Values › Community › Collaboration
Core value · Community family
Collaboration
Creating better results by working with others
Also covers Cooperation and Partnership
What does collaboration mean as a core value?
Collaboration as a core value means working with others towards a shared goal, building on each other’s ideas so the result is better than anyone could reach alone.
You believe the best answer is rarely sitting in one head. If collaboration is one of your core values, working alone on something that matters feels like a missed opportunity, and you get a particular kind of satisfaction when an idea improves because someone pushed back on it. Credit matters less to you than the result. You like partnerships where each person brings something different, and you’re quick to notice when a project would go better with one more perspective in the room.
What does collaboration look like in practice?
- You share a rough draft early, before you’ve had a chance to polish it.
- You ask the quietest person in the meeting what they think before a decision is made.
- You build on someone else’s idea out loud, even when you came in with a different one.
- You describe wins as “we” and mean it.
- You split household jobs by who’s best placed to do them, whoever usually does them.
When is collaboration overplayed?
Too much collaboration slows everything down. Decisions that one person could make in ten minutes go to a workshop, accountability blurs because everyone touched the work, and you may avoid owning a call in case it looks like you’re not a team player. Some people also find constant co-creation exhausting. The mature form knows when to bring people in and when to simply decide. A useful habit is to name who owns the final call at the start of any shared piece of work.
Often confused with
Collaboration vs Community
Community is about being part of a group over time. Collaboration is about working with people towards a result, and it can happen with strangers on a single project.
Collaboration vs Communication
Communication is exchanging ideas clearly. Collaboration uses that exchange to build something together that none of you would have made alone.
Collaboration vs Support
Support is helping someone with their goal. Collaboration is a shared goal where everyone’s input shapes the outcome.
Questions to sit with
- Which decision have you recently taken to a group that you could simply have made yourself?
- When did someone else’s challenge last make your idea better, and how did you respond in the moment?
- Who do you instinctively leave out of collaborations, and what does that cost the work?
More values in Community
Being part of something bigger than yourself.
About the author
Matt Rutherford is a Career and Leadership Coach. The Values Finder is the same exercise he uses with his coaching clients. He also writes Stuff that MattRs, a weekly newsletter with practical ideas to help you think clearer and work better.
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