Thoughts on Collaboration
The irony is not lost on me that here I am, writing about collaborations, completely alone. Actually I’m actively avoiding other people for this because I feel like they would distract me from doing my best work. Then I decided to disseminate this information in a written form where you can consume it, but the text is fixed. Can you still collaborate with this text? Is our relationship still “collaboration”? You can decide for yourself below.
You’ve probably heard this before: “If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together.” Usually this is said to give a vote for working together, but is there a way to go far alone? Can you collaborate yourself?
So many questions so early in this blog post!
That being said/written, let’s get into it.
What is Collaboration?
Probably anywhere you look, you’ll see “collaboration” defined as working together with someone to create something together. Below I’m going to be a bit less Oxford English Dictionary and a little more Truesdell.
“Collaboration to me is entering into an environment where someone’s influence reframes your creative paradigm.”
My definition of collaboration is a looser one: Collaboration to me is entering into an environment where someone’s influence reframes your creative paradigm.
I’ve entered into a few extra-musical collaborations in my life, but most of this discussion will be framed from a musician’s perspective. I’ll talk about “meetings” and “projects”, which sounds like more corporate collaboration, but my life and experience stems from musical collaborations: rehearsals, working with composers, etc.
“I see our role in the creative process as one of shaping the arrow—shaping the tip of the arrow—so that it goes to its target; but not of being involved with the making of the arrow.”
First, something to chew on:
Can you collaborate with a composer who isn’t available and the piece is finished?
I say yes!
Do you need another person involved in the process?
I say no!
When I put a score up in front of me and dive into practicing, I am engaged in a collaboration with that composer, regardless of how alive or dead that composer is.
Certain motives or markings, communicated by the composer, frame my understanding of the piece’s structure, and as my interpretation develops, I may uncover new connections or instructions that I did not see before. Eventually, these instructions give the freedom for me to contribute my unique performance to an audience. Both the composer and I, the performer, have contributed to the creation of this piece, in the audience’s perspective. We are not co-creators (co-composers), but we are collaborators.
Whereas most people think of collaboration happening through daily or weekly meetings, I believe collaboration can happen on more monolithic cycles. Such as:
1956: composer composes piece
1992: composer dies
2011: I follow the composer’s instructions
2012: I eventually perform the work
My contribution to this collaboration only happens in the last few months before the performance, and the lifespan of this collaboration is decades. I vote still collaborative!
(P.S. This is the timeline for my performance of John Cage’s 27’ 10.554”, which was performed for his centennial celebration. No, there’s no recording that’s available and you might be bored with it anyway.)
Irvine Arditti wrote a wonderful perspective in his article for the collection Distributed Creativity: "I see our role in the creative process as one of shaping the arrow—shaping the tip of the arrow—so that it goes to its target; but not of being involved with the making of the arrow."
Collaboration vs. negotiation vs. employment/volunteering
There are a variety of reasons that two or more people would be working together. Even though there are numerous kinds of relationships in the world of creative work, here are three of the bigger “buckets”. Keep your eyes peeled for which relationship you need, or are currently in.
Employment is where you want someone to do a task for you, probably because they have specialized skills, or execute a segment of the project because they have more refined or targeted skills, and you can’t develop that skill on your timeline. You dictate what they do and they execute that task. Sometimes, because of their experience, they can offer some neat suggestions to their part of the project, or maybe they If you pay them its employment, if not, it’s volunteering, but either way it is generally a one-way relationship.
Negotiation is where two people are trying to get a pre-determined outcome and are interfacing with each other in hopes of achieving that outcome. This is generally a more adversarial relationship because the other people are seen as obstacles to achieving the collective goal.
Collaboration is where multiple people are working collectively, with various roles, but equally responsible for the outcome. (See my definition above too!)
Why Collaborate?
For me, I would want to collaborate because working with a specific person brings:
Bigger audience - Perhaps you want to reach and audience outside your field of knowledge. An example could be that you want to reach an audience mostly interested in fashion, so bring in a fashion designer who carries their audience with them. You will support the fashion designer by bringing your musical audience to them. The more people that are exposed to your work, the better!
