What’s your definition of collaboration?
Have you ever had a conversation with someone in which you realized, at one point or the other, that there’s just no point in further continuing the communication? That whether you talk for 4 more seconds or 4 more hours the outcome of the conversation will be the same?
Has that scenario ever happened to you in your career, in relationships, in closed office rooms or in working remotely?
Have you ever looked around a room and realized you’re not really building a career but following someone else’s to-do list?
As a digital designer in the creative field who has worked with a big range of both creative and corporate environments, one thing I realized later on in my career that was vital for my growth, my time and for accepting my self-value: how each and every one of us perceives “collaboration” is completely different one person from another, one environment from another, one culture from another, one age group from another. And today, more than ever, how you perceive the term collaboration can completely make or break you.
Why? Because hierarchy is dying. Elon Musk is currently tweeting a post-apocalyptic emo meme created by a 16 year old, Jack Dorsey is posting Radiohead songs like a teenager trying to “communicate” online with his dad, an almost-40 year old whatever influencer is currently crying in front of a camera to an invisible audience and saying “i apologize”.
As a species, collectively, we have never learned how much we’re all clueless more. We have never let our guards down more, worn more casual shoes, looser pyjamas and “socially shared” embarrassing things more comfortably. And the reason why is simple: hierarchy is dying. If you’re the boss, you have to pay attention because one minute or the other, we might bring you down. Every day we wake up in the digital world we are learning more and more how human we all are, how reachable, how relatable and unrelatable we are.
Now of course, in heavily patriarchal societies that have a whole history of men being mostly in charge, is where the term collaboration proves to be problematic. Not one client you’ll encounter won’t tell you this: “We collaborate! We listen! Our management is flat!”
That is amazing. The copywriters must be over the moon. But if you look closely, or start communicating and collaborating with some of these environments, that’s when the question marks start being raised.
What is your definition of a collaboration?
Is it “I will listen to you, I will let you express your ideas until you’re done, and then, once you’re done I will do what I think is right”
or is it “I don’t have the answer, you don’t have the answer, you have something to give and so do I, let’s try building something together and see what we can come up with”?
Now one more question: which of these 2 potential scenarios do you feel is more in line with harmony in nature and not chaos?
Don’t get me wrong. I am not in any way interested in labelling myself as the holier-than-thou collaborator, this is just an observation that I realized once I started living comfortably, making a high income while feeling very much in tune with the world. Whereas earlier in my career, when plenty of situations of hopelessness took place, I completely shut out, was aloof, uncommunicative and stopped collaborating. And looking back now with a wiser eye, the reason why I did that was simple: in those environments there were no conversations. There were emotions, yes. There were politics. there was someone to please, someone to gossip about, someone to complain to. There was the chaotic side of nature. As an introvert in the creative field, there was nothing to look forward to because everything seemed to operate on people and not ideas.
The art of listening is timeless. It takes just a little time to figure out in a room who’s a good listener from who’s a good talker. And while both are very much needed for society (and for maintaining society’s sanity as well), I only ever picked the first batch to be my teachers. We might have never talked, we might have never had a heart-to-heart, we don’t follow each other on Instagram, heck, a handful of those teachers I have never even met, but the “influence” they had on me was life-long, something I carry and value. Why? Because when I look at their work, their legacy, their contribution to the world, in and of itself it is a collaboration, a palette of ideas to work with, a backdrop to perform in front of, an active natural thing taking place and inviting collaboration.
The sense of self when you’re a listener isn’t some kind of fascist super-heavy grotesque sculpture set up in a room, where everyone comes in to adore, clap, snap a few pictures then leave. No. It’s a work in progress. A sculpture currently and constantly taking shape. You know, like the tech future we all are building collaboratively. As clueless as we all are. And that has to be interesting. And that has to make you enjoy waking up everyday and choosing to give and contribute to the world.
