Collaborative Leadership: Building Teams That Move with You
How Women Leaders Build Sustainable Impact Through Collaborative Leadership and Strategic Pivots
Leadership has never been a straight line for me. It has been a series of pivots—many planned, many unexpected—that shaped not only how I lead, but why I lead the way I do. After more than 25 years in financial services, spanning product management, compliance, operations, and now business ownership, one truth has remained constant: collaboration is the engine of sustainable leadership.
Women leaders—especially those navigating senior roles—know this intuitively. We build, we connect, we bridge, and we elevate. Collaborative leadership is more than a style; it’s a discipline. It’s a commitment to creating environments where people feel seen, valued, and empowered to contribute their best work.
From managing multimillion-dollar operational functions to guiding executives through cost-efficiency strategies, my journey has reinforced that collaborative teams don’t happen by accident. They are built with intention.
The Power of the Pivot
My career has been defined by pivots that forced me to stretch, adapt, and lead differently. I’ve moved from risk operations to product ownership, from compliance to treasury management, and now into building my consulting business. Each transition brought tension—new expectations, new teams, new challenges—but that tension became my teacher.
As I’ve shared before, “Your pivot is not a detour; it’s your differentiator.” Every shift expanded my capacity to lead collaboratively because it required me to listen deeply, learn quickly, and build trust with new groups of people.
Many women leaders tell me their most defining moments came not from certainty, but from transition. Pivots sharpen our instincts. They deepen our empathy. They remind us that leadership is not about solving every problem alone—it’s about creating the conditions where answers can emerge.
Collaboration Begins with Clarity
In every leadership role I’ve held, clarity has been the foundation of collaboration. In my last banking role, where I managed multiple operational locations supporting Treasury Solutions, clarity was essential.
Teams cannot collaborate around confusion. They collaborate around purpose.
Clarity means:
- Providing clear expectations and supporting teams when ambiguity arises
- Establishing documented processes to ensure consistency
- Creating transparent communication channels across teams
- Defining accountability to strengthen relationships and mitigate risk
When I implemented operational efficiencies that significantly increased productivity and revenue, it wasn’t because I had a magic formula. It was because I aligned teams around a shared understanding of what needed to improve—and why. I aligned the goal, then aligned the path.
Women leaders are often natural translators of vision, strategy, and nuance. But clarity requires courage. It requires saying, “This is where we’re going,” even when the path is still forming.
Building Teams That Trust the Mission
Trust is the currency of collaboration. Without it, teams operate in silos. With it, they operate in synergy.
Throughout my career—working with compliance teams, product managers, legal partners, and operational staff—I’ve learned that trust is built through consistency, not perfection.
Trust grows when leaders:
- Show up the same way on good days and hard days
- Communicate openly, even when the message is tough
- Invite feedback—and act on it
- Share credit generously
- Protect their teams publicly and coach them privately
As a strategic leader, I often carried the weight of being both visionary and stabilizer. Collaborative leadership allows that weight to be distributed. When teams trust the mission—and trust their leader—they move with you, not behind you.
The Collaborative Leader as Connector
One of the most powerful roles a leader can play is that of connector.
In every organization I’ve served, I’ve bridged gaps between operations and product, compliance and business lines, technology and customer experience. Collaboration thrives when leaders connect:
- People to purpose
- Teams to resources
- Departments to one another
- Ideas to execution
In a previous role, I partnered with Ernst & Young to enhance Treasury risk models. The success of that initiative wasn’t just technical; it was relational. It required aligning stakeholders who spoke different “languages” and ensuring everyone understood the impact of their contribution.
Women leaders are uniquely skilled at seeing the whole board. We understand interdependence. Collaboration is not about everyone doing the same thing—it’s about everyone doing the right thing, together.
Creating a Culture of Continuous Improvement
Collaboration is not static. It evolves as teams evolve.
One of the most transformative initiatives I implemented was a team training model that increased engagement among remote employees. It wasn’t just about skill-building; it was about connection-building. When teams feel invested in, they invest back.
A collaborative culture:
- Encourages ongoing learning in a safe environment
- Treats mistakes as data for growth
- Embraces innovation to improve efficiency and teamwork
- Regularly reviews processes to remove assumptions and mitigate risk
- Celebrates wins collectively and improves as a team
As a franchise owner with ERA Group, collaboration is embedded in the business model. This global franchise, with more than 30 years of success, operates on a shared understanding: if you win, I win. Owners learn from one another, share innovation, and continuously improve together.
Collaborative cultures create true win-win outcomes.
The Courage to Lead Differently
Collaborative leadership is not soft leadership. It is courageous leadership.
It requires:
- Letting go of ego
- Being comfortable leading from behind
- Sharing power and trusting others with the mission
- Listening more than speaking
- Making decisions with your team, not just for your team
This leadership style is not for the faint of heart. It is for those who see leadership as a responsibility—not just a role.
Leadership is not about control; it is about influence. It is about creating momentum through people, not pressure. It is the confidence to say, “I don’t have to be the smartest person in the room—I just need to create a room where smart people can contribute.”
Your Team Is Your Legacy
At every stage of my career, the teams I built—and the leaders who emerged from them—have been my greatest legacy.
Processes change. Products evolve. Strategies shift. But people carry forward the impact of collaborative leadership long after you’ve moved on.
Whether you’re leading a global organization, a regional division, or a small but mighty team, your influence is multiplied through the people you empower.
Collaborative leadership is not just a strategy. It is a commitment to building something bigger than yourself. For women navigating the complexities of senior leadership, it is the differentiator that turns pivots into power.
Collaborative leadership is not just a management style—it is the breath of transformation.
