Abstract

Collaboration is increasingly treated as a core capability in contemporary working life, yet leadership-development research suggests that developmental efforts often remain too generic, weakly contextualized, and insufficiently connected to the conditions under which participants must learn and perform. This theory-informed exploratory study examines how Norwegian union representatives define, operationalize, and reflect on collaborative capability development within a semester-long university course. The study adopts a qualitative document design based on 25 written course reports produced by Parat union representatives enrolled in the course Collaboration for the Future Working Life at Kristiania University of Applied Sciences in autumn 2025. The reports are analyzed as structured reflective development documents using cross-case thematic analysis. Conceptually, the article draws on collaboration research, leadership development, self-directed learning, self-leadership, and job demands–resources theory. The findings indicate that participants conceptualized collaborative capability as a multidimensional professional capability combining dialogic competence, trust-building, psychological safety, role-based bridge-building, assertive boundary-setting, and self-regulation under pressure. Development was typically organized through iterative practice cycles of self-evaluation, feedback, goal setting, monitoring routines, micro-practices for attention and stress regulation, environmental redesign, implementation, reflection, and adjustment. At the same time, the reports suggest that collaborative development was constrained by time pressure, emotional exposure, cumulative role demands, and fluctuating energy. Reported outcomes were typically incremental, including clearer communication, increased awareness of triggers, stronger boundary-setting, more sustainable role professionalism, and improved presence under strain. The article contributes a bounded, context-sensitive account of collaborative capability development as a self-directed, self-regulated, and resource-sensitive process of professional becoming. It further develops two connected practical–theoretical models: the Performance Pyramid, which clarifies the developmental architecture from identity awareness to energy and capability regulation and performance enactment, and the Self-Leadership Wheel of Becoming, which functions as an operational scaffold for self-evaluation, goal setting, feasible program design, implementation, reflection, and revision. Rather than presenting these models as universally validated, the article positions them as heuristic and processual contributions for understanding and supporting capability development in collaboration-intensive roles.

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