Constructive Collaboration: Driving Performance in Teams, Organizations and Partnerships

• Mid-level to senior executives, Federal Government managers who coordinate activities among multiple constituencies, or who serve in key cross-functional roles
• Individuals seeking to enhance collaboration with business partners, clients and peers
• Team leaders and others who drive business development, manage joint ventures, oversee postmerger or acquisition integration, or manage channel partner performance

• Past Participant Profile

• Hone your collaboration skills
• Assess and value collaboration and then articulate and sell that value to clients, partners and stakeholders
• Construct a personal development plan for continuous improvement
• Identify and create value through analysis of stakeholders’ perspectives and interests
• Design collaborative structures to maximize constructive conflict and minimize destructive conflict

Designing Collaboration

• Learn how collaboration drives value in complex organizations
• Understand the challenges of instilling of collaboration as a key management competency
• Design distributed teamwork: distance teamwork, trust and communication
• Encourage creative conflict that fuels productivity, while minimizing conflict that interferes with it

Collaborative Decision-Making

• Understand the strategy, structure and behavior of collaboration
• Manage multifunctional, multi-incentive teams for high performance
• Understand challenges in collaboration: communication, clarity and stress
• Learn tools to resolve conflict and improve decision-making

Collaborating across Diverse Teams, Companies and Cultures

• Build coalitions for healthy organizations
• Create smart collaborative alliances
• Learn about networks as bridges and barriers to collaboration
• Develop a personal collaboration action plan

Leigh Thompson - Academic Director; J. Jay Gerber Professor of Dispute Resolution & Organizations Professor of Management & Organizations

Brayden King - Academic Director; Max McGraw Chair in Management and the Environment; Professor of Management & Organizations; Chair of Management & Organizations Department

Jeanne Brett - DeWitt W. Buchanan, Jr., Professor of Dispute Resolution and Organizations; Professor of Management & Organizations

Edward Zajac - James F. Bere Professor of Management & Organizations

“In addition to having outstanding faculty, the reading material, applied learning, and the diversity of the participants all contributed to a rich experience.”
Director, Office of Change Management, Northwestern University

“Excellent faculty and choice of exercises to gain experience collaborating between individuals, teams, departments and organizations. [I] was able to implement the learning immediately into my work.”
Assistant Director, Human resources, Chicago Cubs, Greater Chicago Area

“The tools I [took with me from Constructive Collaboration] have been among the most useful of all of my executive education [programs]. Unhealthy alliances that were draining profitability from my company have fallen apart. The workplace culture has improved; new collaborations have been established that are culminating with the addition of a [multi] million dollar managed services agreement [that] represents an amount of growth that was simply not possible while I was struggling to deal with the coalition of professional adversaries I had encountered. Thank you for the tools the [program] provided, which allowed me to more effectively understand what I was dealing with and how to form good collaborations of my own to counter it.”
CEO, Cornerstone Project