S1E13 - Co-Elevation – Beyond Collaboration to Lifting Each Other Higher

In this final driver of the Vision to Results framework, Glenn Price and Terry Reynolds explore the idea of co-elevation — the step beyond collaboration that separates competent teams from truly high-performing ones. For years the model used “collaboration” as the twelfth driver, until they realised collaboration often just means sharing the work. Co-elevation is something very different. It’s when leaders actively lift each other, tap into one another’s strengths, and collectively raise the performance of the organisation, creating the kind of momentum where one plus one genuinely becomes three.

Throughout the episode, Glenn and Terry unpack why staying in your swim lane limits progress, and why the best teams think like business leaders first and technical specialists second. They explore how trust, vulnerability and positive intent underpin co-elevation, and share real examples of executive teams who walk into meetings as “the leadership team”, not as heads of separate functions. They also lean into the importance of honest, in-the-room conversations, where challenge is seen as a contribution, not a threat.

You’ll hear practical guidance on how to lead across as well as down, how to make peer-to-peer challenge normal, how to reward wins that cross boundaries, and how choosing to trust quickly can create remarkable speed across the whole organisation.

Transcript

Welcome to Leadership Matters, a podcast series recorded by LeaderShape Consulting that helps leaders take a vision and deliver a result. My name is Glenn Price and I'm one of the directors at LeaderShape Consulting and I'm joined by my co-host and business partner, Terry Reynolds. And we are on the last of 12 key drivers that help leaders, teams, individuals execute and take their vision or their goals, their target, deliver results. And we started off in these podcasts talking about that first step, a rational step of setting direction, we then looked at engage and excite more of an emotional feel. We then dove into the specifics around enabling and execution, which was more rational. And then we've on the last two podcasts, taken a look at development and accountability. And this one will be all around co-elevation, which is the last set of emotional drivers. And we call these or refer to these as sustaining momentum.

And I think what would be worthwhile once again is why did we pick the word co-elevation? And to tell you the truth is that up until only maybe 18 months ago, the word that we had at the bottom of this model was collaboration. And what we meant by that was people working well together and sharing out the work, right? So you've got your strategy, you've now got action plans, you've resourced those action plans, you're developing people, they're taking ownership, and now you want people to work together.

And that's the sort of culture that execution discipline culture, the rewarding of progress, the right DNA that you're trying to encourage. But what I found with working with teams is, is that you could collaborate and it's simply sharing the work. And yet what we're trying to do in this last step is amplify the impact, right? Where one plus one equals three. And so I think really simply put, you need to have collaboration, people working together in order to operationalize or execute on your action plans or your strategy in order to get to the vision. But if you're looking for speed and progress and momentum as opposed to simply operational execution, then we need to lift it up a little bit higher. And we call that co-elevation. And in the book, we say, look, the best teams in the world that we followed don't compete with each other. They genuinely lift each other up. Once again, they're not just sharing the work. They're going, what strengths do you have? And how can I use those strengths in my plan and how can I use my strengths in your plan without asking for return? It's about raising the game together, not just waiting for the hierarchy to drag performance up, which is typically the collaboration part. I think that what you've just said is really interesting because it gets me thinking and going, know, obviously trust plays a huge part of this. I would say no trust, no collaboration or co-elevation.

And I also think that, you know, if you're, if you feel comfortable within that team, you're going to ask for input. I, hey, Glenn, I'm going into this market. I know you've got a background there. Can you help me with this? Right. Open, open, open, as opposed to you giving me an opinion. If we're not, if we're not in a trusting relationship, I'm going to struggle taking yours on. I think there's some fundamental levels. So I agree with you. We've talked about trust a lot.

Clearly, it's a key ingredient to the right culture to enable you to deliver results. I think it gets to the stage where teams trust, so they have vulnerability-based trust, they're giving each other feedback. But the best teams where I see co-elevation working is where there was a genuine... It wasn't forced. So when you say, an opinion, that makes me, once again, with words, it sends the heckles up going, hey, I didn't ask for your opinion you focus on your area of the business, I'll focus on mine. And if we have a client or a job or a service that requires us to work together, then we'll share this out. Co-elevation is when I share the opinion and it's valued before even it being asked. Maybe it's not even an opinion, maybe we're sharing resources. But the speed of when you see a team at an exact level or just the leaders of a country team, for example.

And they're at the stage where they're giving each other rapid feedback. They're making emotional deposits in other people's bank account without requiring transfer or reciprocation back going, hey, you owe me this. The genuine collective ownership of them going in order to get to this vision and this strategy, we're going to need to play all our strengths together at once. We're playing a full game, full court press not just making sure that we're playing our individual roles. So my example of that would be not so much that you and I have the same role. Let's say we had in your example that you gave, we were two heads of countries and you go, oh, you've got some experience in that particular region. Can you share that? Where I see it working is I'm the head of IT, but I could comment on a sales plan or I could comment on a operational plan of a facility in a particular region not talking about IT, but because I'm commercially astute, that I can ask some questions. I can get curious. I can try and lift some work and get my team to do it so that your team can focus on hitting its priorities. And so you're beginning almost a little bit tied back to resource. But now co-elevation really is the leadership resource working together is that when that happens, genuinely, it saves time and the boat goes faster and one plus one equals three. I can't get any more slogans into one sentence. And I think that, you know, it really starts with the leader of that group. So, you know, because they need to invite that level of conversation, I think, and set the scene for people. Because I've worked with a lot of executive teams and I would say that the leader of that executive team actually likes people to stay in their own swim lane.

