The Art of Collaborative Leadership: Building Teams That Drive Change
Key Strategies for Inspiring Innovation and Driving Purpose-Driven Teams
By Simon Doble
When it comes to building truly innovative teams, collaboration starts from within. It’s not enough to hope that departments or individuals will magically align; leaders must actively foster a culture of transparency, diversity, and psychological safety. I’ve seen the power of this firsthand—at SolarBuddy, our mission to eradicate energy poverty was only possible because we harnessed the collective brilliance of our people. This guide explores the lessons I've learned on creating collaborative environments where ideas can thrive, contributions are valued, and everyone feels empowered to drive change.
© Simon Doble
If you’ve been following this series, you know I’m a firm believer in the power of perpetual innovation and working together to tackle our biggest challenges. Collaboration isn’t just an option; it’s a necessity, whether we’re dealing with everyday obstacles or global crises.
But here’s the truth: working with others—especially in tough times—takes deliberate effort. It’s not about hoping for the best; it’s about building a culture that values openness, trust, and shared purpose.
As I’ve said before, expanding outwards and inviting others (even your “competitors”) should not be reserved only for when times are good. On the contrary, collaboration and innovation are the best way out of a crisis. But it’s not easy, fear and stress often hijack our brains, our biology kicks in, and we become reactionary instead of visionary. Luckily, the collaborative muscle can be trained and there are techniques leaders can adopt to develop the abundance mindset, even in the toughest of times.
Being mindful of collaboration at the top, embracing diversity, showing strength, building psychosocial safety and uniting behind a common purpose are some of the most powerful tools.
This week, I would like to share my thoughts on another critical aspect of collaboration—in order for teams to be truly innovative and work with others, they first need to learn to work with each other. Companies big and small need to build a culture of collaboration between team members, different departments and also between the leadership and rest of the company.
In my own journey, I’ve seen firsthand how powerful internal collaboration can be. At SolarBuddy, every step we took on our mission to eliminate energy poverty was only possible because we fostered an internal culture of shared purpose and open communication. I am lucky to work with some amazing people who are, frankly, much smarter than me and harnessing their true innovative potential was the key magic ingredient in SolarBuddy’s success.
Being mindful of how you’re collaborating at the top, embracing diversity, showing strength as a leader when it’s necessary, building psychosocial safety and uniting behind a common purpose are some of the most powerful tools that you can start applying today to double down on collaboration and innovation.
Notes on Collaborative Leadership for Innovation and Team Alignment
But first things first—I don’t have the magic bullet to solve all your collaboration issues. Navigating corporate social structures is challenging, and you must trust your instincts and specific circumstances. Below are insights that have resonated with me. I learn by watching and analysing social behaviour, and when research supports these observations, it's a win-win.
1. Collaborative Leadership Begins at the Top
We learn best by observing—our parents, peers, mentors, and idols—and imitating what we see. (That’s why it’s counterproductive to tell children not to smoke when the parent is on a pack a day.) But the same goes for organisational behaviour. More often than not, good collaborative efforts are sabotaged by power struggles and political disputes among upper management. And it can have real impact at innovation.
Consider Microsoft: a former executive revealed they developed a tablet a decade before the iPad, but internal rivalries killed the project. That’s how innovation goes to die.
Research shows that the most successful collaboration comes from teams with experienced professionals alongside newcomers.
Firstly, good collaborative leadership is transparent. Decision-making should be open and include contributions from across the company. More often than not, the CEO and his CxOs don’t work as a team themselves, each running a different division and competing with each other for resources. When decision making is made transparent and even higher management is rewarded for collaborating, this situation can get turned on its head. When the leadership is an inspiration, it’s easy for the rest to follow.
Teams with transparent leadership have the information they need and feel safer taking risks, accelerating innovation. Being part of discussions and well-informed makes them more committed to the company's mission. And building feedback loops—both with the leadership and within the team—makes people more comfortable to communicate.
