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Kicking Off a Collaboration

David Sherry
1 min read

When you start a collaboration or hire someone new, the tendency is to sell the dream.

While you both connect on a shared vision, it’s easy to get ahead of your skies and end up jumping in too quickly, which in turn can end the excitement and create conflict.

The problem is you imagine the relationship as it could be in the future, rather than where the relationship is actually at, today.

Remember, you just met, and the vision you have for what your relationship could be is just that, a vision.

For now, you can better define what each person wants now, and how they will contribute in the short term.

The key is to outline a first step –a first leg of the journey, clarifying what success looks like, what your expectations are, and when you will reassess or check-in again on the relationship.

If you say in advance when you will reassess, you both have the context that this is us learning about one another, and we’re building trust, brick by brick.

You can say “Let's check back in a month or 3 months to see if we’re still on the same page.”

Rather than starting a new relationship off with high hopes of a perfect forever match, we can test to see if we find mutually success early, and build on it.

People reveal more of themselves over time, in different context and situations.

Sometimes, too, we change, or change our minds. All of that is ok.

This process allows for a relationship bloom into what it could be tomorrow, instead of fixing what it should be today.