I have been involved in many projects implementing technology solutions at my organization. These projects often had major deadlines that required a collaborative team effort to implement the solution. Sometimes teams worked well and other times they didn’t. I agree with the authors that the “heart of collaboration is trust�. (224) At times we had leaders that few people trusted, that didn’t instill trust in others. Poor leadership created poor relationships that also created more failures than successes. But most times I’ve been involved in teams that shared common goals, did anything possible to help each other out, and consistently worked hard to improve on past experiences.

Even so, I admit I am not always trusting of people and indeed few people gain my highest value, that I trust them fully with every aspect of my life. I guess I don’t go that far with people I work with but I do value each member. I do try to instill my trust in them to meet goals, to provide a nurturing environment. I do follow Kouzes & Posner’s examples to disclose some personal information, I admit my mistakes, I acknowledge my need for personal improvement, I listen attentively to their needs, etc. (244) I leave an open door policy and my team knows that they can come to me with any situation and trust that I will do whatever I can to help them and I also perceive failures as learning experiences. I don’t expect everyone to be perfect! …But I do need to I make some improvements.

While I encourage my team to provide input into our work, or input on how I am doing, I don’t actually outright ask people how effective I was explaining something or how I did listening versus directing or how trusting they feel I am with them. I haven’t gone so far to discuss “trust� being a dependent part of each other as a team need even though I think they understand this. I should be highlighting people’s strengths more, tell everyone how much that person is needed on our team and I should encourage more learning opportunities for cross collaborative work so that my team can interact with other teams.

In closing, the authors encourage we build trust, emphasize “we� in teams and get people interacting with each other and providing valuable feedback to both one another as well as their leaders. They in turn tell us to not only foster these relationships but also to act upon people’s suggestions. I think I do this fairly well in my work, but I will re-assess what “I� think and see if my team thinks the same.

This chapter ties well into our new Action Research project. Our team has been active since day one: emailing, gathering information and working on a collaborative vision. Everyone appears very open to each other’s ideas and I sense we do trust each other to get this project done with desired results. We are dependent upon each other to make this project more successful than we could by doing it alone. As Kouzes and Posner author that exemplary leaders can’t get extraordinary things done alone -- it takes collaboration to be a success. (242) Are you sharing a positive experience with your action research team? Or do you have experiences from failed projects? Either way, I'd be interested in learning from your experiences.

-Alex

1 Kouzes, James M. and Posner, Barry Z. The Leadership Challenge: How to Get Extraordinary Things Done in Organizations. 4th ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007.x`