What is a Collaboration Coach?

Q: What is a collaboration coach?

A: The one person dedicated to helping you succeed through collaboration.

Q: What do they do?

A: Help you collaborate with other people, individually, as organisations, and more widely.

Q: Why is that important?

A: You cannot succeed without other people. Collaboration is how we work with them.

Q: How does collaboration coaching work?

A: First your coach examines where collaboration is fundamental to you (individually, as an organisation, and more broadly) and why – what does it unlock.

Your collaboration coach helps you examine your existing behaviours and structures, seeking what brings you power and success through collaboration, and what brings you weakness and frustration.

You learn how to make collaboration a specific method of your strategy, and use it to reach your strategic goals.

You model your ecosystem with a collaboration map to design, plan and communicate what collaboration means to you, and how it should work for you and your stakeholders.

Q: What does this involve?

A: An open mind ignited by your insight that collaboration is key to your success.

A lot of conversations with stakeholders.

And:

documentary reviews (contracts, policies, product requirements, commercial strategies etc.)
strategy planning sessions
individual and group training
collaboration map design and iteration
formal and informal negotiations
dispute resolution, where relevant
reviews and check-ins throughout

Q: How long does it take?

A: This depends on the context, but is typically at least a few days for a short sprint (which may spread out over a few weeks) and any time longer for bigger projects and ongoing part time engagements.

In every case I specifically focus on timescales when defining the initial scope of work with each client. I build in a pilot or scoping period with review milestones to ensure you can balance cost, risk, and improvement based on my time and delivery.