1. Time Spent in Collaboration
Professional Organization
Alone
Group
American Consulting Engineers
Council 84 16
American Institute of Chemists.
American Psychological Assoc 86 14
International City Management
Association 79 21
Modern Language Association 90 10
Professional Services Management 80 20
Society for Technical
Communication 73 27

2. Whom Do You Interact With?
Other writers
Subject matter experts
Printing-production people
Managers

3. Advantages of Collaboration
Joint knowledge, experience, and writing expertise
A variety of ideas and approaches
The strengths of all members
Different perspectives generating better products

4. Disadvantages of Collaboration
Multiple/conflicting personalities and approaches
More time
Inequitable division of tasks
Loss of personal satisfaction, ownership, or creativity

5. Why Collaboration Fails?
Ignorance of each others strengths and weaknesses
Lack of leadership/coordination
Lack of appreciation for fellow member’s role
Inability to plan and negotiate through difficulties
Failure to resolve conflict and to reach consensus

6. Why Collaboration Fails?
Personality conflict
Different understanding of the audience, context, and purpose
Misconception about the writing process
Ignorance of group writing process

7. Successful Collaboration
Writing skills and group managment skills
Negotiating and interpersonal skills
Being clear about the document and group interaction
Open mindedness about intertpersonal conflict
Tolerance to multiple perspectives
Observing group dynamics and project progress continuously
Willingness to intervene anytime to change direction, task, role, and norm if the change

8. Managing Collaborative Teams
Keep lines of communication open
Make sure responsibility for final product is shared equally by all members of the team
Create small teams to address complex and interesting tasks
Make sure written documents are considered as important as the products they accompany

9. Managing Meetings Set Agenda Focus on agenda items Record task
Record process
Build consensus, trust
Manage conflict
Start and end on time

10. Skills We Need to Focus on
Listening
Interpersonal communication
Managing meetings
Plan, conduct, follow through
Conflict management
Leadership
Decision making
Trust building