 

The Inner Development Goals framework has been developed by over a thousand researchers, experts and practitioners in leadership development and sustainability, including names you might recognise like Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer and Renée Lertzman. The IDGs are supported by companies such as Google, Spotify, IKEA, shipping company Stena, and renewables developer OX2.

Collaboration is one of the five dimensions of the IDG framework, because: 

“To make progress on shared concerns, we need to develop our abilities to include, hold space and communicate with, stakeholders with different values, skills and competencies.”

The IDG framework identifies five skills and qualities that are needed for effective collaboration:

1. “Communication skills: Ability to really listen to others, to foster genuine dialogue, to advocate own views skilfully, to manage conflicts constructively and to adapt communication to diverse groups.”
2. “Co-creation skills: Skills and motivation to build, develop and facilitate collaborative relationships with diverse stake-holders, characterised by psychological safety and genuine co-creation.”
3. “Inclusive mindset and Intercultural competence: Willingness and competence to embrace diversity and include people and collectives with different views and backgrounds.”
4. “Trust: Ability to show trust and to create and maintain trusting relationships.”
5. “Mobilisation skills: Skills in inspiring and mobilising others to engage in shared purposes.”

It’s important to note that these skills aren’t intrinsically positive – they can be used for both good and evil. 

For successful collaboration towards sustainability, these skills need to be underpinned by other skills and qualities, like empathy, compassion and a sense of service – collaboration needs to be guided by a moral inner compass.

So those are the skills needed for collaboration. 

This list of skills can seem a bit overwhelming, and imply that we need endless study to collaborate successfully. Study and intentional practice are definitely useful, but there are a number of simple steps we can take to make a real difference in the quality and effective of our collaborations.

Seven characteristics of effective creative teams

I’ll come to those steps shortly, but they’ll make a lot more sense once we understand more about the process of collaboration.

Earlier I mentioned Keith Sawyer’s book Group Genius: The Power of Collaboration. In it he describes the “seven characteristics of effective creative teams”.

I think his insights are really helpful because, by definition, collaboration is a team, or group, process.

Don’t be put off by the term “creative” – he’s using it in the sense of innovation. And collaborating for innovation and new, creative ways of doing things is exactly what we need as sustainability leaders.

Although Sawyers talks about seven “characteristics”, they are really the attitudes that the team shares, and their awareness of how innovation really happens.

Let’s dive in.

1) Innovation emerges over time

New solutions and new ways of doing things aren’t just invented in a vacuum, they are the result of long series of incremental ideas. And this takes time.

And from our point of view as sustainability leaders, starting to build more effective collaborations, it takes time to build the necessary levels of trust between everyone involved.

2) Successful collaborative teams practice deep listening

I often think deep listening is the fundamental skill for sustainability leaders – get this right and everything else will flow from it! 

As Sawyer puts it: “most people spend too much time planning their own actions and not enough time listening and observing others”.

3) Team members build on their collaborators ideas

This is why deep listening is crucial for effective collaboration – new and better ideas and solutions are the result of building on each others ideas, and we can only do that if we’re actually listening to the other people we’re working with.

And this also means creating a space where everyone involved in the collaboration feels able to contribute fully.

Regardless of their position in the hierarchy, they need to feel confidence not just to put forward their ideas, but also to question other people’s assumptions.

4) Only afterwards does the meaning of each idea become clear

What Sawyers means here is that when the team is exploring ideas, it’s often not obvious which ideas will turn out to be useful. Very often someone will come up with an idea, but it’s only when another member of the team combines it with a different idea, that it makes sense or is useful.

5) Surprising questions emerge

This might seem a bit of a weird statement. But remember that Sawyer is talking about how we think about collaboration and innovation.

What he means is that the process of collaborative innovation may take us to places we simply weren’t expecting. 

He says: 

“The most transformative creativity results when a group either thinks of a new way to frame a problem or finds a new problem that no one had noticed before.”

And 

“The most creative groups are good at finding new problems rather than simply solving old ones.”

6) Innovation is inefficient

This can be a difficult pill for some managers to swallow. In cultures obsessed with efficiency, spending time on coming up with some ideas that don’t yield obvious results is an anathema.

But the reality is that innovation – whether you’re developing a sustainability initiative or designing low carbon infrastructure – isn’t a series of simple steps that can known in advance.

As Sawyers explains:

“Some ideas are just bad ideas; some of them are good in themselves, but the other ideas that would be necessary to turn them into an innovation just haven’t happened yet.”

