How to Increase, Recognize and Reward Complex Collaboration

Complexity is inseparable from leadership. As a leader, you understand — and probably even hope —not everyone on your team will always think the same way as you do. That understanding is at the core of success in complex collaboration.

Not everyone in your organization has the perspective or experience that comes with a lifelong leadership practice. That means it could take some work to communicate the value of complexity.

Acknowledging the Power of Culture

The first step towards any type of complexity is properly defining your organization's culture. Culture affects every aspect of a company and it is especially influential over the types of social groups that seem natural or normal.

You are probably all too familiar with non-diverse, clique-type groups. These are products of culture, specifically when an organization values — or demonstrates a value of — predictable outcomes over innovation.

On the other hand, complex collaborative teams are diverse in terms of interests, experience and thought patterns. They often yield unexpected results. They will form when your organization demonstrably and consistently values new ideas over maintaining the status quo.

Increasing Complexity: Creating a Collaborative Environment

To start, you will probably want to focus on the prerequisite for complex collaboration: diversity. Different ideas require different backgrounds.

You can encourage this sharing of ideas by forming a culture that clearly states an imperative out-of-the-box thinking. Once you establish that necessity, everyone should own the need for diversity in their teams and build complex groups — without direct intervention from you.

Recognizing Complexity: Encouraging Diversity

Promoting true diversity — a diversity of ideas — takes more work than simply putting people with different backgrounds together in a meeting. You have to create a culture that encourages people to express what makes them unique.

Encouraging diverse viewpoints starts with celebrating the characteristics, thought patterns and knowledge that make people different. Active listening will be one of your most important skills here: Always listen for new ideas. When you notice them, encourage the people who have them to speak up.

Rewarding Complexity: Reinforcing Cultural Values

Successful collaboration is a reward in and of itself. You can underline that feeling of accomplishment by aligning your reward structure with the culture of your organization.

In order for complex teams to generate positive results, you will have probably communicated certain cultural values, such as the importance of diverse contributions. In that situation, you would want to assign rewards that correspond proportionately with each individual's contribution to the group's success.

The simplest example is probably bonuses. When your team succeeds, make sure you determine bonus pay on an individual basis. This type of reward structure might be more complex than you're used to — but then again, so is the team itself.

Committing to the Change

This type of shift in values doesn't happen overnight. It also doesn't happen by itself. You need to put in the work, guiding your team towards success in this uncertain territory. The payoff: A potentially groundbreaking new idea whenever you need it.