Skills that I don’t have or can’t build in the short amount of time. We only know so much, so if someone is a virtuosic electronic musician and you are a virtuosic acoustic musician, you can create something unique together. However, it might take you years to learn the same skills that your collaborator has, which allows you to get into the project immediately.
A unique perspective on the work. Sometimes our own brains get into the same ruts and we believe someone else can frame the project in a unique way.
It’s a multi-person project - sometimes you just simply can’t do the project with just one set of hands, eyes, elbows, etc. Think string quartet — you just simply need three other people to complete this project. In recent times, there have been a lot of videos with one person overdubbing, or other live performances where one part is performed live and the remaining parts are pre-recorded (think Electric Counterpoint by Steve Reich) which avoids needing those pesky collaborators!
How do you start the collaboration?
I’m not the most social person in the universe (hence me making videos and writing blog posts instead of talking to you in person), so I understand the hesitation about communicating with other human beings.
Just reach out — Do you have a specific person in mind for your collaboration? If so, and you are simply dragging your feet on reaching out, get over it. Just get over it. Find their website or Insta-thing and send them a message. Just do it now, I’ll wait.
If you can’t get a hold of them, or can’t find their contact, then patience will be your key virtue. I trust that you will be able to connect with the right person, but you might have to be more patient than you originally intended. Also, that person that you thought was perfect for you may not truly be the ONE!
Patient Scavenger Hunt (curiously wait) — Do you have an idea of the kind of person who you think you should collaborate with but not a specific person? Then patience is your key to success. Be observant, patient, and put yourself in opportunities to meet that perfect person. Sometimes looking for the right person, whether in a personal relationship or working relationship, is a scavenger hunt where there are no clues.
Can you reach out to someone you know who could possibly help? Are there social media groups that would narrow down your search? Sometimes it helps to do a social media cold-call blast to ask for input. You never know who is going to have that magical connection that will put your perfect partner in front of you.
He just wanted to play catch with his dad…🥲
Find the person and the project will follow…
Sounds like the budget version of Field of Dreams.
Honestly, in many of my past collaborations, I did not have a specific project in mind, but I found people with whom I wanted to collaborate and we eventually thought up a project for the two of us. That interpersonal connection is, to me, more vital than the content produced.
Why work alone?
It is scary for some people to approach a project on their own, but I believe this should be the default for any project you start, and you should add collaborators only as they are needed. Here’s the reason: you are capable of more than you think!
🚨¡Anecdote alert! 🚨
I knew I wanted to collaborate with the singularly amazing fashion designer Jenny Lai on a project for an instrument shirt. We worked together and created this fabulously inventive shirt (read about that project here on Jenny’s website).
After the shirt was made, it was up to me to create the music for the shirt (as you can imagine, there is no pre-existing music composed for “shirt”). I went searching for composers to write a piece for this new medium, and thought of some folks that would’ve been perfect matches for it! I remember pitching this idea to a wonderfully creative composer and he said to me, “This sounds very interesting, and it sounds like it’s a you thing. You should write the music.”
Ug.
I can’t compose! So I swallowed my pride and procrastinated for years and eventually undertook the composition and am proud of the result, and the growth I fostered in myself to create something and put it in front of people. If you’re interested, here is the video of our collaboration.
😌Anecdote Alert: Subsided😌
Moral of the story is: push yourself to achieve more, build the skills and think more creatively before relying on others. You will be the one reaping the benefits of this hard work.
“...push yourself to achieve more, build the skills and think more creatively before relying on others. You will be the one reaping the benefits of this hard work.”
"FAQ: Don’t I need someone else to be original?”
Nope.
