How to unpack your collaborative mindset

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According to evolution and neuroscience, the brain is a social organ. It seeks out opportunities to interact with other brains and when it does, it’s affected by those interactions. By stimulating the structures in our brains, through relating to other people, new neural pathways are established. These new pathways give rise to new thoughts, new feelings, and potentially new ways of behaving.

 The brain is a social organ.

If seeking out social interactions is natural, then it seems that collaboration is natural too. We’re predisposed to come together, to interact, to ‘spark off’ each other, to stimulate and create, and ultimately to be affected by the whole experience.

But, many of us have learned to put obstacles in the way of collaboration, with good intention perhaps, in the misguided pursuit of self-preservation and protection. We have learned to make it harder for ourselves to connect with others and truly relate to them in a meaningful way. The good news is that many of these obstacles are created in our thinking, and that’s something we can recognise and overcome. Here’s how it might be possible……

All too often we walk into a situation that requires us to collaborate well and our heads are full to bursting with ‘thinking’ about the situation. Many of our thoughts don’t serve any useful purpose at that moment, but they can do plenty to get in our way.

Imagine the scene, the meeting notification chimes on your computer, you leap from your seat, clutching a pile of (hopefully relevant) papers, your laptop, and a freshly made coffee.  And then you collect two over-stuffed suitcases, and with not enough hands and far too much to carry, you drag the suitcases along the corridor and into the meeting room with you.

[We] have learned to put obstacles in the way of collaboration.

Suitcase number one is made of hard brown leather, with traditional buckle fastenings. It’s battered and worn, and plastered with stickers of all the (work) places you’ve been. It’s heavy and it’s full of the memories of your past experiences of meetings like this. It has memories of the good, the bad and the indifferent interactions that you’ve had with the people in the room, and even those people who are not in the room find space in your suitcase!

There are a couple of extra items in your luggage too. A small bag of prejudices based on your previous experiences and a generous helping of Ego, because your sense of self travels everywhere with you.

By dragging that suitcase into the room with you, it’s surprisingly easy for you to access the thoughts and feelings that accompanied those original interactions.

But the feelings aren’t real. They’re founded on a memory, created by thought.

Your second suitcase is new and shiny, made of tough plastic with a combination lock. It’s pristine and it has that just-out-of-the-wrapper smell about it. This suitcase is heavy too. Inside you’ll find the experiences that you’ve not had yet in real life, but you have imagined them.

 …you’re actually terrible at predicting the future; we all are.

You’ve created them in vivid detail, with sound and colour and movement, all based on what you think might happen and so they feel very real. You think you know how the sequence of events is going to pan out. You think you know how people are going to behave. And based on all that, you think that you know how the experience is going to make you feel. But you’re actually terrible at predicting the future; we all are.

Once again, these feelings aren’t real. It’s just an illusion, created by thought.

What is real, is the present moment that you find yourself in. That collaborative opportunity in front of you. The meeting where your opinions and ideas can transform others. The place full of rich stimuli, where you can make connections with others in the room and let your social brain relate to other social brains and create new neural pathways.

 …let your social brain relate to other social brains and create new neural pathways.

So, you have two choices. You can drag all of your excess baggage into the collaboration and let relics of the past and an imaginary future get in the way of your performance. You can let the contents of those suitcases form a barrier between you and the people in the room with you, and in doing so limit your natural ability to find human connections and enrich your neural network.

Or, you can leave them outside, and choose to be unfettered, immersed in the moment, knowledgeable, resourceful and capable. Ready to contribute fully, without internal interference and distraction and make the most of the creative and collaborative potential that’s in the room.

…be totally focused on, and absorbed in, what’s happening in the present moment.

You’ll find that when you leave your excess baggage outside the door, you can be totally focused on, and absorbed in, what’s happening in the present moment. Rather than worrying about what he might think of you, or what argument she might pick with you, or the fact that you really don’t like him very much, or how you’ll be perceived if you say this or that, or if there’ll be repercussions if you speak your mind, or if they might think you’re being negative, or too big for your boots……

Instead, you can listen to the contributions, the suggestions, the opinions and ideas of others and value them for what they are, untainted by your historical biases and made-up fears.

And you can offer your thoughts and suggestions freely, trusting that they are worth sharing, not because they will prove that you are right or better or clever, but because the mere sharing of your thoughts and suggestions will affect the social brains of the others in the room, and change them and you as a result.

As you approach your next collaboration, think about what you’re dragging in there with you and if there might be a little excess baggage.

Are you approaching it with a mind that’s cluttered with assumptions and predictions?

Or are you approaching it with a collaborative mind-set that is focused on being fully in-the-moment, giving the best of yourself and making the very best of the brain power that’s in the room with you?

Sources:

The Neuroscience of Attachment, Linda Graham, MFT

Clarity, Jamie Smart