How to be an amazing collaborator
Learning to be an amazing collaborator is a crucial business skill. It makes people want to invite you back again and again and it makes people naturally spread the word about you and your business.
How can you be an amazing collaborator?
The first skill: Be willing to share your ideas openly.
Even though it can be scary and you're mind might suddenly fill with a thousand reasons not to share like:
you're not smart enough
other people have better ideas
you're not confident enough
your ideas are stupid
(and by the way I and every creator out there have had every fear you could possible imagine come up)
Whatever fears come up don't hold back - share your ideas anyway.
Your ideas are always better or more helpful than you think, and sharing them is the only way to rewire those fears (because you'll see people responding to them in a way you're not used to, with consideration, curiosity, excitement, or their own spontaneous ideas)
Your homework is to practice sharing your ideas.
Share your business ideas, cooking ideas, fun event ideas, sex ideas, t-shirt folding ideas, anti-racism ideas, squatting on the toilet ideas, whatever you want to collaborate on.
Share your ideas openly.
The second way to become a great collaborator is to let go of your ideas as soon as they come through.
No one likes a person who tries claim credit for everything and force their ideas to the top.
Let go of your "I want to be special" stance. That's a competitive stance.
Trade it in for a collaborative stance like "our team is gonna kick so much ass"
Your homework is to practice sharing your ideas and then letting go of credit. This especially applies to us white dudes.
Go practice and experience the totally crazy, counter-intuitive bliss of no longer stressing about getting credit for everything.
People will notice that you're an extremely generous team member and they won't be able to stop themselves from wanting to collaborate with you, because it's such a rare skill.
The third skill you need to become an amazing collaborator is to become an excellent appreciator.
I once asked an improv genius friend of mine what secret was to improvising with others, and he said, unto me...
Your job is to make everyone else look like a million bucks.
Think about the times people have really appreciated you. It adds fuel to our engine effortlessly. It makes us feel safe, and like we can really stretch to come up with non-conventional ideas (which is usually the pathway to invention).
If you can genuinely appreciate others, you can change the vibe of any room into a magical creation vortex.
Your homework is to spend the next few days appreciating the crap out of everyone and noticing what happens.
The fourth way to become an amazing collaborator is to follow the idea flow.
What does that mean?
First - When you're coming up with new ideas, follow the flow: go big, silly, embarrassing.
Let the worst ideas come first and make your way gradually to the best ones.
Then - When your team is in realist-mode, follow the flow: do calculations, whip out that spreadsheet and get to work. Lead by contributing.
Finally - when you're all in critic mode, follow the flow: get specific, test those ideas, don't hold back.
Your homework: use your awareness tool to figure out what stage your collaborations are in and then lead the charge by following the flow.
And that, my friends, is how to be an amazing collaborator.
I hope you liked this series. Follow for more great tips on https://worththejourney.com.
