In business, collaboration is a necessity. It means that evenly vested members of a committee or team sink or swim as a result of their combined efforts. In relationships it is an absolute necessity, although it may be less collaboration and more being supportive. Of each other. Of achieving a goal. Raising a child, a pet, a neighbor. It’s just a little different because the goal is to maintain peace and respect as a result of the efforts of the union, the partnership. But does collaboration always work in other situations? Let’s say creative ones.
If a composer and a lyricist get together for the first time to write the next Tony award winning musical, will they start their venture by blowing smoke up each other’s ass? “Oh when you did that … ” immediately followed by “oh but it was small compared to when you …”
So once the composer and the lyricist’s hind quarters can’t accommodate any more smoke, they finally have to explore common ground where they are both comfortable. But it’s much more of a challenge. How much of your comfortability can be relinquished to hop onto foreign territory? Especially when that territory is more the of the other creator’s comfort zone? So now you’re sort of sucked into assuming a role in someone else’s scheme to avoid the ruffling of feathers. And you slowly give up what you do best in order to make the team gel, or at least not explode. So now it’s not a collaboration at all. The two players start listening to each other less and resenting their diminishment more. “But I thought you liked when I …” becomes “oh I did, but this is just a different scenario.”