For those interested, I found a uniquely interesting article on not collaborating by John Croft in a book titled Distributed Creativity: Collaboration and Improvisation in Contemporary Music (see reference links below), where he makes the argument for working alone. He makes a good case for originality being able to come from a single person, simply by combining pre-existing elements and re-contextualizing them. He showed, for example, the end of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, second movement. Beethoven composed a second-inversion chord with a delayed melodic resolution to wrap up this movement. Neither second inversion chords nor delayed melodic resolutions were original, but putting them together in a new context (end of the movement) was. (N.b. Beethoven composed this piece by himself.) Croft brings up a point that very little is discovered in a vacuum, so you probably have the knowledge in your brain to make something extraordinarily unique.
You are original on your own, but you may not know it just yet.
Beethoven Seventh Symphony, end of mvt. 2
Morten Hansen, a management professor at University of California, Berkley, has a wonderful quote to support being critical of immediately jumping into group work. This time in business: “Too often a business leader asks, How can we get people to collaborate more? That’s the wrong question. It should be, Will collaboration on this project create or destroy value? In fact, to collaborate well is to know when not to do it.”
“Too often a business leader asks, How can we get people to collaborate more? That’s the wrong question. It should be, Will collaboration on this project create or destroy value? In fact, to collaborate well is to know when not to do it.”
“It is amazing what you can accomplish when you do not care who gets the credit!”
There are a few reasons to “go it alone”
You desire a streamlined process. Sometimes other ideas and paradigms can derail a train of thought or goal of a project. In today’s distracted world, sometimes it is nice to have a singular line of questioning and focus.
You desire an expedient process. Invariably other people will come to your collaborating table with contrasting ideas and methods, which can be a great foil to your own ideas. However the discussion of those ideas, negotiating of how to move forward, and consolations that you may have to make can slow the process.
You and your precious project, potentially.
You want a guaranteed unified idea. Sometimes you can collaborate with a unicorn (someone who shares your same values and you can both agree on the same goal together at the same time). But most often, when working together, your idea will become a Frankenstein of everyone’s suggestions. If you are looking for a guarantee that your idea is unified from soup to nuts, then set off alone.
You want the credit. It sounds weird to admit, but honestly this can be a good motivator for many of us, especially if there is prize or commission money involved!
You want to be more flexible and adaptable in the process and post-production. Pivoting, refocusing and revamping a project in the middle of the process is much easier with one person than two or more. Multiple people working together will require permission, organization, planning, etc. and you may miss out on opportunities or get bogged down in the process.
You don’t feel like you can trust others with this info or idea or process. Sometimes you have a great idea that you just need to keep to yourself and are worried that other people will want to adapt it in ways that will taint the purity of the idea. It’s okay to keep an idea to yourself for a while, or the whole process!
Collaborating with YOURSELF
I know what you’re thinking: “That doesn’t count! Someone else has to be present to ‘collaborate’!” But if you remember my definition of collaboration from above, you’ll remember that I define collaboration as “entering into an environment where someone’s influence reframes your creative paradigm”.
“entering into an environment…” this could simply be changing your mental frame of reference, or choosing to accept another point of view, even if you fabricate that point of view internally.
“…where someone’s influence reframes your creative paradigm.” Why can’t that paradigm be a new way of approaching the problem internally, or thinking about the piece or project from someone else’s point of view? Creativity is going to help a lot with this, and we’ll explore that briefly in the next section.
Here are some ways that you can step out of the grind and give yourself a new perspective.
Self-collaboration skills
Metacognition: This is basically “thinking about what you’re thinking about.” Can you step back, at a lunch break or at the end of the day, and think about your process? Were you approaching that problem in the most efficient way? Could you think about it in a new way? Could you change your paradigm? Could the information be re-organized or re-catalogued in your brain to help give a fresh perspective? The only way to answer these questions is to analyze what’s going on in that brain of yours!
Be able to laugh at yourself: sometimes getting something wrong or making a faux pax is embarrassing, but being able to realize this and laugh at yourself is paramount to working together with yourself. (P.S. Bonus points if you make yourself laugh and don’t feel the need to post about it on Instagram or DM someone the story of how charming you are.)
