Power through Collaboration: The Formula for Success in Challenging Situations

By Stephen Willis, Ph.D.

Is Collaboration Essential for Your Success, Yet Frustrating or Difficult to Achieve? By reading "Power through Collaboration: The Formula for Success in Challenging Situations" you will be able to:

~ Learn the 12 common misconceptions that lead to collaboration disappointment and failure! Gain transformational understanding of what collaboration really is, and is not.

~ Discover the real essence of collaboration — the essential key to collaboration success! Gain game-changing insight into the psychological foundation that underpins and enables all successful collaboration. And see if your collaboration has it with the enclosed quick and easy PtC Collaboration Scan survey.

~ Learn the PtC Formula that creates Power through Collaboration -- the most powerful force for achieving your goals, especially in challenging situations!

~ Learn how to identify the 5 cooperation types -- so you can determine who will contribute to your collaboration success, and who will contribute to your failure. For example, learn to identify the ‘Predator’ type.

~ Learn how to identify the 8 Motivations for Cooperation — so you can determine who will be a great collaboration partner and drive collaboration success. Also, learn to recognize the motivational signs that warn of trouble ahead.

Collaboration is much sought after — for the allure of its power. In a complex, interrelated, and connected world, Power through Collaboration is the most effective force for achieving your goals. It is the rocket fuel that propels outstanding performance and accomplishment. It optimizes your capability to achieve crucial goals in high stakes situations.

Sooner or later people grasp that Power through Collaboration cannot be harnessed by doing business as usual. It cannot be captured with standard business models and strategic frameworks. It cannot be simulated by typical self-serving cooperative relationships. It cannot be cajoled with profusions of sanguine advice and quick tips. It cannot be prescribed via archaic rules and outmoded playbooks. It cannot be enacted via modern day collaboration technologies. It cannot even be understood with the conventional mindset.

A fresh framework is needed. If you are dealing with serious stakes and challenges, you need more than a book of platitudes or proverbial tips that gloss over problematic people and ruthless reality. Superficial guides may not fit your situation; are wrong as often as they are right; offer contradictory advice; and falter in complex situations when you most need help. For guidance to be useful, it is best applied within a coherent framework.

The Power through Collaboration books provide you that coherent framework:

"Power through Collaboration: The Formula for Success in Challenging Situations" is part of the Power through Collaboration (PtC) series. If you are new to the Power through Collaboration Model and PtC Formula, this book is a straightforward read and a good place to start. It is based on and drawn from the advanced book "Power through Collaboration: When to Collaborate, Negotiate, or Dominate!"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephen Willis, Ph.D.
• Release date: Nov 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9780985476816

Stephen Willis, Ph.D.

Dr. Stephen Willis, Ph.D. (www.powerthroughcollaboration.com) is the creator of the “Power through Collaboration Formula” for managing collaboration in difficult situations. He is the founder of the “Power through Collaboration” group on LinkedIn, and the author of two books: “Power through Collaboration: When to Collaborate, Negotiate, or Dominate” and "Power through Collaboration: The Formula for Success in Challenging Situations."Stephen is a consultant, coach, and facilitator to Fortune 500 companies, startups, and nonprofits. His career includes: instructor for Harvard University, CEO of AIB Business Consulting Inc, and psychologist with the Veterans Administration. Stephen’s work building collaboration and resolving conflict has been funded by Packard Foundation, Marin Community Foundation, San Francisco Foundation, and Pante Rhea Foundation.Stephen earned a Ph.D. in Psychology from Purdue University, a B.S. in Mathematics from Manhattan College, and trained in Facilitation at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. He is a member of the American Psychological Association and its Society of Consulting Psychology.

Book preview

Praise for Power through Collaboration

Power through Collaboration is a very powerful window to the benefits of collaboration and its success — well spelled out. Win-win formula!

Ajaya Gupta, Editor, Journal of Institute of Management Technology

Dr. Willis captures the essence of the collaborative process: people. This is a book that every practice group could read together to build skill and understanding of how to implement the collaborative process.

Gloria Vanderhorst, Ph.D., Editor, The World of Collaborative Practice Magazine

Dr. Willis is absolutely correct that people cannot possibly collaborate if they don't even know what collaboration means. I must tell you that just learning what collaboration is not was extremely eye opening. This book is extremely thought provoking. I cannot thank Stephen Willis, Ph.D enough for writing this book.

Mark Baer, Esq., Huffington Post

Stephen Willis's trail-blazing book guides us along a path to the type of collaboration that can pull us back from the precipice — something that is needed as never before!

John Perkins, New York Times bestselling author, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and Hoodwinked

I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to improve his or her outcome and experience sustainable success. A must read for anyone serious about leading consciously and living consciously in order to thrive in the 21st century paradigm.

Runa Bouius, President, Conscious Leader Network

I am impressed with the authors comprehensive knowledge which he generously and unhesitatingly shares in this book. The 'Formula for Success' is exactly that — it will lead to much better collaboration in any situation.

Vivek Sood, Chairman, Global Supply Chain Group

More at: http://www.powerthroughcollaboration.com

Power through Collaboration:

The Formula for Success in Challenging Situations!

By Stephen Willis, Ph.D.

Copyright 2013 by Stephen Willis

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Published at Smashwords by:

Willis Consulting LLC

(V2.8 November 26, 2014)

ISBN: 0985476818

ISBN: 9780985476816

Available in eBook and print editions

www.powerthroughcollaboration.com

With loving appreciation I dedicate this book to my daughter Kristina

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Table of Contents

Chapter Summaries

Preface

Common Misconceptions about Collaboration

The Real Essence of Collaboration

The Global Picture: Collaboration vs Self-Interest

Examples of PtC Collaboration in Action

The PtC Formula

The PtC Formula in Operation

Next Steps & About the Author

Notes

Chapter Summaries

Common Misconceptions about Collaboration: addresses 12 common misconceptions that create problems, disappointments, and collaboration failures.

