Collaboration can be messy work. To do it well means sharing your ideas and staying open to other people's. It means letting someone bend your thinking, or set it aside entirely. True collaboration involves talking, listening, trying, and letting go. It's not always comfortable.

 

Sometimes we skip it for that reason. It's easier to divide and conquer, "you do this, I'll do that," than to really co-labor together.

 

AND…there is joy in the messiness!

 

Collaboration can be playful. It expands thinking, sharpens it, and sometimes produces things the group didn't think were possible. When you let yourself notice that, the work becomes something else entirely.

 

Collaboration has the potential to be creative work, when we let it.

 

So what if instead of feeling impatient, you brought a mindset of joy? You get to play with ideas and make something better together.

 

Next time you're in collaborative work, try naming the joy out loud. What might you say to the other beautiful humans in the room to invite them into the messiness with you?

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