Transformative Collaborations
What makes a great collaboration? I mean really, truly great. Not just the ones where we all transact to get to an outcome, but the ones that 🐛transform🦋 us in the process.
I am talking about the ones that challenge us - crack us wide open, make us uncomfortable but still held. Like a twin flame, but in a work setting.
The ones that are patient enough to let us feel around for the light switch of our intuition.
The ones that are generous with us as we, together, figure out the shape of something that is still fuzzy and emergent.
These collaborations also strike a beautiful balance, in what Jessie Woolley-Wilson calls "Benevolent Friction": hard on ideas, soft on people.
When I heard Adam Bryant share this from Jessie Woolley Wilson, it made so much sense and I look forward to aspiring to embody it for many years to come.
You may or may not have noticed that it's been a few weeks since I've posted here (a combination of the algorithms of life, calendars, and platforms mean we aren't always able to keep up with one another).
Finding the time and the words are two things that have kept me away. Specifically:
I have been enveloped by a few inspired end-of-year collaborations. Majorly grateful, 10/10 would sign up for each again (and again).
I am still feeling around for language to describe things I know in my bones, but don't yet have language for (< some phrasing borrowed from one of my favorite prompts on Nitzan Hermon's site Creative Surplus).
And so, taking a bit from column A (inspired collaborations) and a bit from column B (finding language to describe intuitions), I wanted to share some of the key ingredients I look for and aspire to create in transformative collaborations...
Key Ingredients for Transformative Collaborations - WIP
Be generous and patient for language, ideas, and possibilities to emerge. Build in space and slack in the system to allow for this.
Speak truth, seek truth. Honesty is the greatest gift - it means you care enough about the relationship to say something.
"A player" in craft. "A player" in attitude. Team player above self. No exceptions.
Play the infinite game - generous with time, knowledge, network. Be wary of those playing the finite game - hoarding time, knowledge, access, resources.
Foster benevolent friction - be tough on ideas, but soft on people.
Seek first to understand, before being understood. Get really good at asking sincere questions - and listen for the answers, not for what to say next.
Be curious about your collaborators - ask why and how they arrive at things, in a genuine way that invites them to be better known (and better know themselves, too).
Whenever possible, enable what lights your collaborator's soul on fire.
Be a contributor to their flow state; be a bright spot they look forward to.
Give a little to get a little - when you can, grab the back office and the admin off someone else's plate.
Pass the microphone - and set up the speaker to be seen in their best possible light. Be their publicist, agent, and wedding DJ. Play their favorite song, take a photo from their best side.
Resist a single gravity for as long as you can - let a few things be possible and true, until time and / or data say otherwise.
Turn things over in your palm like a stone - work to smooth and clarify, but never hold anything too tightly.
Don't debug your features and don't ask others to, either. Find collaborations that allow your "too-per-powers" to shine and grow strong; foster the same for others.
Be willing, able, and ready to be wrong; to be surprised; to be confused. Delight in it, even.
Speaking of confusion: allow for it, welcome it, and do not look at it as a problem to be solved - rather, a step and a space that invites creativity. Nitzan put this nicely when he said:
"High-context confusion is the ability to communicate abstractly and to spend time in unknown spaces together without losing patience or being anemic. It is an active state of conversation, expecting something but nothing specific.
17. [[more to come...]]
I thought about making the 'anti' version of this list, but I've realized something lately that I will put words to here:
I don't want to be pushed by my problems -or the problems of the world- I want to be led by the dreams, visions, and actions that get us to higher ground.
And especially here on Turtle Academy & Ventures, I want to continue to focus on putting everything I've got into making my small part of the world -and anyone I can positively affect in my path- a little better each and every day.
In closing, and if you're up to it here publicly or in a 1:1 message, I'd love to know your take on one or more of the following:
What was the last transformative collaboration you were a part of? What was your personal from-->to? And how did your collaborator enable that for you?
Anything you'd add to the 16+ ingredient list above?
What do you know in your bones, but don't yet have language for?
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AI was neither used nor harmed in the writing this post 🤖💛
Originally posted on LinkedIn here.
