The crucial collaboration step most credit union leaders miss

Jackie Brown, ACC, Founder, JB Communications Group

Eight pairs of eyes looked up at me as I invited them to share what surfaced in their paired conversations. This workshop was just a few minutes in and this group was already leaning in, eager to learn more.

Right away, one participant shared what came up in her conversation. Immediately across the table, someone else agreed and heads started nodding around the table. It would have been easy to summarize and move on. Then someone said, “Well… our group actually went in a different direction.”

My heart soared. I was eager to hear more.

Not because of the disagreement itself, but because this was the moment that determines whether collaboration becomes real or stays performative. This was a crossroads – would this team flounder or flow?

She went on to describe how her group had approached the topic from a completely different angle. The others leaned in to ask questions. People started sharing examples to clarify ideas. There was gentle pushback as they tested their assumptions out loud.

What mattered to one person didn’t quite match what mattered to another and instead of smoothing it over, they stayed with it. They were thinking together.

That is the part of collaboration many leaders unintentionally rush past.

When I speak with senior leaders about group engagement challenges, I often hear: “We just need everyone aligned around the goal.” Yes, goals matter, so does clarity, and execution; but alignment that hasn’t been tested rarely holds under pressure.

Alignment that’s polite agreement might get the project moving more quickly, but will encounter friction further down the road.

What gets skipped is the phase before alignment, the part where people make sense of the terrain together. When the group is given the opportunity to surface constraints, name tensions, compare interpretations, they refine what the work actually requires.

Without that shared sense-making, alignment becomes compliance. People nod. They execute and later, when friction appears, they wonder why things feel off.

Collaboration needs more MAP moments:

Make Sense.
Align.
Proceed.

Most organizations are comfortable with alignment and execution. The discipline is protecting the Make Sense phase, especially when time feels tight and authority sits unevenly in the room.

The higher your role, the faster a room will align around your phrasing. Not necessarily because it’s fully understood but because it feels efficient.

Strong leaders resist the urge to steer too quickly. They allow the “different direction” voice to speak. They also invite contrasting perspectives. They let the room test ideas before settling on them.

And they do this not to create chaos or to entertain dissent for its own sake, but to ensure the group is solving the right problem together.

One participant in that workshop said it plainly: “We usually jump straight to solving. But we could probably move faster if we slowed down long enough to map first.”

That’s the paradox many teams discover too late: collaboration doesn’t begin when the goal is stated, it begins when people feel invited to make sense of the work together, before the solution hardens.

In credit unions, where trust and stewardship are central to the mission, this discipline matters even more. Decisions carry downstream impact across departments, communities, and members. The leaders who build resilient alignment aren’t the ones who speak first. They’re the ones who create space for the room to think. And once a team has experienced that kind of shared sense-making, they don’t want to go back to meetings that skip it.

Want to welcome more MAP moments? Let’s have a real conversation about what that looks like for you and your credit union. If that’s a conversation you’re ready for, I’d love to help. Learn more at jbcommunicationsgroup.com.