Why I Love to Collaborate

I have a lot in common with Millennials.

Although I myself am not a Millennial.

One of the things about me is that I love to collaborate. 

I had a great experience collaborating on the United Way Committee at Combined insurance. 

I was the Chair of the United Way Committee for six fundraising campaigns (2007 – 2012).

Shared Purpose.  Every year we sent out a message to employees asking for volunteers to join the United Way Committee.  Every year I worked with 6-8 employees who were very committed to the cause of raising money for the United Way!  The composition of the Committee changed from year to year, but there were four employees from Underwriting who volunteered on the Committee for all six campaigns that I chaired!   Clearly I must have been doing something right.

Openness.  I viewed every member of the Committee as an important member of the team.  I was the liaison between the Committee and management, and the Committee with the United Way.  I shared information with the Committee in terms of what transpired in my communications with management and the United Way.  I believed that it was important to provide context.

No one person stood above the rest.   I viewed the Committee as a collective and so if the Committee received praise, then the praise was for the Committee as a whole and not for one individual like myself.   I was also of the mindset that I wouldn’t ask anyone to do anything that I wouldn’t also do myself.  Take shopping, for example.  There was a person on the Committee who was a Costco member.  She would volunteer to go shopping at Costco for us.  (FYI -- All of our cakes were bought from Costco.)  I would volunteer to make a trip to the dollar store, so that one person wouldn’t be “stuck” doing all the shopping.  

Discussion.  Everyone’s opinion was important and we took the time to listen to everyone’s opinion.  We ran our meetings on a consensus basis.  We got to play to our strengths.  One year, one of the members suggested that we organize a bazaar as a fundraiser.  We had never organized a bazaar before.  This member had some great ideas, and I asked her to lead this initiative while reassuring her that her Committee colleagues would support her all the way.   Our bazaar was a huge success!

I’ve always loved to collaborate and to help others.  Collaboration is a part of my makeup.  I have an image of collaboration (people planning around a round table) on my vision board.  I use the word “collaborative” to describe myself on my LinkedIn profile.   I wrote about collaboration in an earlier post called “How I Would Sustain a Collaborative Culture.”   (Upon re-reading my earlier post, there is a bit of overlap between the two posts, but not too much of an overlap.)  

I’ve read articles about Millennials and the changing workplace.  An example of one such article is Joel Goldstein’s “Why Millennials Prefer Collaboration Over Competition.”  This is an interesting article, and for me I prefer collaboration over competition in the workplace any day.  

Another interesting article is in Forbes by Louis Efron called “Why Millennials Don’t Want To Work For You.”  There are four headings in this article.  Two of the headings, in particular, resonate with me:  “Think Like a Trauma Ward” (about collaboration) and “Communicate How You [as an employer] Are Changing the World” (about how what the organization does creates meaning and purpose in the world, and how organizations should be communicating this meaning and purpose to their employees). 

I enjoy learning Millennial perspectives.  As an HR practitioner, Millennial perspectives help make a workplace stronger. 

As for me (a Baby Boomer), my perspectives on the workplace aren’t so different from a Millennial’s. 

We’re more alike than you think.

Originally Published on LinkedIn:  August 9, 2016

Image Credit:  Pixabay