Quote-A-Day: Day 5

#Collaboration + #competition are equal #partners. To #learn + #lead, you can't have one w/o the other. #edchat #satchat #QuoteADay #Day5

I recently finished reading Michael Fullan's book Change Leader.  One of the important characteristics Fullan discusses for leaders is the ability to cultivate both collaboration and competition in leadership and management.  This is a powerful idea.  We often speak of collaboration as being a necessity to take learning and leading further, but in reality, collaboration without competition will never be as effective as when the two work together to emphasize the drive to keep getting better.  That constant drive is what competition is all about.

I like to think of a true combining of the two terms into what I call "collabetition."  The idea here is that teamwork always is at the heart of the work being undertaken.  We work as a team when we collaborate towards an end, and we also work as a team when we compete positively to see who can reach the desired end in the most effective and efficient way possible.  Collabetition requires everyone to work together, even if people are pursuing the same result in "competing ways."  Why?  Because the goal is always the same: the betterment of the world around us, and the betterment of ourselves.