Many leaders know collaboration matters, but far fewer have figured out how to make it work across silos, competing priorities, and complex stakeholder relationships.

In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Heidi Gardner, Distinguished Fellow at Harvard Law School, former Harvard Business School professor, Thinkers50 ranked thought leader, and co-author of Smart Collaboration and Smarter Collaboration. In this conversation, we explore what smarter collaboration really looks like in today’s workplace, and why working across boundaries is both more necessary and more difficult than ever. Heidi shares practical insights on trust, healthy conflict, over-collaboration, stakeholder alignment, and the leadership behaviours that create the conditions for innovation and high performance.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why hyper-specialisation makes collaboration harder, just as the problems leaders face become more complex and multidisciplinary
• The importance of starting with a shared goal and being clear on each person’s role
• How over-collaboration drains time, energy, and trust in the very idea of collaboration
• Why conflict is not the problem, but unmanaged conflict is
• The difference between competence trust and character trust, and why both matter
• How leaders can create space for challenge, curiosity, and better decision-making under pressure
• Navigating collaboration within your team and cross-functional collaboration
• Practical ways to align with stakeholders, navigate conflicting priorities, and communicate progress toward big goals

I loved Heidi’s reminder that collaboration is not about involving everyone in everything. It is about being intentional, drawing on the right expertise at the right moment, and creating enough trust for people to challenge each other without tipping into relationship conflict. Which is especially important in the complex environments teams are operating in.

Smarter collaboration is not more collaboration, it’s better collaboration.

If this episode resonated, share it with a leader or team who are navigating silos, stakeholder tension, or the complexity of cross-functional work.

Links:

• ⁠Smart Collaboration⁠
• ⁠Smarter Collaboration ⁠
• ⁠Collaborating with GenAI: Lessons from Heineken’s Use of the “PowerBot”⁠
• ⁠Using GenAI as a Collaborative Teammate