Competency Development: Collaboration

Perhaps the most important competency HR professionals can develop is the ability to show leadership in collaboration. Collaboration is often defined as a problem solving competency, another way to look at it is for goal accomplishment.

Rather than viewing collaboration as a means to only solve problems, consider it as a way to develop a business case for a program that you see as innovative and important to the future success of the business. Working collaboratively means access to greater resources, recognition and reward when facing competition for finite resources.

For the HR professional, this means engaging subject matter experts across the organization to develop the best practice approach to accomplishing a goal. Perhaps your goal is to launch Social Media/Web 2.0 applications in the organization. In order to develop a comprehensive business case for the project you need to access expertise in IT, Marketing, Communications, and Learning and Development.

Engaging others to share their expertise requires that while you are taking a leadership role in developing a collaborative effort, you must ensure that all participants are committed to the success of the project. This requires that you use well developed leadership skills, especially in the competency areas of Emotional Intelligence.

When you are researching information related to the project through the internet Google searches are a very useful tool. A key resource via internet research however is the use of Social Media groups where you can access a vast scope of expertise; join groups that are not specific to HR as you will develop comprehensive and useful information resources by inviting knowledge that is diverse.

To start the discussion of what you ‘see’ as the goal(s) for the project, summarize the information you gather through online research. Ask the participants that you have engaged in your project for their thoughts on that information in relation to integration in your organization and what else needs to be considered.