INsight/ Collaboration is Key

Coach Wouter speaking in Tsukuba, Japan.

Manila, 2 May 2018 — Millennial keynote speaker Brian Fanzo brought it home for me with these words: the future of innovation is collaboration.

The greatest time in history is now, according to Brian Fanzo, the founder of iSocialFanz LLC, a social strategy consultancy. After listening to him, my guess is that many people will agree. There is an infectious enthusiasm in his message and in the way he delivers it.

Fanzo's insights helped me to synergize many things I have learned over the past year, about the fundamental changes that are taking place in how people around the world learn and do business. Millennials, of course, are at the forefront of these changes, and there is much to learn from what they are discovering.

To see how the changes play out in Asia's innovation scene, take a look at 30 under 30 Asia 2018 in the Forbes Asia edition, which presents a line-up of exemplary innovators in their twenties from countries all across the region.

Back to Fanzo. Three C words feature prominently in his social media strategy message: Change, Collaboration, and Community. And as I continued listening, I noted how he added three more, creating conversations and connections.

At the core of Fanzo's strategy lies the imperative of building trust with your clients, partners, and the stakeholders in your business. From my experience in leadership training and coaching, I could not agree more. The best results happen when the training and coaching graduates become collaborators in pursuit of showing up with leadership behaviors, taking on challenges, and committing to grow more leaders around them.

What is important in building trust, says Fanzo, is to be able to share your own story in a way that invites a conversation and creates a deeper connection. This is something I am working on.

In my training and coaching work, my inclination has been to focus less on myself and more on the people I work with. Observing this, a trusted fellow coach once told me that I had left out to tell my own story, about myself, how I became passionate about growing leaders, and why this matters. Now I am taking his words to heart.

As Fanzo sums up his talk, he closes with a powerful message to show up as yourself in your work, to become more self-aware as you do so, and to share more about yourself with the people who matter to your business.

Watch this space for more as I work with what I learned from Brian Fanzo and his message. Meanwhile, why not go ahead to check out some of his talks on YouTube. You might discover how you can create more innovation using collaboration and his suite of other C words.