Most organisations understand that relationships matter.
Complex work cannot be delivered through structures, processes and formal authority alone. People need to exchange information, work through disagreement and coordinate activity across professional, departmental and organisational boundaries.
This is one reason collective leadership is so important.
No individual leader has a complete view of a complex situation. Bringing together different perspectives, experience and expertise can create a richer understanding of what is happening and what may need to change.
But assembling the right people and encouraging stronger relationships is only part of the work.
People can respect one another, trust one another and genuinely want to collaborate - and still find it extraordinarily difficult to act collectively.
The reason is often found in the conditions surrounding those relationships.
Different perspectives are valuable because they are different
A complex situation looks different depending on where someone stands.
An operational leader may see a capacity problem. A finance director may see an affordability problem. A clinical leader may see a quality or safety concern. A workforce leader may see unsustainable demands on people. A strategist may see choices that have not yet been resolved.
None necessarily has the complete explanation. Equally, none should be treated as merely representing a narrow departmental interest.
Each perspective reveals something about the wider situation.
The value of collective leadership does not come from quickly blending those perspectives into a comfortable consensus. It comes from allowing the differences between them to improve the organisation’s understanding.
That requires relationships in which people can question assumptions, disagree constructively and remain engaged when the conversation becomes uncomfortable.
It also requires more than good relationships.
Relationships operate within a wider system
Leaders do not enter a conversation free from their organisational context.
They carry accountabilities, performance expectations, professional obligations, resource constraints and the concerns of the people they represent.
They may be encouraged to collaborate while being held individually responsible for protecting a budget, meeting a target or delivering a particular service.
They may be asked to take a system-wide view while governance arrangements continue to measure success locally.
They may agree on what needs to happen but lack the authority to make the necessary decisions.
They may trust one another but work within structures that require several additional approvals before anything can change.
Under those conditions, difficulty collaborating is not necessarily evidence of weak relationships or poor leadership.
People may be responding rationally to the environment in which they are working.
When collaboration meets conflicting conditions
Consider a group of senior leaders responsible for improving an outcome that crosses several organisational boundaries.
They know one another well. Meetings are constructive. There is goodwill and broad agreement about what needs to improve.
Yet decisions remain slow and collective action is limited.
It would be easy to conclude that the group needs further team development or a stronger commitment to collaborative leadership.
But closer examination might reveal that:
- Different organisations are working to competing priorities.
- Accountability for the shared outcome is unclear.
- Individual leaders remain answerable for performance within their own organisations.
- Information is distributed unevenly.
- The group can discuss problems but has limited authority to redirect resources.
- Decisions made collectively can later be challenged elsewhere.
- Immediate operational pressures repeatedly displace longer-term work.
In that context, another relationship-building intervention may create a better conversation without materially changing what the group can accomplish.
The relationships are being asked to compensate for the surrounding system.
Connecting leadership across an organisation
Small leadership groups or trusted partnerships can be powerful. They allow different perspectives to meet and can provide stability when the wider environment is uncertain.
The harder task is connecting those relationships across the organisation.
As more groups become involved, different priorities, accountabilities and pressures come into play. Information becomes fragmented. Decisions travel through multiple governance routes. What appears sensible from one part of the organisation may create difficulty elsewhere.
The issue is no longer simply whether individual leaders work well together.
It is whether the organisation enables their leadership to connect.
That depends on questions such as:
- Is there enough shared purpose to guide decisions when priorities compete?
- Are decision rights and accountabilities clear?
- Can disagreement be raised without creating disproportionate personal or organisational risk?
- Do governance arrangements support collective action or pull decisions back into separate organisational channels?
- Are people given the time, information and authority needed to work across boundaries?
- Do performance arrangements reward local delivery while expecting system-wide collaboration?
- Can the organisation learn from the consequences of its decisions?
These are strategic, structural, relational, behavioural and systemic questions. They interact.
Unclear priorities can create structural duplication. Fragmented accountability can weaken trust. Low trust can lead to additional governance. Additional governance can slow decisions and reinforce the belief that other parties cannot be relied upon.
The resulting pattern cannot be explained - or changed - at only one level.
Relationships and conditions shape each other
This is not an argument for treating relationships as secondary.
Relationships are part of the system.
Strong relationships make it easier to share incomplete information, surface tensions and respond when formal arrangements do not cover every eventuality. They allow people to use judgement rather than relying entirely on rules and escalation routes.
But the relationship between people and organisational conditions runs both ways.
Good relationships can help people navigate difficult structures. Over time, however, persistently difficult structures can place even strong relationships under strain.
Similarly, changing a governance arrangement may create an opportunity for collaboration, but it will not automatically produce the trust needed to use that opportunity well.
Effective intervention therefore needs to consider both.
The question is not whether the problem is relational or structural. It is how relationships and organisational conditions are interacting to produce the current outcome.
Creating better conditions for collective leadership
Improving those conditions does not always require major redesign.
Sometimes the useful intervention is relatively small:
- Clarifying which decisions a group can make.
- Making one unresolved strategic tension explicit.
- Removing a duplicated approval.
- Sharing information earlier.
- Creating a regular space in which disagreement can be explored.
- Aligning measures around a genuinely shared outcome.
- Protecting time for work that crosses organisational boundaries.
- Reviewing what happens to collective decisions after the meeting ends.
The starting point is to understand what is preventing collective leadership from translating into collective action.
Useful questions include:
- What outcome are people trying to produce together?
- Which perspectives are currently shaping the conversation - and which are missing?
- Where do priorities or accountabilities pull people in different directions?
- What might individuals or organisations risk by acting collectively?
- What authority does the group actually hold?
- Which current arrangements reinforce the pattern?
- What proportionate change could make collaboration easier?
These questions move the discussion beyond whether people are sufficiently collaborative.
They direct attention towards the environment in which collaboration is expected to occur.
Beyond individual relationships
Collective leadership is not simply a larger version of individual leadership.
It involves connecting different perspectives without erasing their differences, building relationships capable of holding disagreement and creating conditions in which people can act on what they learn together.
Strong relationships matter.
But if organisations want those relationships to carry the weight of complex change, they must also examine the priorities, accountabilities, governance and pressures surrounding them.
The challenge is not only to bring people together.
It is to create the conditions in which working together can make a difference.