How to be more transparent:
Honour your commitments: As with the smoking parent, saying one thing and not doubling down with your actions erodes trust. Preaching work-life balance while demanding weekend work or ignoring feedback erodes trust and undermines your leadership.
Invite everyone to contribute: Keeping staff in the dark about strategic decisions breeds speculation and rumours. Some companies go as far as inviting all staff to strategic executive planning via chat and video-calls.
2. Embracing Diversity for Innovation
Your team brings immense value through diverse experiences, cultural backgrounds, generational perspectives, and unique expertise. Research consistently shows that diverse teams produce better results— but only under the right leadership. Unfortunately, in many organisations, a dominant managerial culture (often white, middle-aged, and male) still dictates norms around communication, behaviour, and even appearance. Companies invest significant resources in attracting top talent, only to stifle creativity by homogenizing everyone.
What sets great collaborative leaders apart is the ability to bring together people from different backgrounds, disciplines, cultures, and generations and leverage all they have to offer to drive innovation. For instance, a non-native speaker might need an interpreter to share their ideas fully, or someone might prefer presenting in a style that feels authentic to them. And ensuring women are fairly represented at all organisational levels should be a given, not an afterthought.
Diversity is a key ingredient for innovative teams, but without psychological safety, it looses its meaning.
Moreover, research on creative industries highlights that the most successful collaboration—using whichever metrics you chose—comes from teams that include people with a lot of experience alongside newcomers. People naturally gravitate toward familiar colleagues, so leaders must actively mix teams to encourage fresh ideas.
How to embrace diversity:
Foster an Inclusive Environment: Creating a culture where everyone feels valued starts with inclusive practices. This means setting up diverse hiring panels, ensuring everyone has a voice in meetings, and actively addressing any unconscious biases.
Tailor Communication and Support: Not everyone communicates or works the same way. Leaders should adapt their approach, offering flexible communication styles and resources, like interpreters or presentation coaching.
3. Structure, clarity and strong leadership
When you promote collaboration between your team you start facing a new problem. It’s easy to wind up in endless meetings and discussions leading nowhere. Different backgrounds bring diverse ideas, which can spark conflict. That's why leaders must ensure that disagreements remain constructive and be prepared to make firm decisions when necessary.
Open debate and idea-sharing are crucial for innovation, but too much back-and-forth without decisive action can stall progress. Collaborative leaders should be strong and agile, forming and dissolving teams as opportunities arise and assign clear responsibilities so there is always an appropriate person to end the discussion and make the final call going forward.
Strong leadership means setting clear roles, defining specific goals, and laying out actionable plans. Everyone should understand what’s expected, the direction their team is heading, and the steps needed to get there. And this also means establishing the right structures for cooperation.
Building the right structures for cooperation is key, but there’s a balance to strike: offer enough flexibility to let people’s unique strengths shine but establish limits to ensure that self-expression enhances rather than hinders collaboration.
How to offer structure and clarity:
Practice conflict resolution: As a leader, recognise when to step in and mediate, using empathy to understand each side’s perspective. Stay calm and impartial, avoiding emotional entanglement while guiding the conversation productively.
Mix and match: To spark creativity, periodically reshuffling teams could be a great way, but make sure to always assign clear roles and points of contact.
4. Building Psychological Safety
Diversity is a key ingredient for innovative teams, but without psychological safety, it is meaningless. Google’s own research revealed that psychological safety is the backbone of high-performing teams, with those scoring high in this area exceeding revenue targets by up to 17%. Harvard Business School professor Amy C. Edmondson’s findings further emphasise its importance.
Psychological safety means team members feel free to share ideas—no matter how unconventional—without fearing repercussions. It means being confident to admit mistakes, ask questions and offer new ideas. This culture of openness fosters constructive disagreement focused on the work itself, not individuals, enabling team members to take risks and be vulnerable.
Stories are powerful tools for shaping attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours—including our desire to contribute to a team.
Psychological safety is not created by filling your team with yes-man or friends who are all the same and agree on everything. It is an actively nurtured environment that accommodates diversity. Without this safety, people may choose silence over sharing, even when they notice critical mistakes, for fear of appearing ignorant or disruptive.