Support your needs: As humans we have needs and wants, and there is a fine line between the two. We can convince ourselves of needing more than is actually necessary. In a way, you should be your own supervisor or boss, and recognize what is truly needed to make your project fulfilling and “successful” (whatever that means for you), and how those needs can be different from the wants.
An example is: Someone wants to write a blog post about collaboration, which requires a dedicated amount of uninterrupted time. A chunk of uninterrupted time is what this person needs to execute this task at the highest level. After they sit down to write and have gotten the first paragraph written, they might say to myself, “I need a cup of tea.” A cup of tea is definitely not needed for this person to continue writing the next paragraph. Not only that, it will break up the chunk of uninterrupted time. In that break, this person may have lost their train of thought and been susceptible to outside distractions.***
***This story is completely apocryphal and would never represent the author.
If someone really wanted that cup of tea while they’re working, they should wake up 10 minutes earlier and prepare the tea before their writing session, so that it is on the desk before writing begins, supporting my need for uninterrupted writing time.
John Cage Rule #8: When John Cage was working with the Merce Cunningham dance studio, he came up with a foundational set of rules for work. I find all of them to be a wonderful gospel (it is interesting to read John Cage being dogmatic, instead of his usual more open approach). However, Rule 8 is the best way to collaborate with yourself: “Do not try to analyze and create at the same time. They are different processes.”
After reading Deep Work by Cal Newport, I understand the value of keeping your brain in one mode of thinking in order to maximize the depth of thought and productive work on a subject. This can also work on the micro scale.
For example, you are learning a piece and are playing the piece while self analyzing whether you are playing with the correct phrasing or are really making that dynamic shape you desire. Since your brain cannot literally do two things at the same time, you are constantly switching between the roles of executor and evaluator of the music. You have broken Rule 8. Shame.
How to solve this issue for the musician? Record yourself. The recorder allows you to be fully in the performing mindset, and allows you, at a later time, to be engrossed in the analysis/critique mindset. Additionally, this dedication to each element of practicing will transfer to a more effective and focused recital because you will not have spent all those dozens of hours practicing self-critique in real time.
John Cage Rules for Merce Cunningham Dance Studio
Be your own administrator
Create and keep commitments to yourself: You can be your own administrator (maybe could be read as “boss” or “administrative assistant”)! Dedicate a time, perhaps at the end of your working day, to make a list of tasks, brainstrorms or creation that needs to happen this week. Then look at your calendar and find time dedicated for those goals. Time blocking is not a new concept, but I have found it to be wildly effective in calming an anxious brain, especially when there are so many tasks to complete for a project. You could include practicing, brain storming, listening, phone calls or Zoom calls, journalling or reviewing, or basically anything else. Don’t forget to budget time for walks, rest, eating, watching Mission: Impossible, or whatever else can help your brain digest the information you developed and churned during the day.
Establish positive routines: Creating a reliable and regular workflow allows your brain to not have to make mundane decisions, and instead focus on higher-level creative processes. For example, schedule a time for brainstorming right away in the morning, and do it every day. This will get your brain into a habit, and there won’t be a civil war in your own brain whenever you encounter unstructured time. You’ll find that you will start to wake up and immediately jump into the higher level creative work. You won’t need a collaborator to push you.
Discipline wins the day: This is all a way of saying that, if you can be disciplined and keep commitments and agreements with yourself without relying on outside collaborators to have to push you, you can go far collaborating just with yourself! Also, the ability do things that you assign to yourself, aka “self discipline” is basically the key to a happy life, in my opinion.
“...the ability do things that you assign to yourself, aka “self discipline” is basically the key to a happy life, in my opinion.”
Self 1 and Self 2: As Timothy Gallwey wrote about in the Inner Game of Tennis, our brain has a “Self 1” and “Self 2” (very Dr. Seuss…). These “selves” describe a descriptive, conscious brain and a reactive, subconscious brain, both working in tandem to make you who you are. When we are young we rely nearly 100% on the subconscious brain, and as we age we start to rely much more on the conscious brain. As creative people, we don’t want to lose the guidance of the subconscious self, so, as you are collaborating with yourself, don’t squash the opinion of the subconscious self, that gut reaction, while vetting it with the conscious mind. If you find the creative, subconscious mind to be dominating, then turn it over to the rational conscious mind. (P.S. understanding which one is operating is metacognition, as mentioned above!)
