The Collaborator: Discover Soccer as a Metaphor for Global Business Leadership

By Winsor Jenkins

SECOND PRINTING

AXIOM BUSINESS BOOK AWARD WINNER - INTERNATIONAL / GLOBAL BUSINESS - BRONZE MEDAL

We live in a metaphorical world and they are like magic They are everywhere and it's hard to change metaphors we live by. However, new metaphors like the one introduced in The Collaborator: Discover Soccer as a Metaphor for Global Business Leadership, are needed more today than ever to help people comprehend and navigate in today's global business world. This is a world where teams and team-based applications continue to grow in the workplace. And team collaboration is essential to achieving results.

Written as a business allegory, The Collaborator is a story about a team leader's introduction to an innovative, yet practical framework to develop collaborative leadership skills for harnessing the power of connections across a global team's network to effectively collaborate.

Embedded in this framework are team principles to describe a collaborative mind-set, along with essential competencies to describe a collaborative skill set. The principles come from the game of soccer and mirror a successful soccer teams behavior on the field. The competencies arealigned with the principles and come from the Polaris Competency Model. Combined, they provide a developmental pathway to unlock the collaboration-code and produce positive results.

Soccer is a global sport and language that serves as a new and powerful metaphor for people working on teams in today's global business world. It represents an environment where people only achieve success by effectively collaborating. Taking advantage of soccer's global recognition and appeal, its metaphor offers an opportunity for people to act in positive ways to effectively collaborate.

As the story unfolds, a first-time manager is challenged to develop a collaborative mind-set, along with a collaborative skill set. On her learning and development journey, she is introduced to several team principles and essential competencies that, when combined, enable her to unlock the collaboration code for leading her team. She is challenged to learn this in real time with the support of her supervisor, along with members of her global team.

If you agree that collaboration is a critical practice for generating team results in a world where people must be highly competent in adapting to changing conditions, assimilate new information on the run, and apply multiple skills across a network - all in real time, you will find The Collaborator offers a powerful pathway for developing team leaders (and teams).

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0979572401
• ISBN13: 9780979572401
• Release Date: June 2008
• Publisher: DW Pub
• Length: 132 Pages
• Weight: 0.41 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 12 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 6 to Postsecondary

Customer Reviews

An Idea Whose Time has Come

The next time you're faced with leading a global business team, think soccer. The Collaborator builds the case for using soccer as a metaphor to help business leaders manage global teams. The book, which is written as a fable, tells the story of Toni, an up-and-coming manager for a global manufacturing business. We meet Toni as she is promoted to lead a global team and we follow her on a journey as she learns about the game of soccer and how it applies to the challenges she faces as a new leader. Her manager and coach, Ron, acts as a mentor and leads by example as he teaches Toni about the 11 operating principles of soccer leadership. This practical guide offers a framework, namely the metaphor of soccer, that everyone can apply to successfully lead teams and achieve business success. If you're looking for a new way to teach the principles of team-based leadership, or a new language for talking about how leaders will succeed in the more globalized future of business, the Collaborator is an excellent choice.