“Collaboration is hard work, but it can also be easy work”
So said a client this week when reflecting on what they are learning about collaboration. And just one day earlier another client said something very similar when talking about her collaboration journey: “It’s hard but it’s easy”.
What do they mean? I think they are saying that authentic collaboration draws on basic human capabilities that we all learned as children, hence “easy”. And it requires changing old habits and behaviours and challenging deeply held assumptions and thought patterns.
So hard!
Let’s take a closer look.
Why is collaboration easy?
- I don’t need to be the one with all the answers.
- I like to be curious.
- I can get help from my collaborators.
- Just listening can be very useful.
- I can be myself – authentic and human.
- Conversations make all the difference.
- I don’t always need to plan everything out.
Pretty easy, huh? And yet…
Why is collaboration hard?
- Admitting that I don’t know can be very uncomfortable.
- I’m used to being the person who knows things, which makes it hard to be curious about what other people know.
- Asking for help is counter-cultural and makes me feel vulnerable.
- Listening can be much harder than telling.
- I’m worried that I don’t know how to make collaboration work, so I stick to business-as-usual approaches.
- It feels risky to invite other people in when I am feeling unsure about the way ahead.
- It’s difficult to have my practices, beliefs and assumptions challenged by ‘outsiders’.
Quite hard to do then.
I must agree with my wise clients. Collaboration is both easy to do and difficult at the same time. Perhaps it helps to simply acknowledge this fact, and acknowledge our natural discomfort at working with others. And it helps further to focus on what makes collaboration easy. Don’t over think it. Just let your natural human capabilities shine and get the conversation started. What could be easier than that?