Collaborative Leadership

Check out this very useful archived webinar from the National Public Health Leadership Development Network. Jeffrey L. Wilson, MSHA, presented a two-part series on the fundamentals of collaborative leadership. In part one of the series, Wilson covers two concepts that stand out as being very useful in the current Implementation Phase of NLAPH:

The first is defining the "level of interaction" of your stakeholders through networking, coordinating, cooperating, and collaborating. Then, in an inverse way, identifying the amount of involvement required for the relationship (e.g., networking requires a low level of involvement and collaborating requires a high level of involvement). Through this exercise, we can find a simple way of identifying the "asks" we make to our stakeholders and break down our Network Maps in different ways.

The second useful concept is identifying the "problem types" we are trying to solve: Type I (clear problem / clear expert solution), Type II (clear problem / unclear, complex solution), or Type III (complex, unclear problem / unclear, complex solution). All of the Applied Health Leadership Projects in this cohort are targeted toward addressing Type II or Type III problems. These types of problems require leaders to be involved in bringing people together to collaborate on solutions, not necessarily to know all the answers.