The Art of Collaboration

It’s similar to envisioning your role in the meeting, but more powerful because you’re declaring what you intend to happen. Start by asking yourself: “What is it that I most want to achieve in this meeting? I want this to be a successful meeting about collaboration. I want this meeting to be without conflict and stress. I want to experience harmony. I want to uplift the other participants and have them stimulated and excited by my words. I want to be precise with my thoughts and communicate clearly so that I am understood by all. I want the other participants to be positively influenced in the direction of my desire.”

It might seem awkward to have a conversation with yourself about setting your intentions, but chances are you’ve done it before when you told yourself that you know exactly what’s going to happen at a meeting: “This person will be difficult, that person is going to disagree with everything I say and that person will ask a hundred questions” and so on and so on.

Approaching a meeting with intentions that certain good things will happen allows you to focus your thinking in a positive way and helps pave a conscious and subconscious path for you to walk.

3. Allow others to have their points of view.
Most people have a sense of competition. This competitiveness is triggered very naturally since it has been instilled in us as part of our socialization. From a young age we are taught to win, and that lesson often reverberates throughout life — even during a meeting, when we come across someone who doesn’t see things our way. It’s almost instinctual to want to win the “argument” by convincing our adversaries to accept our point of view. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to win, but that spirit doesn’t always have a place when trying to establish a collaborative relationship.