Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction

00:01:42: Idea for action 1: think about the collaboration context

00:04:18: Idea for action 2: choose your collaborators

00:06:00: Useful resource

00:06:17: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Sarah Ellis: Skill number 9 is collaboration, and in Squiggly Careers, we're all very used to collaborating.  But I think there's more collaboration and in lots of ways more sophisticated collaboration.  Certainly, if I think about all those years ago when we started our career at Boots, collaboration was in lots of ways quite straightforward.  It was often, well always, face to face, probably mainly in the team that you were in, you didn't go loads outside of your team, and mainly with probably one other peer and maybe your manager.

Helen Tupper: And always in the same way, it would happen in the same meeting room, or something like that.  It was very predictable.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, so a lot of similarity.  Whereas now, I feel like you're collaborating with a much wider range of people, probably inside and outside your organisation, and you're collaborating in lots of different ways, which often I think feels overwhelming for people.  It's sort of like, "Oh, we're collaborating on WhatsApp and on Teams, and then we phone call, and then we're face-to-face".  Not everybody works in a hybrid way, but I do feel like everybody uses technology to collaborate, and there's always this bit of a sense of tension.  It's like, is that proving to be a kind of friend or foe when it comes to collaboration?

Helen Tupper: Yeah.  I think what I do when I'm trying to be really intentionally good at collaboration is, first of all, I start with my close collaborators.  So, I don't actually think about this as just a generic skill, I think about it probably like a skill in action, so who am I most likely to collaborate with?  I mean, you and I collaborate all the time, we collaborate on ideas of the podcast, on writing our books, on designing career development for organisations. 

There's people that I might collaborate with outside, on articles that we might write or things like that.  So, I think about like two or three really close collaborators for me.  And then, I almost think about the context of that collaboration.  So to me, collaboration equals better together.  Because if that is not true, then I just do it on my own, to be honest, which is very appealing to me sometimes! 

So, I believe that the point of collaboration is, the output of this is that we are going to be better together.  And so, I will think about, well, for that collaboration to generate that result, how does it need to happen?  And I find that the how is very different. So, for Sarah and me, we collaborate best with space and time.  So by space, I mean actually some of the physical space is really important, can Sarah go out for a walk; is there light; is there a space for lots of Post-it Notes?

Sarah Ellis: I sound so needy!

Helen Tupper: Well, I know that I need to create a collaboration environment that allows our best work to happen, but that is not what I need when I'm working with someone else in my team, for example.  It's a short amount of time, efficiency is really important, actually a shorter meeting is much better.  And I think it's just understanding, who are my close collaborators and what is the best sort of context for that collaboration to happen.  And that's the point about Sarah, about being intentional.  Just really thinking about that in advance really helps me to get what I want out of working together with somebody.

Sarah Ellis: And we've definitely had some examples of where we haven't been intentional about our collaboration, and then it's felt worse --

Helen Tupper: And it causes friction, doesn't it?

Sarah Ellis: -- and it causes friction.  And I think the thing that we did well in those moments was recognise it, sort of call it and go, "Well, what is it about how we're collaborating that isn't working?"  And what we found, and it was I think because we weren't expecting it, is that sometimes when we are in meetings together with other people, so not collaborating just the two of us but with other people, we sort of both try to take charge.  Or then, maybe one of us would, but then the other one would feel frustrated because perhaps they weren't involved.  So, it didn't feel like a collaborative conversation, just we both came away usually feeling bad about it.  So, you know your whole "better together", we were like, "Well, this is worse".

Helen Tupper: Yes.

Sarah Ellis: But it was important that we were both there.  So, the answer wasn't, "Oh, well you do it or I do it", it was more about, "Okay, well we need to do something different in this context".  So, I think you're kind of applying context times collaboration, and also knowing that it can be the same person, but needs something different.

Helen Tupper: I think they are really good flags.  You know when you're like, "We are worse together in this moment, this is not working", it's a definite flag.  And then when someone goes, "Oh, you just do it", that's a collaboration fail!

Sarah Ellis: We still do that sometimes!

Helen Tupper: We still do that!  What's yours, before we go into a debate?

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, yeah.  Mine is, we talked about being intentional, is sort of to choose your collaborators.  So, I sometimes think we default to collaborating with the same people, because they're the people that show up and they're probably the closest proximity to us. 

So, I would naturally think, "Well, who am I going to run this by?  Well, Helen, because I'm going to see her", or someone in our team, because perhaps you're seeing them anyway.  Whereas now, what I try to do is, if I'm working on an opportunity or a problem, I will actually think, "Well, who has done this before?  Or who might do this differently?  Or who might have never done this?"  Because I think those three filters mean that you choose your collaborators in an interesting way. Back to the, "How will this be better?" you know, if you kind of combine the right interesting group of people, and sometimes that's not always the most obvious person. 

Sometimes it is because you think, "Oh, well we're making a commercial decision, so let's make sure we've involved the commercial person here, or someone who's got some experience of that previously, because they'll have a good lens on it, we can collaborate with them, they'll be able to give us a good perspective.  But sometimes, someone who has no knowledge can actually be a brilliant collaborator, because they ask such different questions.  So, I think it's almost that sense of going, just because they're the normal people that you spend time with doesn't necessarily always make them the right collaborators, and making sure that you don't always look internal, and so actually thinking, "Well, who's outside of my organisation, who outside of my industry can I collaborate with?" It's sort of like, mix it up.  The variety of collaborators I think makes a really big difference.  Just make sure you're not collaborating by default, and then potentially getting stuck in like an echo chamber trap.

Helen Tupper: So, our recommended person to learn a bit more from on this topic is Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, who we often refer to because he's got some brilliant work, but he's got a particularly good article which is all around remote collaboration, and we'll put the links to that, and all the resources that you can get, in the Skills Sprint emails or on our website, amazingif.com.

Sarah Ellis: So, we hope you found that useful, and tomorrow we'll be back talking about adaptability.  Thanks for listening and bye for now.

Helen Tupper: Bye everyone.