“In my previous role as Director of Sustainability for the City of Atlanta, the COS equipped me and my team with the skills and confidence to work with multiple stakeholders with competing interests - none of whom we had any formal power or authority over. Today, I use the COS to successfully structure all work - there is no project too large or complex for this system. COS has become a part of my personal brand. The trust and confidence it creates are a key differentiator."
- Mandy Schmitt Mahoney, President; Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance
 

Assess Your Workplace

This assessment measures the extent to which you are experiencing (or creating) an environment conducive to effective collaboration. We appreciate your candid responses. The time you invest will increase your awareness and sensitivity to the environmental factors that support (or undermine) collaboration in your workplace.

Take the survey now. (Estimate: 10 to 15 minutes)

Note: The survey may be taken anonymously. If you choose to provide your email address, we'll send you a summary report comparing your responses to the averages.

If you'd like to receive a customized report based exclusively upon responses from your team or organization, contact Mark Voorsanger at mark@thecos.org.

A Closer Look...

Many companies list teamwork and collaboration as among their core values.  When asked, however, leaders and their teams are rarely aligned around the specific skills, behaviors and environmental factors that contribute to effective collaboration in the workplace.  As a result, collaboration suffers and businesses fail to achieve desired levels of worker engagement and productivity.  In order for workers at all levels to collaborate effectively, the following key factors must be attended to and nurtured:

1. Time Pressure: People must have sufficient time to focus on their individual work and to help each other to succeed.
2. Trust: People must feel sufficient levels of trust toward and from colleagues. It's worth noting that effective collaboration is also a powerful input to building trust within teams.
3. Communication: People must be capable of communicating openly and listening without becoming overly reactive.
4. Problem-Solving: People must have the skills to diagnose problems and build support for solving them collaboratively.
5. Meetings: People must be willing and able to conduct effective and productive meetings in a way that meets the needs of all meeting participants.
6. Power & Authority: Leaders must remain conscious of, and limited in, their use of power and authority to influence others.
7. Decision-Making: People must feel appropriately involved in the business-related decisions that affect them.
8. Accountability: People must know how to hold others accountable and, in turn, must be willing to be held accountable.
9. Priorities: People must feel empowered to name and address competing priorities.
10. Fairness: People must feel as though they are being treated equitably by their leaders, co-workers and the policies of their organization.

The COS Work Environment Survey has been designed to assess the current state of collaboration in the workplace. Our aim is to help leaders and teams to identify and prioritize the areas where training and development investments are likely to have the greatest impact. The aggregate response data will serve to expand our understanding of the areas where support is generally most needed in the workplace, and to identify the trends that exist among companies of varying size and operating within various business sectors.