This document discusses different levels of collaboration: functional, positional, and mutual. Functional collaboration is transactional without emotional investment. Positional relationships involve competing agendas and a focus on being right rather than problem solving. Mutual collaboration involves transparency, shared power, and risk-taking that allows conflicts to fuel creativity. Crossing from positional to mutual relationships requires vulnerability, which is difficult but can unlock high performance. Behaviors that foster mutual relationships include deep listening, sharing needs and values, expressing feelings without judgment, and embracing conflict creatively.

1. High Performing Collaboration
Influential sources: Peter Block, Flawless Consulting. Judith Glaser, Conversational Intelligence. Marshall Rosenburg, Non-violent
Communication. Katzenbach & Smith, The wisdom of Teams. Renee Brown, Daring Greatly …. And years working with teams in action.
Conversations change results. Only the ‘right’ conversations create high performing relationships, which
deliver better shared results. This applies to all collaboration settings: A single relationship, across a team,
between neighbouring departments, partners in an alliance, or more broadly in an organisational culture.
• Functional – At this stage, the parties do business together, but
without significant engagement or emotional investment in
each other. It is primarily transactional - getting the job done,
by focusing on the task, exchanging information, following the
laid-out process. Collaboration is typically compliant or
accommodating, and the communication is appropriate. There
is not seen to be a need for intimacy or trust, and there is limited
emotion running. Power is applied, usually appropriately.
• Positional – Relationships tend to become positional naturally
when situations are pressurised and when needs are competing.
How the relationship evolves is determined by how power is
held and used. Strong agendas bias real listening and inhibit learning. Trust cannot grow, and the seeds of distrust
may be sown. The strong agendas (and egos) mean it is important to ‘be right’, which fosters judgment and blame.
Rather than see the person, there is a tendency to see the ‘label’ – job title, department, company. Whilst we may
rub along and get things done, we don’t feel ‘as one’ or ‘one team’. Crucially, when feeling vulnerable, the parties
revert to individual agendas ahead of the collective purpose. this does not feel ‘wrong’, because each protects
legitimate interests, but the results suffer. Positional relationships are not necessarily unproductive, business can still
get done, but there remains something missing, including trapped performance.
• Mutual – When conversation moves into a place where there is mutual commitment, mutual accountability and
mutual trust, new levels of performance are possible. It is not about greater friendship, although there is often
professional intimacy and care. There is certainly a new level of listening and disclosure, going beyond just opinions
and solutions. By transparent sharing of needs and feelings, new understanding is built, from which trust can grow.
High mutual trust also means that conflict is no longer feared and instead it can fuel creative outcomes. Once issues
are tackled with courage and vulnerability, power is now shared. There is risk-taking in the relationship, which
becomes more possible because we feel safe amid difficulty. When vulnerable, parties find new strength in the shared
purpose ahead of individual agendas - The ‘greater good’ now changes from protecting a position to pursuing a shared
outcome. Ultimately, trapped performance is released, and new results emerge.
Crossing the vulnerability barrier. It is common to get stuck in positional relationships. We often talk of
‘siloes’. When positional differences are confronted, collaboration can become adversarial. It may be heated
or go to a safer transactional place, resorting to the contract or ‘rules of the game’. Alternatively, when
confrontation feels too risky or counter-cultural, it is avoided. There is safety found in harmony, over
something more risky and potentially productive. These adversarial and harmonious behaviours are not high
performing, they are just different forms of positional relationship. Crossing the barrier into mutual is hard,
especially for the first time. Most of all, it requires being vulnerable, relinquishing the comfort of positional
power; in fact sharing power. Expressions of vulnerability take many forms: stating feelings openly, dropping
agendas, fronting up and apologising, appreciating the value of differences, naming difficult truths. Although
hard to make, the shift can be triggered in one conversation, even one moment. The prize is high, and so is
the risk. Although there is no guarantee of success, being courageous (instead of seeking comfort), builds
respect, from which trust can grow. It’s an exciting place to be too. When it comes off, it is thrilling (really!)
and highly productive. The courageous choice, however, is often not taken, because we fear it will end us up
in a worse or unsafe place. And this is where cultures get stuck.

2. people deliver projects
engagement – enjoyment - learning
• Dysfunctional – If positional relationships get stuck, out of hand, or the relationships are left to fester, there is a risk
of decay into dysfunction, with real performance loss. Dysfunction is a dark place, which we have all seen and felt at
some point: A broken relationship between two colleagues, a team that has lost all trust, a heavily siloed organisation,
two communities in discord. Dysfunction can develop from a worsening adversarial picture, or it can be a harmonious
relationship which falls into a malaise on non-action, because it feels less risky than confronting the status quo.
Conversations which bring about mutual relationships.
Too many books would have it that there are 6 or 8 ‘steps to success’ – if only. Here
are a set of behavioural principles – choices you can make, or leave; always it’s your
judgment, made in the context of your relationships:
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• Deeper more honest listening, that walks in the other’s shoes.
• Moving beyond opinions to discover, and share the needs and values underpinning them.
• Talking wider than just the task, about how we will engage each other, and our relationship.
• Expressing honestly and accurately what we are noticing/experiencing in the conversation.
• Expressing our emotions (feelings), while suspending the judgements we have hooked them to.
• Giving generously without need for reciprocation, or implied quid pro quo.
• Holding each other to account against explicit expectations we have set for each other.
• Taking personal accountability when we are wrong and forgiving others when we feel wronged.
• Embracing conflict in a spirit of trust and safety, seeking creative outcomes to satisfy both.