How to build psychological safety:
Show Empathy and Vulnerability: This must start from the top. Leaders, managers, and team leads often face pressure to appear flawless, but true strength lies in showing vulnerability. When leaders openly acknowledge their own uncertainties or past mistakes, they signal trust in their teams, encouraging a culture where everyone feels safe to be authentic.
Framing work as a learning problem: Emphasise that work is about exploration and continuous learning, not flawless execution. Admitting your own mistakes and asking for feedback breaks this illusion, building genuine trust over time.
Modeling curiosity: Asking a lot of questions and asking for feedback engages teams to discuss and motivates input.
Admiting fallibility: Maintaining the perfectionist allure encourages people to fake perfection themselves and actually erodes trust over time. Admitting your own mistakes and asking for feedback can help you break through this facade.
5. Aligning Meaning and Purpose
A higher purpose is arguably the most crucial factor in today’s business landscape. Research consistently shows that a well-defined purpose is essential for sustaining team effectiveness and driving innovation. People crave meaning both individually and collectively.
Individually, it varies significantly, and it can take many forms—from financial security and individual self-expression to uniting behind a common goal. It’s important to recognise this, as pursuing a grand goal without considering financial stability or work-life balance can quickly lead to burnout and high employee turnover.
The journey may not be simple, but its rewards are far-reaching and transformative.
But what unites a team and leads to innovation is a broader, pro-social purpose. This means having some meaning behind the work people are doing. Feeling that it is making a valuable contribution to the world and positively impacts others. And it pays off to be specific, as people don’t just want to know that their work is helping, they want to know who is it helping and how.
Purpose should be collaborative. It needs to articulate how the team collectively aims to serve customers, society, and the world. A study in the Journal of Applied Psychology highlights this as well: when people hear stories about how their colleagues’ work benefits others, they become more motivated to engage in helpful actions. And when they know how their work is impacting others, they tend to set their own goals and desires aside from the objectives.
How to find and use purpose:
Play the long game: Finding a common and specific purpose doesn’t happen overnight. Purpose is more than the leader’s vision, it's complex, multidimensional, practical and is constantly adjusted and updated by debates about concrete problems. Therefore, it pays off to take your time and engage in continuous discussions.
Define success: In traditional business, success is defined by the bottom line and shareholder earnings. In purpose driven companies, it should include which contributions to the customers and society constitute success.
Share stories: Stories are powerful tools for shaping attitudes, beliefs, and behaviorus—including our desire to contribute to a team. Finding specific instances of how your team positively impacted colleagues, customers and society and regularly sharing them can be a great tool.
Conclusion: The Power of Collaborative Leadership in Driving Innovation
Building a collaborative, purpose-driven team is as much an art as it is a science. By fostering psychological safety, embracing diversity, and providing clarity in leadership, companies can unlock the full innovative potential of their people. A team united behind a shared purpose—whether it’s ending energy poverty, contributing to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) or improving lives in some other way—has the power to inspire each member to go beyond their individual roles, thinking bigger and pushing boundaries together.
For leaders, this requires empathy, vulnerability, and a steadfast commitment to transparency and inclusivity. The journey may not be simple, but its rewards are far-reaching and transformative.
For purpose-driven organisations like Barefoot Citizens and SolarBuddy, this collaborative ethos is foundational. Our mission goes beyond business; it’s about addressing deep-rooted global issues with scalable, people-centered solutions. But this approach isn’t just about solving today’s challenges; it’s about building resilient, adaptive structures that can continue to bring positive change for years to come.
Ultimately, collaboration in purpose-led companies isn’t just a business strategy—it’s a way of life. Each step, from small actions to bold innovations, contributes to a collective mission to make a tangible difference.
How about you? Are you leading with transparency, diversity, and psychological safety? Or are there any important lessons I have missed?
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If you found this information interesting, feel free to reach out to me here to book a keynote or cooperate on the next exciting project.
Let’s drive change, together!
Simon