One of the ways a truly collaborative spirit comes, is from a revelation of the limited nature of the individual.
My parents come from Lebanon. The Lebanese culture has an ethic that breeds “do-it-yourself” types and “self-starters.” As I was growing up this seemed like an amazing ethic. “You can do whatever you want” sounds like a beautiful thing to hear as a young child. It encourages one’s imagination. In encourages one’s curiosity, and the questioning of norms. I quickly found myself asking, “If I believe that anything is possible, why is [insert any possible thing here] not happening?”
Naturally, one of the revelations that I’ve landed on is that the things that I was searching for could not come to life with only one person. It wouldn’t even come to life in a healthy way if one person made other people get involved. True collaboration is about mutual alignment. When two or more people have similar revelations and act upon them together. The work is in the conversations, the sharing of revelations (that is the continued responsibility we have for the revelations we all receive), and the gathering of the like minded.
I often smile, imagining a world in which such a dynamic was common.