Build Collaboration Readiness

An Educator’s Purpose in 2026 

Jan 23

In 2026, I am thinking, writing, crafting, and consulting with a purpose in mind: that of the educator. To me, the educator spans the wide range of work that I do, both formally and informally, in and outside of postsecondary institutions, workplaces, conferences, professional development sessions, and on/through social media.

Over the last ten days, in two different virtual conversations with people that I have never met before, the topic of the challenge of collaboration in the workplace came up. Coincidence?

In one call, we discussed a new Relational Skills App that was available to support learners develop skills such as communication, problem solving, adaptability, strategic thinking, creativity and innovation, social intelligence or perception and situational awareness. I asked, based on their experience, which skills were emerging as weakest among workplace learners. The caller offered three: communication, social intelligence and collaboration.

In another call, I listened to a government director discuss the challenge of building trust and foster collaboration among public servants.

Why is collaboration such a challenging skill?

Well first, what is collaboration? We assume it means working together, but it is more than that. Jim Tamm, author of Radical Collaboration and an evocative TedTalk that I often use in my work, discussed how people need to move from defensiveness and feelings of emotional vulnerability or the Red Zone to the Green Zone of potential collaboration.

Another tool that I use, the Collaboration Spectrum Tool, suggests a progression of learning how to work together, moving from competition and coexistence to cooperation, which might be temporary and fleeting. Collaboration, on the other hand, requires a shared sense of priorities and purpose and a willingness to strive toward a common goal.

While there are psychological reasons of why people are defensive, they are also salient organizational cultural ones. Here are three:

1. Workplace organizations, with their silos, units, divisions, matrices and layers of hierarchy, are not designed to facilitate the critical dialogue and engagement that collaboration requires.

2. Moreover, as I have learned from writing about Gen Z and burnout, many people are feeling cynical and disengaged, both symptoms of burnout, in part of the result of indifferent at best, toxic at worst, workplaces.

3. We assume people have learning social skills to build trust and to communicate with others. Yet we know that some of the impacts of COVID-19, of which Gen Z was arguably hit hardest, was the loss of in-person learning opportunities for young people to navigate interpersonal dynamics and verbal and non-verbal cues to strengthen their ability to communicate and work with others.

Moreover, with the impact of remote work, in-person learning opportunities such as mentoring disappeared, robbing especially younger workers the possibilities of the experiential learning of communication, trust building, and what I might call “collaboration readiness.”

So, if you are a manager or leader, educator or trainer, consider how you develop trust, help people confront vulnerability and defensiveness, and forge a workplace culture that factors in webs of communication and collaboration to allow people to build and develop their “collaboration readiness.”