Future: In a recent interview with Google CEO Sundar Pichai, I was inspired to hear about the future of AI. It sounds like there is a future where generative AI can be a collaborator for anyone looking for a partner without needing to involve another human. Obviously AI can write music, but we don’t need that right now. It could be a great resource for vetting ideas, brainstorming how other groups have managed the same problem, connecting data points, reaching out to audiences, responding to requests, and way more than I could ever imagine, probably. Let’s keep it in mind for collaborations!
Use creativity as collaboration: Finally, the essence of collaborating with yourself, for me, is looking at a project from a new angle, getting a fresh perspective. The more you can free yourself, or inspire yourself, to have those perspectives, then you will have a multitude of collaborators right inside your own mind, and the further you can take your project by yourself. If you are interested in working with other people, your developed creative side can help those collaborations as well.
Exercising Creativity
Beware of green when getting creative
Have you ever felt stuck creatively? Yeah, me neither. There is no special potion or tincture to spark your creativity or problem solving, but these skills are a vital part of any collaborative adventure. Additionally, relying on creative motivation to strike in order to work on a piece or project will keep you in the creative dungeon for a while.
To jump-start a stuck creative mind, I’ve used a few techniques below:
Questions are the spark to creativity — Many times we get into a habit of only asking the questions for which we feel we have an answer already. Don’t be scared of questions, embrace them and allow them to guide your development.
Take a break —Sometimes a walk, exercise, or even cleaning your physical space can jog the subconscious brain. For a bonus tip, try walking in a location without many people or obstacles, like a trail through the forest. This allows the brain to work without interruption or working on navigating as well as processing.
Break it down —Have you considered a smaller, more fundamental issue than the one you’re considering? Maybe you can find a smaller, more digestible element to your current road block. If you’re thinking about a phrase, have you thought about the measure? What about the note? The physical motion? Your stance? Your breath? I could keep going…
What if there are no limits? If you didn’t have any limits on your project — financial, logistical personal — what would you do? If you didn’t have to answer emails or pay for rehearsal space or the lighting crew, what would you do then? I’ll bet your dreams are more realizable than you think.
James Clear, in an interview with Ryan Holiday on YouTube (linked below), said a wildly inspiring sound bite: “I want to start with the magical outcome, and let’s work backward from that.” What is your magical ideal? If you don’t have it, it can never be achieved.
“I want to start with the magical outcome, and let’s work backward from that.”
External prompts: I have sometimes found a lot of help in the cryptic and unique prompts from the Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt “Oblique Strategies” cards. These are cards from which you draw a prompt that can help you think in a new way. An example could be, “Start working backward” (I think that’s one). You could try to make your own as well!
Click the pic for an interesting Guardian article on drafting
Drafting with your colleagues: Bikers in the Tour de France will ride inches behind another biker, even if nobody else is around. This reduces wind resistance and allows the trailing biker to use less energy to go the same speed. If someone else has faced a similar problem to you, use their experience to help you get further faster. Igor Stravinsky suggested, “Good composers borrow, great ones steal.”
Get a new perspective— one of the great pieces of writing advice I received was to read through your document, but your internal voice was a great newscaster or actor (Meryl Streep, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Ron Burgundy, etc.). This new voice and new perspective can give you insight into the effectivity and universality of a thought.
You can do this while testing or creating new ideas. Ask yourself what others would think:
What would my parents say?
What would my teacher say?
What would a nice couple having a night out want to hear?
How would a dancer choreograph this?
What would a film look like if it were made of this?
What would be the draw for an inattentive tik tokker? (tik-tokkist?)
“Good composers borrow, great composers steal.”
