10 Questions to Cultivate a Collaborative Mindset

Illustration of three morel mushrooms

Source: Myco Consulting LLC

It is sometimes difficult, at least at first, to see the potential value of collaborative work. But when could-be collaborators enter exploratory conversations with the mindset that collaboration is a waste of time or generally ineffectual, they shut down possibilities and undercut their ability to advance complex strategic goals.

Last weekend, I attended a wild mushroom identification workshop. Instructor Tradd Cotter said one trick for spotting the coveted morel mushroom is to train your eye in advance of hitting the forest by staring at images of honeycomb. The pattern becomes imprinted on the brain and thus becomes easier to spot out in the wild.

Borrowing the foragers’ approach, are there strategies individuals can use to train their eyes to better see when collaborative work might be exactly what’s needed to advance complex goals?

Here are 10 questions to help you see more fully, and thus evaluate more wholly, the potential benefits (and costs) of collaboration:

1. What values do the potential partners share with us?
2. In what ways are our respective goals aligned?
3. What’s at stake if we do this and it goes smashingly well?
4. What’s at stake if we do this and it totally flops?
5. What is the cost of inaction?
6. What is the potential return on investment — not just in terms of finances, but also in terms of organizational capacity, our ability to meet our most important goals, additional opportunities, and extended networks, both now and in the long-term?
7. What do we stand to learn from these partners as a result of working together (e.g., exposure to new perspectives, new skills, sector know-how)?
8. In what ways might a deeper relationship with these partners provide value during crises?
9. What about this opportunity feels exciting, resonant, important, or worthwhile?
10. What are my biggest worries or hesitations? This last question can open useful insights about how you would need the collaboration to unfold, should it move forward. Separate from if we should collaborate and why, how concerns the processes involved in moving from thought to action to create together that which didn’t previously exist.

If you are worried that this collaboration will end up on the treadmill of endless meetings with little forward movement, then you want — and need — your collaboration to be guided by clear plans and expert facilitation. If you’re hesitant because, despite your enthusiasm for the project, you know a ton of work will land on your plate that you simply won’t be able to complete, then it’s time to explore opportunities to realign commitments to provide you the capacity and incentive to engage. A well-designed and facilitated collaboration can prevent the very things you’re worried about, which can lead to embracing a new opportunity.

So what’s the “morel” here? The point is not to trick yourself or anyone else into a collaborative frame of mind such that you or they say yes to something that is not in their best interest. Rather, these questions enable could-be collaborators to spot delectable opportunities when they arise, in hopes that they, like the foragers, don't inadvertently pass by a highly desirable outcome.