Effective communication is vital to success in modern business. Without it organisations fail and individuals go astray and become inadvertent saboteurs.

Effective communication involves moral courage, honesty and  the ability to give and receive feedback. Meetings that do not involve challenge and two way discussion are ineffective. The information passed may as well have been placed on a noticeboard. And yet all too often leaders waste such opportunities to benefit their organisations and develop their teams as effective communication is often misconstrued as challenging  a leader’s authority rather than supporting it.

Leaders have to accept that their ideas and concepts will be challenged if they are to develop and improve those ideas and achieve greater outcomes. If a challenge can be rebuffed by the leader then the concept is strong. If a challenge causes the leader to refine the concept rather than doggedly pursue a failing concept then the concept is improved and the leader better respected for their judgement. So why avoid effective communication? It is only when such challenges become personal that the effect becomes negative in its orientation. If it is depersonalised then either way a challenge is positive.

Followership also requires  followers to be prepared to challenge a leaders plans and concepts for the betterment of an outcome. To sit and watch a leader fail or not deliver an outcome in the most effective way is tantamount to negligence and yet how many times have we seen it happen and indeed been involved in it ourselves? Followers just like leaders need to be honest and require the moral courage to challenge their leader’s ideas and plans in order to improve them if they want their organisation to achieve greater things.

Effective communication is a two way street and a street that will only work if it is based in trust. All too often opportunities are missed because of a lack of trust and openness.  As humans are naturally competitive and some are more ambitious than others they use information as a source of power and control to the detriment of operational effectiveness. It is is the strong man that knows and exposes his weaknesses and it is the even stronger team that truly works together to ensure their individual vulnerabilities are not exposed. Mutual support ensures that the team is stronger in its completeness than the sum of all the strengths of the individuals who form it. Such a team has to derive its strength, honesty and openness from truly effective communication.

Small to medium size enterprises are beginning to collaborate more and more. Such collaborative enterprises are beginning to challenge some of the bigger commercial organisations as co-operative ventures NISA, Mole Valley Farmers, The Co-Op are all examples of successful mutual collaboration. Now with customers becoming more and more environmentally sensitive and more concerned with the local impact of the big five supermarkets there is a growing opportunity for local collaborative work to truly challenge organisations with a large environmental footprint.

So if SME’s wish to collaborate what are the key tenets of effective collaboration. After all  collaboration is simply working in a leaderless team!

Vision as ever is vital and it must be common. A shared and well communicated vision will hold a collaboration together and empower those within it to achieve.

Trust Collaborators must trust each other. If they don’t collaboration wont work. Trust is two way and trust is important when there is no leader to arbitrate.  Trust allows the collaboration to be honest and forthright in its  internal challenges without fear of dissolution. Trust  also breeds respect and respect ensures that listening to and comprehending each other’s point of view is  part of everyday life.

Communication is the essential life blood of collaboration and it has to be effective without  a leader to interpret messages. Communication in the early stages makes for stronger collaboration. That early communication is important in establishing members expectations and boundaries. For collaboration will crash without all those involved understanding each others expectations and boundaries. The most important part of communication is honesty in terms of being honest in what you will do and not what you may do! It is also vital to communicate any change in your intentions- for to announce that you haven’t done something on the day you promised to deliver it it breaks trust!

Clear Responsibility and Ownership boundaries are enhanced by clear delineation of responsibilities, they make for effective work and control and ensure accountability within an organisation. Ownership of issues and tasks has to be clearly understood by all those involved. And all those involved have to be prepared to accept responsibility and accountability.

Results Without outcomes which match or exceed expectations no collaboration can survive for long as members look to others to satisfy their ambitions.  A collaboration and the individuals must focus on results.

Well its easy really when you know how. Then why is it so difficult for SME’s to achieve successful long term collaborations? Follow these simple principles and suddenly many doors and avenues of opportunity are opened.