Effective Collaboration

I’m going to make a blanket statement that I believe to be true: nothing important happens with a single person acting alone. It could be your family, it could be your coworker, it could be a friend, but every single one of us needs to collaborate with someone to succeed.

That doesn’t mean collaboration is easy – in fact, more often than not, it can be really hard.

Effective collaboration requires two things: humility and empathy.

What is humility? It’s not insecurity, false modesty, or being overly tentative. No, humility is simply knowing that you don’t know it all – admitting that you need help. Humility is asking a question and actually wanting to know the answer.

But humility isn’t enough.

Collaboration also requires empathy. Empathy is not sympathy. It’s not pity. It’s identifying with the challenges that someone else is facing – feeling what they are going through, relating to them and understanding their motivations. It’s acknowledging that whatever you’re going through is as important and valuable as whatever I’m going through. I may have my issues, I may have my resentments and grievances and problems, but you’ve got yours, too. My perspective is valuable, but so is yours.

Humility and empathy are required to actually hear?and?see someone else. And, unless you can really do both, you can’t collaborate with them effectively.

And the last thing I’ll say about collaboration is that, if you’re going to collaborate effectively, you must work with people who think, look, and feel differently than you, and who have different experiences. This might feel uncomfortable, but problems only get solved – innovation only happens – when you bring new perspectives to the table. It’s definitely easier to work with people who agree with you, who think like you, who can finish your sentences, who have the same background and experiences.

While this may be a comfortable setting, it’s not how you solve problems.