The Power of Collaboration

Collaboration is more than just working together—it's about creating harmony that produces extraordinary results. When we understand true collaboration through God's standards, we unlock access to divine power and achieve outcomes that seemed impossible on our own.

What Makes a Good Leader?

Good leaders lead a good life. This fundamental truth shapes everything else about effective leadership. The key of humility unlocks stability, unity, creativity, and healthy trust. When leaders work with humility, they gain credibility and produce tranquility in their teams and families.

Vision plus patience produces a good leader's perspective. Remember: you've got to live it to lead it. Let your life do the talking for you. Communication without authentication is simply intellectual constipation.

Why Are Choices More Important Than Performance?

Your choices are far more consequential to life than your performance. You can perform so brilliantly that the world throws awards and applause at you, yet simultaneously choose death and destruction due to lack of discernment. Your legacy will always be determined by your choices, not your performance.

God says in Deuteronomy 30:19, "I've set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Therefore, choose life that you and your descendants may live." Life is summed up in your choices. Caesar couldn't outrun his choices. Napoleon couldn't outrun his choices. Neither can we.

What Is True Collaboration?

Many books focus on teamwork using metaphors like "getting the right people on the bus in the right seats." While this captures an important truth, real collaboration goes much deeper. It's not enough to have the right people—they must be in the correct roles where they can best contribute.

Too often, collaboration becomes an unqualified positive, meaning as long as everyone is pulling together, the outcome doesn't matter. This is vanity and potentially evil. True collaboration must be measured by the outcomes it produces, not just the activity it generates.

The Jesus Model of Collaboration

Jesus provides the ultimate insight into collaboration in Matthew 18:19: "Again, I tell you, if two of you on earth agree, harmonize together, make a symphony together about whatever they may ask, it will come to pass and be done for them by my Father in heaven."

Notice that Jesus uses the word "harmonize," not just "agree." Agreement is not sameness—it's harmony. That's a blend of differences. Harmony is the pleasing arrangement of different tones, voices, or instruments, not identical sounds. Creative tension makes beautiful music.

How Do We Build Trust in Collaboration?

Trust is the bridge that secures the connection we call collaboration. Real collaboration involves weaving an intellectual partnership—a give and take of ideas that works with freedom and respect.

Stephen Covey defined trust as the combination of character and competence. His son, Stephen M.R. Covey, noted that "low trust creates friction and slows everything—every decision, every communication, and every relationship."

The Wright Brothers Example

Wilbur and Orville Wright achieved the world's first successful airplane flights through collaboration, but they fought and argued constantly. Their father, a bishop, raised them to read, debate, and fight for their ideas while learning to disagree respectfully and retain resilience in problem-solving.

They would argue and debate through struggles but never let go of their determination. We're still talking about their outcomes today because their collaboration was built on principle, not just process.

What's the Difference Between Good and Bad Collaboration?

Good collaboration requires principle. When you replace the true standard with process alone, you're committing intellectual idolatry—stripping the gold out of the true standard to worship the works of your hands.

Bad collaboration includes agreement to be immoral, unjust, dishonest, or corrupt. Some examples include:

• Meetings for the sake of meetings
• Numbers for the sake of likes or appearances
• Process that has hijacked principle
• Collaboration that prioritizes "how" over "why"

The Social Media Trap

A dangerous form of collaboration has emerged through social media. People partner hour after hour with information tailored to their bias, creating addictive dopamine hits. The emphasis becomes the "how" (the process of swiping and consuming) rather than the "why" (the purpose and truth). This represents process mastering principle, which is never good.

How Do We Maintain the Gold Standard in Collaboration?

Keep the gold in the standard, and the process will always serve the people. When process is subject to principle, you can do the unthinkable—you can scrutinize without taking it personally or panicking.

If something can't tolerate scrutiny, you know you have a "golden cow" on your hands. Golden cows inspire dark unity, evil agreements, and wicked collaboration.

Learn and Laud

Good collaboration creates an environment for both learning and lauding (genuine praise). Learning is receiving, but we also need opportunities to recognize others sincerely. This sows seeds of praise and honor that multiply at scale.

Andrew Carnegie said, "No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it." Harry Truman added, "It's amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit."

Why Does Environment Matter in Collaboration?

Environment awareness predicts influence. If your environment hasn't been decided with discernment, you'll have to over-manage and rely on rules to compensate for trust deficiency.

When you have the right people with you, even challenges signal excitement ahead. As David Novak wrote, "Happy in challenge is better than miserable in success." Winning isn't winning when the chosen environment of collaboration is wrong.

What Is the Sixth Key: Integrity?

Integrity is adherence to a code of morality, but it's also being complete or undivided. This key partners perfectly with collaboration because who would step onto a bridge of trust without integrity? Trust without integrity is a dangerous trap.

Integrity keeps us firmly locked onto the gold standard of good leaders—God's manufacturer standard. Collaboration is a tool, but it's not the end goal. The ultimate collaboration is you in agreement with God's will and His plans for you.

Life Application

This week, examine your current collaborations—whether in your family, workplace, or community. Are they built on principle or just process? Challenge yourself to identify one area where you've been prioritizing "how" over "why" and realign it with God's gold standard.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Am I collaborating with people who share my core principles, or am I just going through the motions?
• Where in my life have I allowed process to hijack principle?
• How can I better practice "learn and laud" in my relationships this week?
• What "golden cows" do I need to identify and remove from my collaborations?

Remember, the ultimate collaboration is harmonizing your life with God's will. When two agree according to His standard, Heaven gets involved. That's the kind of collaboration that changes everything.