#collaborations software

It's been awhile folks! 2012 has turned out to be a crazy busy year but one full of opportunities and most importantly, growth. Last Friday, I attended my 2nd annual Chic-Fil-A Leadercast event hosted by the very nice folks at the Laurel, Delaware Wesleyan Church. Once again, thought leaders from around the world gather to share their experiences, their insights, and strategies to become a better leader and decision maker.

A standout segment of yesterdays simulcast was around collaborative leadership and organizational dynamics. What is collaborative leadership? It's self-explanatory isn't it? Leadership defined by the dynamics and contributions of his or her team. Meaning, lets solve our problems with the best each of us has to offer within our skill-set and talent where we discuss, collaboratively, the best possible outcome. Great leaders surround themselves with great team members. Those team members create, collectively, the best possible solutions and innovations that allows those leaders to make the best and most informed decisions, again, for the best possible outcome.

What I took away from that segment was how collaborative leadership wasn't about the technology, platform, or application of principles but how it started with people, first, whether in a conference room, coffee shop, or a commute to the office or a client. The way teams interact then stream those solutions collaboratively and leverage what is available to them via collaborative or social technologies. These platforms of communications enable actions at a much greater pace never before seen in almost real-time, especially when we are all geographically dispersed.  Instant messaging or chat, twitter, facebook, linkedin, IBM Connections, Jive, SocialText... all platforms driven by a simple concept that starts with people first, technology second. 

It's compelling to think that the old ways of communicating found in the concepts of collaborative leadership ring true today. Take into consideration the *way* we collaborate can be at a much greater speed given the technologies that are available today whether that is via a technology *cloud* or as something as basic and assumed as email.