Today I want to write about collaboration, as in what it looks like when it's ideal.
Okay, let's get into it.
A great collaboration is built on a foundation of trust.
It flourishes when collaborators make an intentional decision:
"I trust your expertise and believe we can create something here that is more than the sum of our parts."
Trust can be established early by celebrating common values, interests, backgrounds, or mutual friends.
It grows when each person in a collaboration does what they say they're going to do, plans ahead, and is careful not to scope creep.
Trust is built on self-knowledge, regular communication, and a spirit of abundance.
Two additional factors have an important role to play as well:
1. Shared strategy (this is the nuts-and-bolts part)
2. Matched energy (this is a little more nebulous but crucial)
Strategy is how the work actually gets done. Talk ahead of time about what program you'll use together. How often you'll meet or talk. What the main goal and timeline will be. Share your concerns and fears, hopes and dreams, then address them.
Finally, much of a successful collaboration comes down to matched energy. It doesn't have to be 50-50, but know that one person cannot keep going if the other disappears or pulls back significantly.
We don't talk enough about what fine-tuned energy sensors we all have in our minds. Honor them. Speak to them. Match them.
Trust.
Strategy.
Energy.
Success.
What am I missing, wise friends? Have you had a collaboration soar? Crash?
What did you learn?
The question below entered my brain last week (thanks, brain!), and I've been turning it over ever since:
"Who gets to experience your incandescence?"
Who?
Why?
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