ABW Partners’ Practical Guide To Designing Collaboration
Summary: The following post is written by ABW Partners’ Becca Flyer. Becca leads Operations & Strategic Planning across ABW Partners’ portfolio and has built systems for us to work internally and with our clients in ways that are collaborative, efficient, and most importantly, rooted in results. In the following blog post, she will cover:
Collaboration as a practice: Collaboration shows up in how decisions are made, how trust is built, and whether people feel valued and empowered.
Building trust: Psychological safety, assuming best intent, and room for dissent are non-negotiable.
The importance of clarity: Clear decision-making models, roles, and expectations matter more than consensus.
Creating teams with complementary strengths: Strong teams are intentionally built to cover gaps and work as a system.
Shaping team norms: Shared communication norms, feedback practices, and role clarity turn intention into impact.
"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." – African Proverb
Real collaboration isn’t aspirational language. It’s a practice that shows up (or doesn’t) in how decisions are made, how trust is built, how people are empowered inside a system, and most importantly, how it impacts your organization’s results.
Collaboration In Pursuit Of Impact
At its core, collaboration means working together toward a shared goal, purpose, vision, and most importantly, results. This is why ABW Partners has a collaborative approach to our client engagements. At the very beginning of our process, we engage constituents of all types (funders, board members, staff, program participants, etc.) so we can get a holistic understanding of whatever problem we're trying to solve and ensure our approach is aligned with various constituents' needs and perspectives, yielding a more sound, thoughtful, and effective outcome..
What Highly Collaborative Teams Look Like
Highly collaborative teams tend to share a set of common characteristics:
Movement away from hierarchical structures
High levels of transparency
Clear, consistent communication
Democratic input models, with clarity about who ultimately decides
Underneath all of these is a single, non‑negotiable foundation: trust.
Trust shows up as:
Assuming the best intent
Believing that everyone is working toward the same outcome
Feeling safe to offer perspective, dissent, and feedback
Importantly, collaboration does not happen by accident. It requires intentional design, ongoing reinforcement, and, when trust breaks, active repair. Teams that ignore this reality often mistake proximity or friendliness for true collaboration.
How Collaboration Breaks or Builds Trust: Decision-Making
One of the fastest ways collaboration breaks down is unclear decision-making. In nonprofits, this often happens when it’s not established upfront who has final say, such as whether the CEO or Board Chair makes the ultimate call during strategic planning.
Effective collaborative teams rely on a clear, repeatable process:
Gather the right people
Clearly frame the challenge, opportunity, or decision at hand
Collect input and allow space for discussion
Name expectations upfront:
Is this input‑only?
Is the group deciding together?
Will a leader make the final call, informed by collaboration?
This clarity matters. Without it, people feel dismissed or demotivated. We’ve all heard (or thought): Why ask me if you’re just going to do what you want anyway?
Collaboration doesn’t require consensus on everything; it means respecting people’s time, perspective, and role. A clear process ensures the right people are involved and leads to better outcomes.
Collaboration Through Strengths
Strong leadership isn’t about one person possessing every skill. It’s about assembling a team with complementary strengths that together form a complete leadership system.
Collaboration isn’t just a process; it’s people.
Strong leaders:
Know their superpowers
Acknowledge their gaps
Build teams that complement them
For example, a visionary founder may bring ideas, energy, and people skills, but needs support in:
Project management
Executive functioning
Financial oversight
Staff management and accountability
The core insight is clear: no one person can do everything. True collaboration requires designing a leadership system that is complete, not heroic.
Feedback and Role Clarity: The Muscle of Collaboration
Collaboration is a give-and-take, and feedback keeps it healthy. Many leaders, both lay and professional, lack the tools and confidence to give regular feedback, and without it, resentment builds and learning stalls.
Strong collaborative teams regularly practice:
Checking for understanding
Regular two-way feedback
Confirming working styles
Getting explicit about:
Roles
Ownership
Decision authority
Input versus execution
These practices build the muscle memory required to collaborate under pressure.
Why Tools and Frameworks Don’t Create Collaboration (Norms Do)
Tools like Slack or Asana can enhance collaboration, but they don’t create it. Similarly, frameworks like DARCI, RACI, and others can’t work in a vacuum.
Without shared norms, tools and frameworks often introduce friction rather than clarity. Teams need explicit alignment around:
What tools are for
What they are not for
How and when to use them
Consider communication norms:
When is Slack appropriate versus a phone call or a scheduled meeting?
What are reasonable response‑time expectations?
Is there permission to delay responses during deep work or meetings?
What projects need to go through the RACI chart?
What does it actually mean to be the one “responsible”?
Without clear norms, expectations diverge, trust erodes, and collaboration breaks down, even with the “right” tools and frameworks in place.
Collaboration in a Remote Setting
Today, a lot of collaboration happens remotely. Remote work can be effective, but it has limits.
In‑person time still matters.
Well‑designed team retreats and dedicated spaces to build trust, norms, and systems create the conditions for stronger collaboration once teams return to Zoom‑based work. Similarly, asking team members to come in person only to spend the entire day on Zoom leaves them frustrated and questioning why they needed to be there at all.
In Summary, Collaboration Is an Ethos & a Practice
Collaboration is not a value statement; it’s a set of beliefs and behaviors.
It requires:
Passionate pursuit of a goal
Belief that you go further together
Clear decision‑making models
Teams designed around complementary strengths
Feedback and role clarity
Shared norms and systems
When collaboration is treated as a practice rather than a label, it becomes a source of resilience, alignment, and momentum, internally and with clients alike.