And 

“the key to success is the ability to improvise a new path, one that wasn’t in the plan, one that, honestly, couldn’t have been known when you first started.”

7) Innovation emerges from the bottom up

Here’s another aspect of innovation and effective collaboration that can be a challenge to the culture of many organisations. 

You can create the conditions for collaboration, you can foster and encourage collaboration. But you can’t control it. And collaboration will only achieve its potential if everyone involved feels able to participate fully.

This is obvious if we think back to some of the other characteristics of effective collaborative teams that I’ve just listed:

• team members build on each other’s ideas
• only afterwards does the meaning of each idea become clear
• surprising questions emerge

These kinds of results will only happen if everyone, whatever their position in the hierarchy, feels safe putting forward their ideas, and everyone’s ideas are genuinely listened to by others.

Sawyers adds:

• “Allowing space for this self-organising emergence to occur if difficult for many managers because the outcome isn’t controlled by the management team’s agenda and is therefore less predictable. Most business executives like to start with the big picture and then work out the details.”

How to collaborate better

So we’ve looked at the skills for collaboration from the Inner Development Goals, and we’ve looked at the approach and ways of thinking that lead to successful collaborations, with the help of Sawyer’s book Group Genius.

It’s a lot to take in.

As well as needing to make sense of it all, we’ve just finished with Sawyers saying the conditions for effective collaboration are fundamentally at odds with the management style and dominant culture of many organisations.

So how do we actually go about collaborating better in what are often less than ideal conditions?

When Morag, Rich and I were developing this episode and guide, everything up to this point was pretty straightforward. It was here it got tricky, as we tried to combine theory with our experience, and distill it all down to clear, practical steps to help you lead and shape collaborations so they deliver real results for your organisation and the wider sustainability agenda.

But before we get to those practical steps, we realised there are three attitudes and assumptions that we’ve found really helpful. Here they are:

First: Collaboration is simply working with other people towards a shared goal. 

It’s easy to see collaboration as something different and outside our normal experience. 

Sure, collaboration might involve complicated processes and sophisticated project management tools, but at heart, despite all the bells and whistles, it’s about working together, cooperating to achieve a shared goal.

And this means we can start to consciously practice collaboration skills and so on, in our day to day work with our team and other colleagues. We don’t need to wait for a specific project to apply them. Working with other people is collaboration.

Second: Collaboration is a natural human skill

Humans are social animals. Working together with others is what we do, it’s the secret to our evolutionary success.

It comes naturally to us as humans, but all too often it’s trained out of us at school and university where the system is focused on individual results, and in the workplace, even though team working is often talked about, it’s frequently held back by individual targets, competition and distrust.

When you look at the skills listed by the IDGs it may seem like there’s a whole lot of new stuff to learn. But another way of looking at it is that all we need to do, is reclaim and consciously practice these natural human skills that have been suppressed by our culture.

Third: Most people want to be part of effective, worthwhile collaborations

Working well together, with other people who you trust, to achieve something worthwhile is a truly amazing experience.

You’ve probably come across the idea of “flow” developed by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Flow is when your skill level and the challenge are equal, and you’re completely absorbed in the moment – you’re in the zone. 

Flow applies to groups as well as individuals, and the insights from group flow inform Sawyer’s book, Group Genius.

I’ve often experienced group flow, but many people find it hard to believe it’s possible – because their experience of working in teams and groups is one of clashing egos, frustration and confusion.

But despite this, most people are hungry to be part of a group where people respect each other, support each other and work well together to achieve something worthwhile.

As sustainability leaders, we have a rare opportunity to work on stuff that genuinely makes a difference in the world. If we can also create the conditions where people work well together, we’re offering something that’s really attractive, something that people will want to be part of.

If, working on sustainability, you and your collaborators can create group flow, you’ll have something amazing.

In our experience, these three assumptions and attitudes make collaboration much less daunting than seeing collaboration as something technical and complicated.

Here they are again:

• First, collaboration simply means working together, cooperating to achieve a shared goal – so remember, we’re all already collaborating all the time
• Second, collaboration is a fundamental human skill – so we’re building on our natural instincts and abilities
• Third, most people want to be part of effective, worthwhile collaborations – so we can invite them to join us

If you keep these assumptions and attitudes front of mind, you can start to consciously develop your skills and experience of collaborating, right away without waiting for a formal collaborative project.

Where to start and what to do?

Collaboration is not what you do for, or to, other people; it’s what you and other people do, together. 

And all the skills and so on I talked about earlier, will enable you to create the conditions where you and others can collaborate successfully.

