Do You Collaborate or Do You Collaborate?

This article is adapted from Ted's Smart Thinking podcast episode 383: True Collaboration.

Summer is here, and for most teams that means one thing: it is time to build. New projects, new committees, new initiatives, new school years. And in almost every organization, people will throw a bunch of capable adults into a room together, point them at a problem, and call it collaboration.

Here is the issue. Only 46 percent of U.S. workers say they clearly understand what their employers expect of them at work. That is a drop of 10 percentage points since 2020. And on a global scale, only one in two employees strongly agrees that they have clear expectations in their role. Per Gallup’s research, moving that number from 50 percent clarity to just 80 percent yields a 22 percent reduction in employee turnover, a 29 percent reduction in workplace safety incidents, and a 10 percent increase in overall productivity. We are leaving all of that on the table because we assume the people in the room already know what they are supposed to be doing.

They don’t. And neither, often, does the person who called the meeting.

A story about professional learning communities and pretend ones

Years ago I had the chance to be part of the early development of Professional Learning Community training alongside Rick DuFour, the educator from Lincolnshire, Illinois who popularized the PLC model. At its core, a PLC is a method where educators meet regularly to collaborate, share expertise, and analyze student data together. Rather than working in isolation, teachers in a PLC operate with a shared mindset: everyone in the building is collectively responsible for student success.

The three foundational pillars are a focus on learning, a culture of collaboration, and a focus on results. Simple, right? Four driving questions anchor the work: What do we want all students to learn? How will we know if they learned it? What do we do if they haven’t? What do we do if they already know it? And if you are not in education, those four questions translate to every organization and every team on the planet.

I was lucky enough to implement PLC practices in my school early on, and we saw real results: improvements in student behavior, reductions in special education referrals, gains in attendance and learning. I drove down to Rick’s school and showed him what we had done. He invited me to present at the PLC Institute in Lincolnshire. For the next five years, I was on that stage.

In my third year, Rick pulled me aside after my session. I thought I was in trouble for karaoke-ing the night before. I was not. He told me he was proud of the traction they were getting across the country, but he was also worried. Then he said something I wrote down the second he left the room and have repeated ever since.

“There appear to be two types of PLCs emerging, Ted. Professional learning communities and pretend learning communities.”

He was right. I had been in those rooms. And the reason so many of them were pretend came down to the same thing it always comes down to: people did not understand what was expected of them or why.

Not all teams are the same, and that matters

One of the first things we get wrong is treating every team like it is the same kind of team. There are actually three distinct types, and mixing them up is one of the fastest ways to create frustration and disengagement.

A committee is long-standing. It has a recurring reason to exist, whether that is weekly, monthly, or annual. Think of a student leadership team that meets every week to review needs and identify interventions. Committees have ongoing work and ongoing membership.

A task force is one job and then done. It has a very specific outcome to reach and a defined number of meetings to get there. Put together a task force to build next year’s school calendar. They meet five times, they deliver the calendar, and they disband. That is the expectation from day one.

A tiger team is fast-moving and immediate. Four or five people brought together specifically because of their skill sets to address something that needs to happen now. They are not a long-term commitment. They show up, they execute, they are done.

Too often, every single group in an organization gets lumped into the committee category and people feel like they are signing up for a life sentence. No wonder engagement drops. When people do not know what type of team they are on, they do not know how long they are committed, what the finish line looks like, or what their role actually is.

What collaborative teams are not

Before we talk about what high-performing teams do, let’s talk about what they do not do, because research shows people actually retain the rules better when they know what to avoid.

They are not transactional. We do not live in a 50-50 world. We live in a 70-30 world. On any given day, some team members can bring all of their energy and some can only bring half. High-performing collaborative teams step into the space where others fall short, whether that is a weakness, a soft strength, or a blind spot. No one keeps score.

They do not keep receipts. Nobody is stockpiling a list of everything they contributed so they can cash it in later. The work is the work, and the team keeps moving forward.

They are not clubs of complainers. There is no weekly meeting of people who get together to catalog everything that is wrong, moo about the changes coming, and recruit others onto the pessimism express. High-performing teams see a problem and get moving on it.

