Radical Collaboration : Five Essential Skills to Overcome Defensiveness and Build Successful Relationships

CHAPTER 10

STRATEGIES FOR COLLABORATIVE SUCCESS

Everyone Claims to be collaborative and lists collaboration high in most organizational values. In practice, however, behaviors are often dominated by hidden or unconscious, adversarial attitudes. These adversarial attitudes and behaviors typically show up when the relationship is under stress. People often don’t even realize they are acting adversarially because their attitudes are so automatic and unconscious. That’s why it is so important to increase self-awareness about attitudes, fears, and defensiveness. Neil Bodine, one of the premier labor lawyers in the country, describes the approach as analogous to certain martial arts, in both philosophy and goals: “Like a martial art, it requires external ...