The personal journey inside collaboration
This last weekend I listened to The Knowledge Project podcast episode #110 with Jim Collins. The Knowledge Project is one of my favourite podcasts, because it makes me pause and think about what I’m hearing and how it translates for me. This episode was no different. In it, Jim Collins (author of BE 2.0 – Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0, Good to Great, Built to Last, and many other books) speaks about a number of ‘mentor moments’ with his co-author Bill Lazier, several of which made me pause and think about the personal journey that sits inside collaboration.
Relationships not transactions
“Bill believed that people break into two buckets. There are those who kind of come at life as a series of transactions and there are people who come at life as building relationships. Bill believed that the only way to have a great life - you can have a successful life doing transactions, but the only way to have a really great life is on the relationship side.”
It’s true of a great life, and it’s true of great collaboration.
It seems obvious, doesn’t it, that collaboration should be about the relationship since it is the relationship that makes the whole thing work. But knowing that collaboration is about the relationship means that each person coming to be part of the collaboration needs to believe the collaborative relationship is paramount. Jim goes on to describe how his mentor would describe a great relationship:
“A really great relationship is one where if you ask each person independently who benefits more from the relationship, they would each say, “I do.”
“People put into the relationship for what they can give to it, not what they get from it.”
In the collaborations I have been involved, this idea of putting in for what they can give to it seems exceedingly rare. At least at the beginning, as so many collaborative relationships evolve over time to become closer to what Jim is describing in the podcast.
While Shane Parrish (host of The Knowledge Project) and Jim Collins are not talking about collaboration, I was seeing it through that lens, and wondering how we get more people to understand they’re participating for what they can give to the collaboration and not what they can get from it. And to help others understand that perspective, it means I need to dig into my own mental models to understand when and why I might go transactional vs. relational. The personal journey must precede the collaborative one.
The Trust Wager
The other bit of the interview that made me pause was a discussion of what Jim called the trust wager. This is your “opening bid” regarding trust when you start a relationship. We really have two potential opening bids:
The opening bid is to trust. We grant the other person our trust at the outset of the relationship, knowing that it can be violated and lost. (with the caveat that granting trust doesn’t mean blind trust. We are still responsible for paying attention to what is happening.)
The opening bid is to not trust. Our trust has to be earned, because we’ve not given it at the beginning.
I think there are many of us who feel the safest choice is to not trust, because then we’re not open to being hurt by someone abusing our trust. Jim cites Bill as stating the opposite:
“I’ve come to the conclusion … that there is far more upside to an opening bid of trust, and there is far more downside to an opening bid of mistrust.”
“The very, very best people will respond to the bid of trust. The best people will be attracted to that, and you want the best people to be attracted.”
Jim goes on to describe how we should consider that how we open the relationship will affect how others will behave. If we open with trust, others will as well. Same goes for distrust. An opening bid of distrust will likely affect how others behave, but also whether the very best people will be attracted and will want to ‘put in’ to the relationship.
Translated to the world of collaboration, this builds from the previous point on relationships to describe a little of how to create a relational vs. a transactional collaboration. But again, it starts with our own personal approach to life and, by extension, collaboration.
These two key thoughts jumped out at me and made me ponder them. I am grateful to Jim Collins and Bill Lazier for bringing their thinking to the rest of us and I certainly encourage everyone to listen to this episode of the Knowledge Project. Take away whatever nuggets catch your imagination. I certainly did.
If you do have a chance to listen, I’d love to hear what you took from The Knowledge Project episode. Leave a note in the comments or send an email to scott.millar@collaboration-dynamics.com.
Happy Collaborating.
Scott Millar, through Collaboration Dynamics, often works as a "peacemaker" by gathering people with different experiences and values and helping them navigate beyond their differences to tackle complex problems together.
Season 2 of the Cool Collaborations podcast is coming this fall. Join Scott as he explores fun stories and insights of successful collaboration with guests from around the world, and then dives into what made them work. Cool Collaborations is currently available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify.