They are not dominated by the same few people. Every organization has a group of 5 to 15 people who sign up for everything, either because they want to guide the change, grow their resume, or quietly make sure nothing changes at all. Real collaboration requires constantly bringing new leaders to the table.

They are never foggy about expectations. The most common collapse point in collaborative teams is that everyone assumes everyone else knows what is going on. Nobody wants to ask, so they all sit there waiting for someone to start, and then nothing happens.

They are not slow to improve. They do not find ways to stall the work, redistribute their responsibilities, or wait for someone else to move first.

What high-performing collaborative teams actually do

They have clear roles. Every person on the team knows what their job is. Not generally. Specifically. Who is the captain? Who is the person asking the hard questions? Who is managing the technology? Who is keeping the group to its norms? When everyone knows their lane, the team can function independently and still support each other.

They have minimal but firm norms, and someone is in charge of enforcing them. They start on time and end on time. They come prepared. They are honest with each other. They advocate for the work outside of the meeting room. When someone violates those norms, the designated person calls it out. Not to shame anybody, but because the team agreed that is how they would operate.

They work from a definition of done. Before the meeting begins, the team asks: what needs to be finished before we leave? That question gets written on the board and referred back to throughout the session. If you want to end a 60-minute meeting early, that is how you do it. Everyone works toward done.

They are mission-focused. There is a clear statement of scope that every member can point to. Something like: we will work together to ensure that teachers have the skills they need to be successful with students by the start of the first quarter. That is a mission. That is what we are here for.

They seek critique, not just support. When a high-performing team takes work into the world, their job is to bring back honest feedback, not just buy-in. What do you not like about this? What should we change? That feedback loop is what makes them rapid and innovative.

The T-chart tool you can use right now

Here is a practical tool to put all of this into motion before your next team meeting. Create a simple T-chart. Title the page “When We Team and Collaborate.” Label the left column “We Do” and the right column “We Don’t.”

As the person bringing the team together, you pre-populate both sides with your non-negotiable expectations around time, behavior, communication, and accountability. Then you go further. Ask each team member to write a sentence describing what one of those expectations actually looks like in practice. Why? Because the killer in most collaborative teams is that every individual interprets the rules differently. Think of a speed limit. Is 55 miles per hour 55, or is it 64 because everyone knows you get a pass under nine over? People will push every boundary you leave undefined. So you write the definitions, confirm them together, and lock them in.

Then you go to the right side of the chart. For every “we don’t,” you ask the team to complete this sentence: if we begin to violate this expectation, this is what we will do. And then you assign a person to own it.

Here is what that sounds like in practice: “If we begin to cast blame, it is Jerry’s job to call it out and redirect us so we can move forward. Can everyone agree to that? Jerry, can you do it?”

When the room says yes, you have just given Jerry permission. And that permission is everything. When the moment comes and Jerry does his job, nobody is blindsided because they all agreed to it in advance.

This document becomes your rules of engaging. It is your team’s constitution, unique to this group, built by the people who will be held to it. Post it. Refer to it. Start every meeting with it.

Expectations without enforcement are just aspirations

The process above only works if the team holds itself to it. Too often we assume accountability is a manager’s job, the principal, the director, the supervisor. In a real collaborative environment, it belongs to everyone. And it takes collegial courage, the willingness to say to a teammate, hey, we said we would do this differently.

That courage does not appear on its own. It has to be built into the structure of the team from the start, which is why the T-chart works. It gives every member both the permission and the responsibility to hold the line.

Here is the challenge I want to leave you with this week. Think about the best team you have ever been on. What made it that way? My guess is it had some combination of high expectations, clear roles, real humor, and a genuine commitment to the mission. Now think about the teams you are currently on or leading. Where is the gap?

So here is your smart thinking for the week.

• Describe the teams in your world that would benefit most from this process.
• List what you personally can do differently to show up as a better collaborator.
• Define your role on your current teams, if you can. If you cannot, that is your starting point.

An unspoken expectation can never be met. So speak it. Write it. Agree to it. And then charge into the work together.