Hi there. This lesson covers the final signature trade of inclusive leadership, collaboration. How do you define collaboration? I think of collaboration as ways that two or more individuals work together to achieve a goal. Inclusive leaders enhance collaboration by empowering and enabling group members to achieve organizational goals. Their approach shifts from top-down leadership to deliberately creating a collaborative culture. To quote management consultant Richard Sterling, "Effective collaboration requires a teamwork mindset that permeates throughout the culture of a business." Before I explain how inclusive leaders cultivate collaboration, let's look at an organization that worked at becoming more collaborative. In 2011, the Cleveland Clinic, one of the largest non-profit health centers in the United States, adopted a new collaborative health care model. A key component of their model was to recognize that all employees, not just physicians, are caregivers. They change from the traditional doctor centric relationship with patients to a caregiver centric one. The clinic had recently revised this traditional hospital structure, they changed from individual departments to multidisciplinary teams. That change was somewhat successful. However, the CEO, Delos Cosgrove, notice that patient dissatisfaction was a significant issue. Since providing patient care is the primary purpose of the clinic, it was important to cultivate a culture where employees helped patients feel satisfied with their experience. Dr. Cosgrove imagined a unified culture where everyone work together for the patient's best interests. His vision included eliminating the divide between doctors and other staff. He believed that all employees were caregivers. To explore this perspective, he and his executive team conducted extensive analysis of clinic processes. This included requiring all 43,000 employees to participate in a full day exercise. In this exercise, randomly assigned groups of 8-10 employees from all roles met with a trained facilitator. They shared stories about what they did and what they might do to put patients first for the goal of achieving world-class care. Although some of the staff resisted the activity, Cosgrove insisted that everyone participate. The clinic launched the exercise late in 2010, it took almost a year for everyone to complete it. This exercise had a profound impact. Feedback indicated that staff from all roles felt it was useful. The executive leadership team analyzed data from the exercise and other sources. A major source was the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services or CMS, patient satisfaction survey. Based on lessons learned, the leadership team developed patient-centered initiatives. They offer training to help team members communicate more effectively when they discussed patients. They mandated hourly rounds, previously a voluntary option where nursing staff use a normal process to check in on patients. They base this decision on data that showed higher patient satisfaction on floors that required rounds. They required all 2,300 managers to attend a full day training on topics related to effective teams. Those sessions continued to be offered every 3-4 months. Due to the changes they made, the clinics overall ranking in the CMS survey increased from about average to the top eight percent of approximately 4,600 hospitals in survey. Hospital executives from around the world visit the Cleveland clinic to study the practices it implemented, that brought about the significant change in patient satisfaction. Highly inclusive leaders foster collaboration among diverse individuals by empowering them to contribute their unique perspectives. They do not try to control the flow and content of ideas. Instead, they encourage employees independent thinking. They understand that collaborating across differences can be challenging. They know that power dynamics, variant communication styles, and a lack of trust can affect engagement. Therefore, inclusive leaders create environments to ensure that everyone feels welcomed and valued. As the Cleveland Clinic example illustrates, inclusive leaders provide professional development to educate employees to be effective collaborators across differences. The researchers who identified signature trace of inclusive leadership cited three elements of collaboration. These are empowerment, teaming, and voice. Empowerment and encompasses ways that inclusive leaders enable team or group members to excel. It includes creating an environment where everyone feels authorized to express their opinions freely. Inclusive leaders authorize members to make decisions about issues that impact their work. In addition, they give employees the freedom to manage difficult situations. Two, teaming. Inclusive leaders understand that diversity of thought and background is essential to effective collaboration. Therefore, they try to assemble diverse teams or groups. They help individual members respect and value differing ways of thinking, communicating, and making decisions. In addition, inclusive leaders anticipate and take appropriate action to address team conflict. Voice refers to creating a safe environment where everyone feels that what they have to say is valued and respected. As in where everyone is comfortable with speaking up. Inclusive leaders honor voice by explicitly including all team members in discussions. They regularly solicit and value a diversity of opinions and ideas. I will share techniques for how to cultivate empowerment, teaming, and voice in future lessons. In conclusion, leaders who are collaborative can help their organizations to reap the benefits of inclusion that we have studied. These include, higher employee engagement, higher retention, greater diversity, and more innovation. As journalists, Alexandra Samur, observed, through collaborative leadership, managers and executives can create an inclusive environment that energizes teams, releases creativity, and cultivates a work culture that is both productive and joyful. That was the last of the six signature traits of inclusive leadership. In the next module, we will explore inclusive leadership and communication. See you then.