The most important specifications required for employment opportunities

The most important specifications required for employment opportunities

She said that during a decade of teaching and research at Harvard Business and Law Schools, she discovered an important and often overlooked idea: "People who figure out how to collaborate across teams gained a significant competitive advantage over those who didn't."

Advantages of collaboration skills

She added that when it comes to hiring, smart collaborators are highly desirable candidates, as they deliver higher-quality results, are promoted faster, are more noticed by senior management, and have more satisfied clients.

But at the same time, she has found that collaboration skills are surprisingly rare, especially among men.

She pointed to a 2021 McKinsey study that found that women leaders, compared to men of the same level, were about twice as likely to spend as much time on collaborative efforts outside of their formal job.

How to be an exceptional collaborator?

“Being a collaborator is not easy, but the main goal is simple: to bring people together to solve problems and learn something new,” Gardner wrote in an article for CNBC, which was viewed by Al Arabiya.net. Here is how to get better at that:

1. Be an inclusive leader.

"Whether you're the project leader or not, you need to take steps to bring diverse people together," she said.

She explained that you have to adopt the logic that “people who think differently from me know something different than I do, and I can learn a lot from them.” These people should not only have different fields of knowledge, they should also represent different professional backgrounds, ages and life experiences.

2. Show appreciation and respect

A groundbreaking study by Harvard Business School professor Boris Groysberg found that workers, especially men, often take their professional networks for granted.

The study revealed that during job interviews, especially people who denied the amount of support they received from their colleagues, they believed that they were more independent and amenable to promotion than they actually were.

Gardner said that selfish people, who think with a “me first” mentality, are the first stages that hiring managers are alienated from, and this is confirmed by Claire Hughes Johnson, former vice president of “Google” for 10 years, who said she is looking for self-awareness and collaboration skills. “before anything else” in job applicants.

3. Ask for help.

As Gardner advised: “If you are responsible for reporting on sales for example every week, but do it alone, it may indicate that you think your opinion is the most valuable, but if you reach out to experts across different departments to get insights, it is likely that Your data points are more compelling.”

It also recommended that you mention the names of those who contributed with you and their experiences, which will give your report more credibility.

4. Mobilize resources

Gardner, author of the book “Smart Collaboration,” advised the need to give people a way to learn without having to be part of every team, as her research found that the desire to learn is a frequent driver of voluntary commitment.

She believes that communities created through Slack are a great way to stimulate virtual forms of collaboration and knowledge sharing and dissemination.

5. Share data streams

Gardner advises using scorecards and dashboards as powerful tools, as they allow you to measure progress against the goals you set in advance. Also, when shared publicly, they create a sense of peer pressure, as they allow leaders to compare results with those of their peers.

Finally, she asked that team leaders be mindful of what data to share, when, and how, as the goal, according to Gardner, is not to obscure data, but rather to make it accessible and useful to a specific audience.

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