Include young people and new people— These kids today! Young people might not have the life experience or attention span that us old folks have, but they do have a fresh perspective, are most times an audience to which you want to market, and usually are willing to share their newly-formed opinion with the world. The same advice goes for people who might be new to your school, community or ensemble. They have a fresh perspective to help you identify issues or solve problems in ways that are overlooked by people entrenched in the culture, and their opinions are valuable. If you find yourself reacting to a new person’s suggestion by saying, “that’s not how we do it here”, then you may be part of the problem.
Be comfortable with failure—Failure isn’t even the right word for this. “Failure” sounds like something devastating, from which nobody can come back.
What I mean is try something one way and hope that it goes as planned, but be interested in why it didn’t work, if it doesn’t. If you are able to plan your time enough in advance, build in time for trial and error (emphasis on the error).
You won’t feel the pressure when something doesn’t go as planned, and you might even welcome the constructive feedback.
This also means to be on the lookout for various forms of feedback, because it might not come to you wrapped in a bow. If you want a nice distraction that talks about various systems, check out David Epstein’s Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World.
There are countless examples of failures throughout history becoming ground-breaking inventions, so you can keep those in your mind, or better yet, just be consistently curious.
For us musicians, we get nervous for concerts and most times play with reservation because we are worried about making catastrophic mistakes on stage. In some ways that is a good fear to have, but it can also be paralytic. I have made amazing mistakes on stage, and I’m sure the audience has known when I’ve made those mistakes, contrary to what I told myself at the time. But the sun rose again and I learned from them and was able to prepare better for the next concert. Every concert and recital is not a destination, but a milestone on your own personal journey through music.
Collaborating with OTHERS
Ok, let’s switch gears and pretend that you have gone through the last section and decided that working together with another person is still the right choice for you.
Excellent!
Here are a few skills I felt were necessary for collaborations I’ve done in the past. (A note: I am not a perfect collaborator, and there might be some people out there thinking, “who is this guy thinking that he can tell us how to be collaborators when he isn’t perfect himself!?” To that sentiment, I’ll say this disclaimer: I am constantly working on my collaboration skills, and many times I’ve learned these skills from my collaborators during a process or even after a project has finished. So maybe I wasn’t perfect in the moment, but I’m a curious learner, so I figured it out!)
Skills required
Invest in the project
I don’t mean that you have to contribute money, but to invest your mental and physical energy into the project from the beginning. If you don’t invest yourself, none of the skills below are going to be genuine. It is easy to tell when someone is fully engaged with a project, and that will inspire others to do the same.
Clear and flexible communication —This is the key to any collaboration. During a collaboration, you are going to need to communicate your goals, ideas, boundaries, emotional feelings, progress and finished product both in verbal and written forms. There are also more understated communication methods of facial gestures, eye contact, etc., as well that may be conscious or subconscious.
Developing clear, accurate communication and responding to other people’s communication methods and styles is going to be paramount to your collaborative success.
Communication requires flexibility because someone you are working with may not respond well to your initial style of communication. The only reason to communicate is to pass information from your brain to another person’s brain, not just their eyes or ears. In order to be heard, sometimes you will need to adapt your style to match another person’s style.
P.S. Sometimes someone’s communication method is to not communicate, and that can be okay!
Proactivity and Preparation—Coming into each meeting or rehearsal having prepared and organized your ideas will help the collaborative process proceed at a much more efficient speed. During the preparation, you will have time to think slowly, consider options, even edit, revise, and ask opinions of other people, and come back to the rehearsal with more robust ideas.
An easy way to do this is to block out time directly after the meeting or rehearsal to review the points that were discussed, then block out a chunk of time each day afterward to keep thinking and reviewing the material, documenting your thoughts along the way in a journal or document.
For many people, we are weary of collaborating with others because we remember back to school days, when we will have to bear the brunt of the workload and that our finished product will suffer. So if someone comes to our rehearsals and meetings prepared with fresh ideas, that is both comforting and motivating to everyone in the group.
