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Christopher Svensson
A little book on collaboration
3 Umeå, 2021
A Little Book on Collaboration
ISBN 978-91-8020-791-1
© 2021 Christopher Svensson
Translated by Darren Packman/The Craft Consultant
Graphic Design: Daniel Åberg/Åbergs stilus et forma
Cover: Daniel Åberg//Åbergs stilus et forma
Cover picture: ShutterStock/MJgraphics
Copyright Notice:
This work is protected by copyright law. Infringement of the author’s rights under the Copyright Act may result in penalties (fines or imprisonment), damages and seizure/destruction of illegally produced material.
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5 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ......................................... 9 SHARED INTENTIONS ................................ 13 Individual and shared intentions .............................. 15 So what is collaboration? .......................................... 18 Shared intentions and effective collaboration ......... 23 References .................................................................. 26 INTERDEPENDENCE ................................. 29 Collaboration and teamwork .................................... 31 Interdependence ......................................................... 34 How group tasks affect interdependence ................. 35 How planning and evaluation affects interdependence ........................................................ 40 Interdependence and effective collaboration ......... 42 References ................................................................. 44 EMERGING STATES .................................. 47 Cohesion ..................................................................... 48 Emerging states ......................................................... 50
6 Emerging states and effective collaboration ........... 55 References .................................................................. 58 GENERAL BEHAVIOURAL PATTERNS ........ 61 Behavioural processes ................................................ 63 Transitional processes ............................................... 64 Action processes ......................................................... 71 Interpersonal processes ............................................. 74 General behavioural patterns and effective collaboration .............................................................. 77 References ................................................................... 80 INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTIONS ................... 83 Individual characteristics and abilities ..................... 85 Abilities or skills? ...................................................... 89 Individual contributions and effective cooperation 96 References .................................................................. 99 DEVELOPMENTAL ACTIVITIES ................ 101 Group activities ....................................................... 102 What should we develop? ....................................... 103 Practice activities ..................................................... 105 Discussion activities ................................................ 108 Developmental activities and effective collaboration ............................................................ 111 References ................................................................. 114
AND FINALLY .......................................... 117 ABOUT ‘A LITTLE BOOK’ .......................... 121
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INTRODUCTION
If today’s job advertisements are anything to go by, the ability to work together is a highly sought-after skill. Employers from all conceivable professions seem to constantly be on the lookout for collaborative team players who can fit right into different employee groups, teams and other constellations. It doesn’t seem to matter if you are a car mechanic, programmer, teacher or a truck driver. The ability to collaborate with others is evidently considered an asset in virtually all professions.
It is perhaps not so surprising that the ability to work together is so highly valued. Many workplaces are so large that it is necessary to organise employees into smaller departments and groups where they work together. On top of that, some tasks and assignments are so extensive and complex that they require input from more than one person. By collaborating with others, we are able to handle challenges and projects
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that none of us would be able to deal with on our own. This does, however, presuppose that we can and want to collaborate with others.
This book is specifically about the collaborations that take place at work, but that doesn’t mean it’s only at work we humans collaborate with one another. We participate in group work at school, practice team sports in our free time, play computer games over the internet and engage in many activities that require us to interact and communicate with others in order to achieve things together. In essence we humans seem to be rather inclined to collaborate with each other in most things we do.
Not all collaborations, however, are as successful as hoped. It is not uncommon for collective efforts to be perceived as inefficient, demanding or even energydraining. How well a collaboration works, and how it is experienced by the people who participate in it, can be affected by many different factors. The reality is a lot of things need to fall into place if a collaboration is to work effectively. Fortunately for us, collaboration is a relatively well-studied phenomenon, and there is a lot of knowledge about what makes collaborations work well (and conversely why they also fail). The idea behind this book is to summarise some of this
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knowledge, and relate it to our working lives in a way that can hopefully be useful to you.
Just like other books in the ‘Little Book’ series, this format does not allow for a comprehensive compilation of all the studies on this subject conducted over the years. My aim, however, has been to base each chapter on an essential part of the research devoted to each chapter’s theme. At the end of each chapter you’ll find a list of references to the scientific sources on which the chapter’s content is based. This will hopefully be useful for those of you who might want to study the subject in greater depth. With all this said, my ambition is that this book achieves a balance between being easily absorbable yet still a relatively illuminating introduction to the subject of collaboration.
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CHAPTER 1 SHARED INTENTIONS
If it had not been for our ability to collaborate, humans would probably have been consigned to history’s rubbish heap a long time ago. It is hard to imagine that we would have survived very long if everyone had defended themselves against every danger and threat life could throw at them on their own. It is even more difficult to imagine that we would have successfully built cities, developed advanced technologies and sent people to the moon if we hadn’t had the opportunity to collaborate with one another.
We are far from alone in tackling the challenges of evolution by helping each other and working together. Every ant hill, school of fish and pack of wolves
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reminds us that there are other species that also organise themselves into smaller groups in order to complete tasks that would be overwhelming for any one individual. Nevertheless, it can be a little difficult to draw clear parallels between human collaborations and those in the animal kingdom. According to prominent researchers such as Michael Tomasello, our ability to collaborate differs from all other species in significantly fundamental ways. The very concept of collaboration can therefore, with some justification, be exclusively reserved for humans. Somewhere on our evolutionary journey we humans absorbed a number of psychological and social abilities that give us completely unique conditions for collaboration. Thanks to these we can communicate with and understand each other in ways that not even primates on the immediate branches of our family tree are anywhere near capable of. Our way of thinking, assigning words to things and ability to consider other peoples’ perspectives enables us to share unique perceptions of things, such as the activities we undertake together. Players in a football team, for example, share the same views on how a football match should be played, what their common goal is, how to reach this goal and everything else the game entails. In addi-
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tion, every player is aware that all the other players share the same opinion.
It is precisely our ability to share perceptions or mental representations, according to Tomasello, that makes our collaborations unique. Unlike other species we can synchronise our individual ways of thinking and agree on common purposes and goals for what we want to achieve, and can agree to work together to fulfil our purpose and achieve our goals. It is often said that we have the ability to share intentions with each other – a kind of shared intentionality.
Individual and shared intentions
Shared intentionality is one of the cornerstones of any collaboration. Without it any form of team building would collapse. Our ability of shared intentionality allows us to create a kind of ‘we-feeling’ –a shared experience of actually working together. It means we can feel confident that we’ll purposefully work together in a collective activity with the ambition to achieve something together, rather than just be two or more people who happen to engage in the same activity, but have individual purposes and goals.
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