Now, that doesn't sound great based on what we're talking about, but that's a reality. And it's probably easier for that particular leader to manage them. Very easy. My assumption would be is that any tough conversation is held one on one because the CEO has a degree of trust with that individual in their swim lane. Does that resonate? And so co-elevation is that level of trust, but done in front of everybody where feedback is not necessarily a, you've fallen down. It's how fast could we go here? Or you did that really great behavior over there. How many times have we sat with a team and they just go, we're just too siloed. We're just all sticking in our silos. And normally there's one or two individuals who are going, I can help others out. You know, I'm bringing more of myself completely naked. I'm vulnerable here. I'm willing to have whatever conversation happens. And there's others that go. That feels a little bit too uncomfortable for me and I'm going to stick in the silo, I'm going to stick in the area of my role and go, actually, it almost comes back to belief systems. I don't believe that I've got an opinion or anything worth contributing outside of my technical competence. And that might be the case on technical, but what we're talking about here is how do you electrify an organization to head in a direction that they can't see, feel or touch? And so co-elevation is about once again, leadership maturity, not technical capability. Because I think that, you know, in most teams what you have is that the enablers, the people in charge of the enabling functions, often are not seen as the business drivers. So then they, their opinions may be not as relevant, not as respected, not as encouraged around that table.

So that team you're describing, really, it's just everyone's at the same level. And in natural fact, we're just business people trying to drive a result. I completely agree. I've got a really great example of an exec team at the moment. They've changed their vision. They've changed the strategy. They've changed their organisational structure. And they've taken a look at the structure of the leadership team at all sorts of levels. But if I look specifically at the exec level, the intent from the CEO is when you walk in this door is that you put your technical competence, your role or your department hat to one side and you've just got a hat on that says the leadership team. And so this is not about show and tell about what your department did or what sort of safety records were held last month or how many goods did we produce or what the CSAT or NPS scores were. That's done in an operational meeting. Co-elevation to this particular CEO means you're turning up, prepared to discuss, debate and decide the key areas of this business. And I think it was Elon Musk that said, if you're not adding value and you're not getting value, then leave my meeting. Now I'm not a huge fan of Musk, but I love that statement. Co-elevation means that you're turning up prepared to give others, that you're rising together, you're making the boat go faster together, not just looking after your own.

Your own patch. distinction, I think, for what you've just said then is that literally the CEO has redefined the roles when they walk in the room. There was clarity there. There was clarity, right. This is not a normal meeting. We're here as business people. We respect each other's opinions. So please contribute freely to anything. Do you know the other thing that he did is that two things. One I want to reflect on, it's called silence, and the other one is called tough conversation. And so one, he's got the ability, and he's uncomfortable with it, but he's got the ability to sit back and let the rest of the team sit in their uncomfortableness as opposed to rescuing them each time and reminding them to co-elevate. So he's leading from behind as opposed to necessary all the time in front. And the second is that he's moved the tough conversation about going Hey, I expect more of you. There's that great line that says I have high expectations and I'm sure you can meet them, which is why this feedback is important. And then in comes the line and he's having those conversations. He's moved those from one on one private to the happening in the room. And as they're seeing that they can also do that to him, there's that modeling of just great comes back to our previous episode. That is extreme ownership.

They're all equal. You're sitting on a round table. Everybody's got a reason why they're there, but it's certainly not their functional role. Yeah, look, I think this of all of the drivers is that one where this is the ultimate. This is really what people should be aiming at. I think it takes a certain type of leader to get your leadership team to this It's one of the lowest scored drivers out of the 12. As long as people understand exactly what we're trying to get people to do, because there can easily be confusion between collaborating, teamwork, all these other words that people go, yeah, we do that, we do that, I share this, I share that, et cetera. This is at a different level. And maybe that's a good way to wrap up, because I'll say what I said in the beginning again, or at least attempt to.

Look, I'm all for you having great teamwork or high performance teams, we call it. We've got many programs that help organizations do that. I'm even okay with collaboration. And as you say, this is the ultimate level. This is level five leadership happening here. But we've got high expectations of the clients that we work with. so collaboration and teamwork allow you to execute on your plan. It's a required ingredients for operational efficiency. Co-elevation dictates the speed at which you can move through these 12 drivers and sustain momentum. And that makes a huge difference.

So here are some top tips for leaders on how we build co-elevation. We'd invite you to lead across, not just down. So how can you influence peers with the same energy that you use when you're leading your direct reports so that you get some of that horizontal leadership? Because I really think that horizontal leadership enables the vote to go a little bit faster and deliver those results. To create mutual accountability, we talked about this in our accountability step in the previous episode make it safe and expected like the story of the CEO that we used for peers to challenge coach and back each other and do that in a in an extreme fashion. It's called out. It's welcomed those conversations, those tough conversations ahead in the room. Three, let's reward collective wins. So celebrate success that crosses teams and functions, make collaboration or co-elevation a performance metrics. So you, you, you literally pull out the number of times where people were able to co-elevate and you heightened that in terms of your storytelling and celebrating progress. And then last of all, you need to build trust fast. And I think one of the things we said on a previous episode is trust takes a while to build, but you can lose it fast. You also could choose to trust in a heartbeat and hope that the person proves you true. So let's be transparent about motives and decisions.

People elevate each other when they believe in the intent. And when that intent is there, then that enables us to move quickly. And as always, we want to make sure that we end with a unifying challenge. So the question we're going to leave you with prior to the next two episodes where we talk about the two amplifiers that cut all the way through these 12 drivers. Here's the question. Who are you elevating and who's elevating you? And have you said thank you? Looking forward to talking to you on the next podcast.