“Yes, and…” vs. “Yeah, but…” This is the catchy way of saying, “accept other people’s paradigm”. Accepting someone’s idea and giving it a chance is a great way to make them feel included and heard throughout a process. If you dismiss an idea immediately, even one that seems far-fetched, you might alienate that person and discourage them from sharing in the future. That person might have the great idea that is a future breakthrough, so you want to make sure they feel comfortable sharing that idea in the future. The judgmental, dismissive response is “Yeah, but…”
Sometimes crazy ideas work.
Confidence —You have something to offer this group/ensemble! Even if you are a novice in the field or younger than everyone or (fill in the blank to make you feel insecure), you have valuable life experience and expertise that makes you valuable. Treat yourself like you are valuable.
Hopefully your group fosters an environment that makes everyone feel comfortable and confident to perform and operate at their optimal level. With that confidence, you’ll have the security to throw out what you think is a “crazy” idea, and simultaneously won’t judge the crazy ideas. Sometimes those are the winners!
FAQ: With whom shall I work?
If you are sure you want to collaborate with others, then you need partners. What do you look for with partners?
Diversity
Diversity is the key to collaborations, you want diverse working styles, learning styles, skill sets, backgrounds, even interests. Hopefully you can also find a variety of environments in which you can interact to make your project even more robust.
“Diversity is the key to collaborations, you want diverse working styles, learning styles, skill sets, backgrounds, even interests.”
It helps to have people who are willing to, or naturally take on different roles. Having an administrator, a creative brainstormer, an archivist and documenter and a critic are a few of the necessary roles that go into collaborating.
After you’ve formed a diverse team, you are inevitably going to experience a variety of communication and information-processing styles. During the collaboration, keep an eye out for folks who optimize their work in different ways:
need to be engaged with others
someone who works better on their own
someone who has good ideas but doesn’t feel like sharing them publicly
someone who needs time to formulate ideas and therefore doesn’t articulate well on the fly. These people can be critically important to the project, but may feel hamstrung by the context of a situation, so make special efforts to connect with those people.
If you would like additional skills for managing a variety of personality types, there are links below for some wonderful resources I found while researching this video.
Many metrics define success
John Wooden’s “Pyramid of Success”
It is impossible for everyone to have the same skill level for every subject. This might make people (or you) feel inferior and like they cannot contribute. Keep in mind that there are many metrics that define success (see John Wooden’s pyramid for just one person’s thoughts), so if you don’t feel like you are the strongest player in the group, be the strongest glue. Work a little longer on coming up with ideas, support and facilitate the organization of the group, or create a new opportunity in which your colleagues can thrive.
How to critique others
When working with others, conflict is bound to arise, and actually it should arise for a productive collaboration; so don’t fear conflict, expect it.
When you feel the boiling waters of conflict arise within you, remember to frame the criticism about their idea, NOT about the person. This is not a conflict between you and your collaborator’s childhood upbringing and deeply-rooted personality traits formed by being the middle child, but between your understanding and their idea. Most of the time the root of the conflict is just a miscommunication anyway.
Gretchen Anderson, in her book Mastering Collaboration, cites a fourth-grade teacher, Ms. Susan, who has discussion prompts on her wall to help students learn productive language. Prompts begin: “Can I restate what I heard you say?” “I agree with you, I’d like to add…”; “Can you give evidence to support your idea?” “Have you considered…”
I like the idea of planning some introductory language and practicing it before you get into the throes of collaboration. If you have these tools, in your own words, perhaps, and remember to take a breath before responding, the conflict will be productive to your collaboration, and stay out of the personal zone.
Disagreement
I also appreciate Gretchen Anderson’s “Five Minute Rule”, that encourages partners to present their conflict to a third party if they have been disagreeing for more than five minutes. This outside party who wasn’t present for the five minutes, can be a sounding board, not a “tie-breaking vote”. Voting to alleviate disagreement will almost never alleviate the deeper issues at hand, but will more likely alienate certain parties. In most cases, just explaining the issue to the outside party will be enough to reframe the disagreement, or at least clarify the topic of the disagreement.