The Real Essence of Collaboration: gets at the actual essence of collaboration and identifies the essential key to successful collaboration.

The Global Picture: Collaboration vs Self Interest: contrasts PtC collaboration with self-interest as drivers of the global economic system and business models. Addresses the awesome and game-changing power of collaborative technology to empower or enslave humans as never before.

Examples of PtC Collaboration in Action: illustrates the PtC definition of collaboration in operation, and how it alters choices, changes behavior, and leads to successful collaboration.

The PtC Formula: integrates and operationalizes psychological and process components into the PtC Formula for achieving success in challenging situations.

The PtC Formula in Operation: guidelines and quick tips for putting the PtC Formula into operation.

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Preface

Collaboration is much sought after, and for good reason. As our world becomes increasingly complex, interrelated, and connected, collaboration becomes ever more valuable and essential. Whenever you need the best results or face challenging and high-stakes situations, you need collaboration. Yet, collaboration is often poorly understood, and all too often ineffective.

Thus, the purpose of this book is to help you get to the heart of what collaboration is really all about. It sifts through the nuances, misconceptions, and confusions regarding collaboration. It examines common misconceptions that create problems, disappointments, and collaboration failures. It connects collaboration in its everyday role enabling everyday success, with its big picture potential as a mechanism for enabling larger scale social and economic success. It realistically confronts our dilemma of needing more collaboration but operating via self-interest.

It drills into the question of what aspects of collaboration are most reliably and truly determinative of collaboration success. The answer is definitely not cooperation as usual. The answer will likely be a new perspective for most people.

In our networked era of game-changing collaboration tools and technologies, the essence of collaboration is still about people. It is about how people feel about working together, and what makes them feel that way.

Another purpose of this book is to enable you to transform and operationalize the true essence of collaboration into the most effective and powerful form of human cooperation there is, that is, Power through Collaboration. Fortunately, there is a formula. The formula is built by taking a candid and realistic assessment of how different cooperation types, varying motivations, and the actual process of collaborating all interact to determine collaboration success versus failure. The PtC Formula alters choices, changes behavior, and enables successful collaboration.

This book is part of a series on Power through Collaboration. It is based on and drawn from my more comprehensive and advanced book Power through Collaboration: When to Collaborate, Negotiate, or Dominate! The advanced book can provide you with in-depth information about the Power through Collaboration Model, and how to use it to collaborate more successfully.

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Common Misconceptions about Collaboration

Collaboration is essential, –– or so people echo.

I am a great collaborator, –– or so people fantasize.

Collaboration is all around us, –– or so people imagine.

Collaboration is a core value in our company, –– or so people proclaim.

How many of these people really understand what collaboration is? Why do they experience so much confusion, angst, and disappointment when collaborating?

Confusing Meanings and Nuances

Despite its value being highly touted and much talked about, collaboration often is unproductive or missing in action when needed the most. There are all too many examples of dramatic collaboration failures, both classic and current. I will name just a few. The Challenger space shuttle disaster. The Columbia space shuttle disaster. The 9/11 attack. The Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction analysis. The response to Hurricane Katrina. The British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill. Collaboration failure was a contributing factor in all of these dramatic examples and led to disastrous consequences.

There are many reasons for such collaboration failures. One of the major reasons is the pervasive lack of understanding regarding what collaboration truly is all about. Misconceptions regarding collaboration are a typical cause of collaboration problems and disappointment. Thus, this book examines the contradictions and confusion with respect to collaboration, and uncovers the real essence of collaboration.

The everyday meaning of collaboration appears to be different for different people. Whether considering one’s own behavior or that of others, views of what collaboration entails often seem inconsistent and ambiguous.

Usually the differing descriptions of intended or implied collaboration are at least in the ballpark. Different terms are used to convey a meaning generally related to collaboration, such as working together, collaborative technologies, teamwork, cooperating together, unity of purpose, collective vision, combined effort, commitment to a group effort, partnering, collaborative relationships, alliances, etcetera.

However, sometimes the differing meanings are way out of the ballpark. Conceptions of collaborative behavior may not seem particularly collaborative — especially when people are describing their own supposedly collaborative behavior.

With great sincerity, people can believe their actions are collaborative despite those with whom they are supposedly collaborating feeling exactly the opposite!

I have vivid images from a workshop on collaboration that I conducted with CEO Jordon and the executive team. Jordan understood that collaboration is good for productivity and profits, but did not understand that menacing everyone with collaborate or else does not produce genuine collaboration.

On the day prior to the workshop, Jordan took me on an intro tour of headquarters for a casual meet and greet of the team members and staff. As we conferred and strode from office to office, Jordan proudly boasted of their collaborative culture, and pointed out all the myriad collaborative systems they deployed. The executive team certainly had every conceivable collaborative tool and toy at their disposal. Jordan also shared more about the reasons for bringing me in. Despite their collaborative culture, they were having a little problem concerning one issue that they wanted help resolving.

Being a psychologist, I naturally took in the collaborative behaviors and communication patterns of Jordan and the executive team. Despite much sincere rhetoric about collaborating, Jordan’s default style consisted of: an imperious posture and glaring eyes; a blaring and dominating manner of speaking: a pattern of issuing an invite to share information that mostly conveyed demands and expectations; a narrow, self-serving, and judgmental frame of reference for assessing others; a readiness to assume the worst about others; an ineptitude