Managing Someone Who’s Too Collaborative

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 21 August 2018

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Rebecca Shambaugh, a leadership coach, says being too collaborative can actually hold you back at work. Instead of showing how well you build consensus and work with others, it can look like indecision or failure to prioritize. She explains what to do if you over-collaborate, how to manage someone who does, and offers some advice for women — whose bosses are more likely to see them as overly consensus-driven. Shambaugh is the author of the books "It's Not a Glass Ceiling, It's a Sticky Floor" and "Make Room For Her."

Transcript

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0:00.0	When leadership advice feels like buzzwords and platitudes, it's time to get real.
0:05.9	HPR's podcast Coaching Real Leaders brings you behind closed doors as Muriel Wilkins coaches anonymous
0:11.9	leaders through raw honest career questions
0:14.6	that we all face.
0:15.9	Listen and follow coaching real leaders for free
0:18.3	wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the HBR Ideacast from Harvard Business Review.
0:37.0	I'm Sarah Green Carmichael. We all want to be liked at work. One of the ways we try to be likeable is by helping out.
0:51.0	By being collaborative, building consensus, and being a team player.
0:55.5	But sometimes being too collaborative is actually a problem.
0:59.2	We've all felt this, like when you're in a meeting and everyone's sharing your thoughts but no one's actually making a decision.
1:05.9	Or maybe it's someone you manage. You can't figure out why she keeps asking everyone what they think
1:11.3	when it's her job to come up with an answer.
1:15.0	Here to help us understand how to manage these tensions, both in ourselves and in the people
1:19.4	that we're mentoring and coaching is Leadership coach Rebecca Shamba.
1:23.0	Becky, thanks for joining us.
1:25.0	Sarah, thank you for inviting me.
1:26.8	It's great to be here.
1:28.6	What does a classic over-collaborator's life look like and feel like?
1:39.0	Well, I was probably on one of those spectrums, you know, and I think one of the things that as a manager, if I have a direct reporter, a team member who's over collaborative, they tend to not have a lot of self-confidence within themselves, so that's why they continue to reach out
1:55.7	and get other people's inputs.
1:57.2	They want to please everyone, right?
2:00.0	And it's impossible these days to please everyone. They may not be able to prioritize very much.
	...

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