Again, beware of trying to vote on “who’s correct”…
Mike's Advice
Okay, we’ve gotten through all that, so here’s the Truesdell Take on collaboration. Of course, every collaboration is different, so you may find some of this to be useful and some of it to not be useful. That’s fine! There is no perfect recipe for making the perfect collaboration, just like there is no perfect way to perform a piece. But we practice and work to develop tools and skills that we may need to call upon if needed. So hopefully it helps to have some reference and a few tools in your kit.
Start with trust
Assume everyone is right, even you, and build on that “Yes, and…” mentality that I mentioned above. You will empower yourself and your colleagues by starting with trust and not having to make them “earn” your trust. Experience builds trust, but trust builds experience. Take the optimistic approach and begin with trust.
Clear communication
I wrote earlier about refining your communication skills. I’m going to just reiterate that here. It’s that important to work on your written and verbal communication skills, which also includes listening!
Define success for yourself before you begin
Success is defined in a variety of ways. Check out this wildly inspiring video by John Wooden about success. He created a definition of success for himself which gave him a framework for his coaching. Many times we don’t have a definition of success before we begin. Sometimes, the result is disappointment in ourselves because we rely on our audience and outside parties to create that definition for us after the fact. We will never be able to fulfill outside parties’ definitions of success, so we will be perpetually disappointed in ourselves and project.
As you define success for yourself, it is also helpful to look for clear objectives to tackle, instead of just setting sail into the abyss. In a music rehearsal, we almost always are looking to unify a few key points:
vertical alignment
sound or timbre
phrasing
balance.
These are great things to bring up if they don’t come up naturally, or just be on the lookout for them.
Ask Questions
I keep a physical pad of paper or Post-Its next to me during rehearsals, practice sessions, meetings or anything collaborative. Questions and thoughts will always arise, and these questions usually become my to-do list, self critique, objectives or new ideas for progress.
Sometimes these are questions for the end of a project, sometimes they are for me and sometimes they are for my collaborators. I like to have the notes option so that I don’t interrupt their speaking train of thought and can synthesize the thought at a later time.
Final advice: Not all collaboration is the same!
I am not the oldest person on my block, but I have realized that every relationship’s dynamic can be boiled down to expectation and communication. Think of an argument with someone that you’d had. I’ll bet it was because you expected something from them and did not communicate your expectation clearly enough, or vice versa. It all boils down to expectation and communication, and professional collaborations are no different.
Every collaboration will be unique, even if you walk into the room with the same people for years, every project needs to be met on its own terms. Some of the composers I’ve worked with are hands-on, some are more loners during the process and active after the piece has been composed, while others are more hands off for the whole process. All of these models are fine and great!
If you come to a collaboration expecting a certain level of communication and your partner doesn’t want to work that way, that’s fine! Flexibility and clear communication will save the day. There is beauty and value in every style and method of collaboration, whether you are working and collaborating with yourself, one other person, a small group or a whole team of people.
I hope you enjoyed some of the thoughts and tips included here. Feel free to connect with me (click the button below) or leave a comment below
Happy collaborating!
“…every relationship’s dynamic can be boiled down to expectation and communication.”
Resources
Some resources I used to help me prepare for this video:
Mastering Collaboration by Gretchen Anderson
Collaboration in Performance Practice, edited by Nyoale Colin and Stefanie Sachsenmaier
Distributed Creativity: Collaboration and Improvisation in Contemporary Music, edited by Eric F. Clarke and Mark Doffmann
“The Impact of the ‘open’ workspace on human collaboration” by Ethan S. Bernstein and Stephen Turban:
HBR IdeaCast, Episode 916 with Sundar Pichai
The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey:
Deep Work by Cal Newport:
“When Internal Collaboration is Bad for Your Company” by Morten Hansen
Disclaimer: some of the links above are Amazon Affiliate Links, where I might receive a small amount of kickback from Amazon if you purchase using that link. The price is the same to you, so it’s kind of win-win collaboration!