Collaboration is truly not for the faint of heart. When we collaborate—even within our own firm—we temporarily hand over the care of our Client to someone else. We may hold our colleagues in the highest regard, and yet when it comes right down to it, we may not be aware of how little we trust them until it is time to collaborate.
Sometimes dividing up the labor is relatively easy—“You do the lawyer stuff, and I will take care of the financial strategy.” If I know my attorney colleague is an excellent attorney, I may be happy to collaborate with her. But if we are all working on various aspects of a complex case, we run the risk that critical pieces may fall through the cracks. We need to build trust, and we need systems.
It is when we attempt to collaborate with a colleague for the first time that we become aware that effective professionals can have remarkably different work styles. If I am a person who checks on a Client project every three days no matter whether what, I am going to be uncomfortable working with a person who waits until there is something new to report to communicate with the Client. Both professionals may be effective in their own practices, but if we are going to work together collaboratively, we need to have some kind of agreement about communicating with the Client. At least, if we want to derive the real benefit of collaboration we do.
When we walk into a Client meeting on our own, we know what we want to accomplish and how to get there. When two (or more) of us walk into a Client meeting, we need to be on the same page before we get there unless we want to confuse the Client and undermine the value that we are trying to bring.
Collaborating requires an initial leap of faith in our colleagues, but to really harvest the benefit of collaboration we need to conscientiously build trust. There need to be rules about who does what. There need to be meetings to plan for meetings. We have to hash out expectations that we may not be aware we had until they clash, preferably not in front of the Client. It can be a lot of work at first. Now that I think about it, maybe that’s why we spent so much time on group projects in the old days in b-school.
It’s easy to lose heart in the first efforts to collaborate. Those of us who have learned to be effective solo practitioners may legitimately wonder if all this cooperation and collaboration is worth the work it requires. I am fortunate to have worked many years in a company that had well-established systems for collaboration in place, and I can report that the results for the Client are unsurpassed when you can bring the right professionals to the table and orchestrate the perfect solution. And isn’t that what this is all about? Bringing the very best solutions to our Clients. That goal is probably worth a little discomfort as we learn new ways and build trust.
The good news is that successful collaboration builds greater success. It does get easier as we learn how to apply each team member’s strengths to the problem at hand.
Karen Lynch
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