COLLABOR(H)ATE

Mashek assesses the pitfalls of business collaborations and instructs readers on how to avoid them in this guide.

In her nonfiction debut, the author draws on her 25 years of experience as a professor and expert specializing in collaborative relationships in the workplace. She acknowledges throughout her book what readers already know: such collaborations are often annoying trials rather than rewarding experiences. To reverse this situation, the author recommends that her readers take her Workplace Collaboration Survey and use what she calls “the Mashek Matrix” to chart the relationship between two factors: “relationship quality” and “interdependence.” When both of these factors are strong, Mashek writes, “collabor(h)ate” becomes “CollaborGREAT.” The author buttresses her points with quotes taken from a wide variety of sources and elaborates on relationship quality and interdependence while recapping features like “Here’s the Point” and “Take 5,” which poses five discussion questions based on each chapter’s content. She cautions against the natural human tendency to create narratives: “Misunderstandings, negative feelings, and counterproductive interactions kick up when we jump into negative storytelling about our collaborators.” Mashek self-deprecatingly pokes fun at her own tendency to describe the nuances of collaboration in scientific, even mathematical terms, and she very effectively grounds her thoughts in personal terms, regularly recounting family stories to illuminate various aspects of working together. Many of her points are self-evident (“Rewards are anything you personally find desirable,” she observes, “costs, on the other hand, are anything you find aversive or undesirable”), but her broader insights into how collaborations work are often both wise and well-informed. People in the corporate world, particularly those who’ve been consistently disappointed by collaborations, will find a great deal of clear thinking in these pages.

An upbeat and pro-active method for improving collaborations in the workplace and beyond.