With resources scarce and work abundant, it’s easy in a recession to inspire conflict rather than collaboration. But, despite the brewing tensions, there’s a way to do it, says Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. Here are her top tips for helping your company’s leaders encourage a collaborative workplace:

• Find ways to acknowledge collaborative contributors. “Recognize and promote people who learn, teach, and share. And penalize those who do not. In all best-practices companies, those hoarding knowledge and failing to build on ideas of others face visible and serious career consequences,” says Kinsey Goman. “In those top companies, employees who share knowledge, teach, mentor, and work across departmental boundaries are recognized and rewarded.”

• Watch your body language. “All leaders express enthusiasm, warmth, and confidence—as well as arrogance, indifference, and displeasure through their expressions, gestures, touch, and use of space,” she notes. “If leaders want to be perceived as credible and collaborative, they need to make sure their verbal messages are supported (not sabotaged) by their nonverbal signals.”

• Focus on the customer. “Nothing is more important in an organization—whether it's a for-profit company or a non-profit group—than staying close to the end user of the service or product you offer and encouraging feedback and two-way dialogue,” Kinsey Goman points out. “When you build collaborative relationships with your customers, you give them power and investment in your organization's success.”

• Remember that diversity is crucial to harnessing the full power of collaboration. “Group members who think alike or are trained in similar disciplines with similar knowledge bases run the risk of becoming insular in their ideas. Instead of exploring alternatives, a confirmation bias takes over and members tend to reinforce one another's predisposition,” she explains. “Diversity causes people to consider perspectives and possibilities that otherwise would be ignored.”

• liminate the barriers to a free flow of ideas.  “When insights and opinions are ridiculed, criticized, or ignored, people feel threatened and ‘punished’ for contributing. They typically react by withdrawing from the conversation,” says Kinsey Goman. “Conversely, when people are free to ask “dumb” questions, challenge the status quo, and offer novel—even bizarre—suggestions, then sharing knowledge becomes a collaborative process of blending diverse opinion, expertise, and perspectives.”

• Enhance collaboration, analyze, and learn from failure. “Leading innovators such as Apple see their failures as being as insightful as their successes,” says Kinsey Goman. “The goal is not to eliminate all errors, but to analyze mistakes in order to create systems that more quickly detect and correct mistakes before they become fatal.”

• Remember that collaboration “takes guidance by managers who know how to harness the energies and talents of others while keeping their own egos in check,” she notes. “Successful organizations require leaders at all levels who manage through positive influence and inclusion rather than by position.”

• Eliminate hoarding by challenging the "knowledge is power" attitude. “Knowledge is no longer a commodity like gold, which holds (or increases) its worth over time,” says Kinsey Goman. “It's more like milk—fluid, evolving, and stamped with an expiration date. And, by the way, there is nothing less powerful than hanging onto knowledge whose time has expired.”

• Focus on innovation. “Creativity is triggered by a cross-pollination of ideas. It is in the combination and collision of ideas that creative breakthroughs most often occur,” Kinsey Goman observes. “When an organization focuses on innovation, it does so by bringing together people with different backgrounds, perspectives, and expertise—breaking down barriers and silos in the process.”

Inside Training Magazine