Read Time:
Collaboration doesn’t start with a partnership. It starts with a conversation you haven’t had yet.
Moving out of siloed leadership doesn’t require a structural overhaul or a campus-wide initiative. It starts smaller than that.
The silo was built one withheld email, one declined meeting, or one unshared piece of data at a time. It opens the same way: incrementally, through deliberate choices to let something move outward that you would normally have kept close.
For the Critical Thinker leader, this is genuinely uncomfortable. It requires releasing some control over how work is used and interpreted. It means being visible before you’re certain the work is ready. It means trusting that the institution can handle something you’ve been carefully guarding.
That discomfort is not a signal to stop. It’s a signal that you’re doing the right thing.
Three Practices for the Siloed Leader
Share something before you’re asked. Identify one piece of information, data, or expertise your unit holds that a peer unit would benefit from. Then share it without waiting for a request. The discomfort of doing this proactively is instructive. If it feels strange to give away what you know, that’s worth examining.
Accept the next collaborative invitation you would normally deflect. Don’t negotiate it down to observer status or a minimal advisory role. Participate at the level the invitation intended. Let your work be visible, and let some portion of the outcome belong to someone else. Notice what happens internally when you’re not in full control of a result your work contributed to.
Make your unit’s work legible to the institution. Legibility is the foundation of institutional trust. Peers can’t collaborate with a unit they don’t understand, and they can’t advocate for resources or opportunities on your behalf if they don’t know what you’re doing. This doesn’t require you to create a newsletter. But it does require communication, whether it’s a brief standing update in a shared meeting, a short summary sent to peers, or a document made accessible that used to live only inside your team’s drive.
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