Collective Creating in a Drama-Free Zone

I’ve worked hard the last couple of years to make my life a drama-free zone.

It hasn’t been easy, and there are long relationships that are tenuous and uncomfortable now, but I’m so much happier for it. Life is hard enough without people who can’t seem to keep their shit together putting their shit-fans on oscillate. Because sharing. Gosh. Thanks!

I’m kind of a hermit, but honestly I don’t think that’s my true nature. When I am in collective situations with people who really resonate, I am in heaven. And I want more of that – but then the monkey-mind starts in. You thought you had this before and you didn’t. What makes you think things will be different this time?

Because I’m learning more about what I will put up with and what I won’t. Things don’t have to change, because I have changed.

It’s all about boundaries. Am I always picking up somebody else’s slack? Does somebody feel comfortable dumping their shit on me at the last minute because they couldn’t deal with getting what they promised to do done? Am I hearing more bogus excuses than a high school English teacher?

And then you have to ask yourself: Did I somehow make this acceptable? Is there some reason that I am unintentionally causing this to happen? I have found myself in this situation more than a few times. Sometimes, because I would jump in and offer to do too much because I was worried about proving my worthiness. Oh, you too? Let’s turn this shit around right now.

I don’t have to prove anything to anybody, and neither do you. People want to work with me, and those who make a personal investment in working with me, whatever form that investment takes, deserve the best I have to offer. I can’t be splintering my focus by doing my job and taking on what somebody else has blown off. Yeah, I’ll get it done, you bet your sweet ass I will, because this project is important to me. If you drop shit on me at the last minute because you just couldn’t get it together, it will get done, and it’ll be good. But it will happen once, and I won’t ever ask you to be involved in anything I do again–because I owe it to the rest of the team to be the best I can be at what I do best. Period. Even if the rest of the team is only me. Write this one in stone. I won’t get fooled again.

Another way we unintentionally take on too much is by getting involved with people who might not have the skills that we thought they did. In order to put something worthy out into the world, we have to do massive editing or re-writing to bring their contribution up to snuff. An old Editor in Chief I used to work with called it making chicken salad out of chicken shit. It can take as long to do that kind of an edit as it would to write the whole damn thing myself.

John Cleese recently posted a viral YouTube piece about how smart you actually have to be to know you’re good at something. People who are absolutely no good at something lack the exactly the skills they would need to know that they are absolutely no good at that thing. So if you want to be on my team, I need to know you really are as good as I need you to be before I commit to work with you. That can make things awkward between friends, let me tell you, but it’s a hell of a lot less awkward than finding out three months into a project that this person cannot deliver what needs to be delivered, and I have to pick up their shit and turn it into salad while doing whatever else I have to do. Be sure you know whoever you are working with has skills on par with your own before you get involved.

So here’s one that might make some people squirm: We want to be totally in control, but we don’t want to admit that, so we encourage people to drop the ball so we can force our vision to the forefront.

Ouch.

If you really do have a powerful vision and you want to do a specific project, then do it. Either do it all yourself, or hire people to assist you and delegate clearly defined work to them so you have the time to do what you need to make the project as great as you want it to be. Don’t claim to want a collaborative situation when what you really want is to be supported to bring your own vision to light.

If you are on the other side of this relationship – believing you’re part of a collective and not subject to a tyrant – you can either accept you are in a supporting role or gently remove yourself from the project. If everything you are doing is getting remade anyway, you shouldn’t have a single qualm about walking away.

Some people don’t understand what it means to be part of a collective.

It means sharing the load fairly–not necessarily equally, because sometimes one person has greater or lesser capacity than another, and that’s fine as long as it’s understood from the get-go. If you sign on to contribute just one thing to the project, make it the best one thing you can bring. Don’t say you’ll do three things when you know you really can’t. Maybe you’re taking care of a sick parent, or trying to manage major change at work, or you just had a baby, or whatever. If you are exceptionally good at something that can add to a project, that’s why you are wanted. Not so you can take on too much. Do what you can deliver. If you’re part of a true collective, the rest of the team will get it. Another time you’ll be able to do more, and if everyone is clear about it from the start, there will be a next time. Collective does not mean one person does 80% while everybody else does 20% between them. Collective means five people do approximately 20% each, but if one person can only do 12% this time, the rest can do 22% each if it’s planned for.

It means doing the best quality work you can do. Don’t phone it in. Bring your best game every time, because your team deserves your best, and your clients deserve your best, and the people who will eventually buy your product or enroll in your class definitely deserve your best.

Deliver what you say you will when it’s needed–and if things are not going well, your team needs to know sooner rather than later. You think you’re letting them down by telling them you’re struggling? Every team I have ever been part of has functioned better when members are able to tell each other early on, “This is not going as well as I had hoped,” or “I’ve come down with a bug and I may not be able to get this done on time,” or “I’m really stuck and I need help.”

But you are probably not the weak link here; you’re probably the frustrated one pulling your hair out because somebody else just doesn’t have the capacity . . . So what do you do?

Power through it, get it done, and never invite the weak link into the chain again? That’s what we usually do, isn’t it? And we know how that goes. There are people out there that have no idea that they are on my never again list. But yes, I have a list, and yes. I check it twice. Put up with not having a life and not getting enough sleep until it’s over and just . . . share the credit with somebody who contributed a fraction of what we did because we’re so fucking gracious.

Or address it before it becomes an issue. Set clear expectations. Ask if your partner(s) will have trouble with their level of involvement, and require that they be honest about it. “Do you have any obligations or developing situations in your life that might impact your capacity to contribute?” And if the answer is yes, then plan for it. Make it part of the overall workflow from the start. Don’t shame anybody into doing more than they can, because you won’t get their best work.

We’re doing this stuff on a shoestring; most of us don’t have the resources to hire administrative or clerical support. We have to know how to do everything because we have to do everything all the time anyway. Forming a collective means sharing the load so everybody does a little of everything instead of all of it. Make sure you are involved with people you can trust to deliver what they say they will. Commit to doing what you can do, and be sure others understand what you expect and need them to contribute. And then when everybody is clear on what is expected and what their responsibilities are, go make great stuff. Co-create with abandon. Communication is everything. Drama unnecessary. It’s so easy it doesn’t feel like work anymore.

Sound good? You deserve it.

Was this post useful to you? Do you want more like it? Subscribe, so you don’t miss a single word!