Collaborate and Partner Up to Achieve Your Goals

Once upon a time there was a professional who didn’t have to do everything, know everything or have everything but this person lived happily ever after multiplying their contacts, resources, time, energy and income without increasing their workload. The really good news is, this is no tall tale and it could be your new reality. Just remember the magic word. It’s collaboration.

A collaboration could also be called a partnership or strategic alliance and participants are often referred to as colleagues, associates, partners, supporters, sidekicks and possibly an accomplice (meant only in the most upstanding of ways). But no matter what terminology you use, the concept remains the same. It is a group of two or more people who come together to cooperatively achieve a mutually desired objective. In the process, the benefits of an effective collaboration are much greater then the end result.

Collaboration allows you to

1. Learn from others: Each person brings and contributes their unique skills and knowledge. It is a great way to have diverse expertise within an environment that allows you to acquire new undeveloped abilities.
2. Model Success: You can benefit from the insights that come from “hind-sight” and proven performance while expanding your own experience base.
3. Increase opportunities: Pre-existing limitations are removed. When you collaborate with others, your opportunities increase as the “span of influence” broadens through your partnerships. By span of influence, I mean contacts, experience, resources and demonstrated results.
   

4. Share responsibilities: It doesn’t get much simpler then this. When you partner with other people, you don’t have to do everything yourself. Responsibilities can be divided based on strengthens so that tasks not only get done, but they are completed with greater proficiency.
5. Expand resources: Whether you need a resume writer or a copy writer; a color printer or a fax machine, Collaborators pool their resources to provide the wherewithal to support objectives.
6. Increase income – Sometimes you can increase your income simply by decreasing your costs, which would be a benefit of a collaborative effort where everyone contributes to overhead. But you can actually raise your perceived market value by your associations –the company you keep, the referrals you get, the testimonials offered and/or the introductions that are made on your behalf.
7. Create a brain-trust. A collaboration creates a mastermind group of sorts and illustrates the adage of how two people can each have one idea, but when shared their ideas double.
8. Fast-forward results. As the saying goes, “many hands make light work.” When you can divide duties, optimize experience and align responsibilities with expertise, the job gets done faster and better than doing it yourself.
9. Enjoy third-party endorsements. Effective collaborations mean you’ll only work with people you like and respect who bring value to a project. When relationships are built on these characteristics endorsements and promotions are genuine and free-flowing. In addition, once you understand the power of collaborations, you’ll be able to ask and get big-name endorsements for your work. (That’s how I got motivational speaker extraordinaire Les Brown to write the forward for my book)
10. Have more fun: Let’s face it working alone can be lonely and kind of a drag. Add a partner or two and gain greater pleasure, satisfaction and support that will make work feel more like “playing with purpose.”