The best way to develop your ability to create these conditions is to make this part of how you work and who you are.

So start with your team and other people you work with regularly. Use your position and influence to create the conditions where you can work together better. Essentially, this means modelling the attitudes and behaviours that are needed for effective collaboration.

In practical terms, what might that look like? Here are three things to get you started:

• Listen deeply and check you understand
• Enable to people to disagree
• Disrupt normal patterns and places of behaviour

Get these right and most of the rest will flow naturally.

Let’s get into each of these quickly:

Listen deeply and check you understand

Listening deeply is so rare in our culture it can seem like magic when it happens. But it’s really as simple as going into a conversation to understand where the other person is coming from – instead of the common default of trying to persuade them to do what you want. 

And when they speak, shut up and give them your full attention. Don’t think about what you’re going to say next. Just listen. Ask open questions. Listen for what’s not being said. Pay attention to body language.

Of course, even if you think you’ve heard what someone said, it’s easy to misinterpret what they mean or make incorrect assumptions about the implications. So check that you genuinely understand by using your own words to reflect back what you heard and asking if you’ve got it right.

It’s not rocket science, but few of us do it often enough.

When you understand where someone is coming from, you’re both in a better position to work out how you might work together more effectively.

Enable to people to disagree

Remember, successful collaboration relies on everyone involved being able to contribute their ideas, even if they challenge the status quo, or seem opposed to what someone more senior has put forward.

If we’re confident doing this ourselves, it’s easy to forget how difficult it can be for some people to say what they think, rather what they believe more senior people want to hear.

One way to encourage and support this is to start by inviting people to disagree on the small things that it’s pretty each for people to say ‘no’ to – for example, ask if there’s enough time in the agenda to discuss a particular topic.

Over time people will realise they can disagree without comeback, and that their ideas are listened to and taken seriously. They’ll become more confident about saying what they genuinely think about more high stakes issues.

Disrupt normal patterns and places of behaviour

We know we need to do things differently to collaborate more effectively. We can evolve our normal ways of working by introducing new approaches like I’ve just described.

But sometimes accepted practices are just so engrained that it’s an uphill struggle. People are comfortable with what they are familiar with, even if they acknowledge it’s sub-optimal. And it can be easy to fall back into the old ways. 

The way around this is to disrupt these normal patterns of behaviour more radically.

For example, instead of allowing anyone to jump in to respond or ask questions, introduce speaking in rounds, where each person in turn shares their thoughts. This kind of approach brings a much richer diversity of voices and views to the discussion – not just the usual suspects or those with the loudest voices.

And instead chairing regular meetings yourself, switch to a more facilitated style, with a different member of the group facilitating each session in term – or better yet, a different pair of co-facilitators for each meeting. Of course, training and confidence building will be important. 

Places matter too. If you’re in a meeting room, it’s difficult not to behaving in the normal ways you’re expected to behave in a meeting room. 

This is why off-site strategy days and so on, when well designed and led, can be so successful. And they don’t have to be in the usual hotel conference suites. We’ve had great success in unconventional venues like farms and rural AirBnB’s where not only can do a lot of your meetings outside, you can hang out and cook together. 

Being in a physically and psychologically different space like these breaks the normal patterns of behaviour, and makes it easier to work together in different, more effective, ways. 

If you can do these things:

• Listen deeply and check you understand
• Enable to people to disagree
• Disrupt normal patterns and places of behaviour

you’ll start creating a space where collaboration can flourish. 

Action learning for better collaboration

There’s one more thing that will make a real difference and help you make more progress more rapidly.

That’s approaching collaboration as an inquiry, deliberately applying the action learning cycle, both as a reflective tool for yourself, and as a process that the group uses together.

Here are some additional questions specific to getting started with collaboration:

• What would successful collaboration look like?
• What are we already doing that’s working well?
• What do we need to keep, or have more of, what’s working well?
• If anyone feels uncomfortable or unable to commit, what would make it easier for them to come on this journey with us?

In all of this section, the context has been collaborating more effectively with your team and other colleagues. What about when you’re starting to work with a new group of people, or entering a formal collaboration?

What you can do will depend on the circumstances and the level of control and influence you have. But everything I’ve talked about so far can apply, you may just need to adapt it slightly. 

The most important thing, as early as possible in any formal collaboration, is that you don’t take the default arrangements and assumptions for granted – and that you ask these questions of the people involved:

• What does success look like for this collaboration?
• How should we work together to maximise the chance of success?
• What shall we do now to make sure we work together in that way?

I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by people’s enthusiasm for consciously exploring how you can work well together.