#46 Collaboration vs. Killaboration

I would love, I love to work on my own. I'll just say it out loud. I know this isn't a popular opinion. I love to work on my own. And it's not that I don't like to connect. It's not that I don't like to collaborate. It's just that when it's actually time to do, sit down and do the work, I work better often with just a legal pad in front of me, something to write with, and lots of time to reflect.

I can go onto the computer, open up 17 tabs, research things, and pull it all together. And this is something that we have to remember that, so if you have collaboration as a part of something that you're doing in your system, you also want to try to provide time for people to process things on their own.

For example, if you present some new idea to a group and then say, all right, let's connect and brainstorm now about how we can pull this together, well, right at that moment, I might not be a very effective participant in that discussion, but if you'll give me some time, present the idea, the concept, the subject, where we're going, now if you'll give me some time to go off, do a little bit of research, do a little bit of personal reflection, work on it a little bit, brainstorm a little bit on my own, and now come back into the group to discuss, I'm going to be a much more effective participant in that discussion. I'm going to be much more able to contribute something meaningful to the discussion because I've had some time on the front end.

Same thing with after that brainstorming. Now we've all come together and we've brainstormed, we've come up with all these ideas, and we've tapped into that collective intelligence of the group, which is larger than any one person. I agree with that. But now when we actually pull it all together, sometimes it means that one person or a very small group is going to have to come out of that larger group and actually do the work to pull it together and to pull it off.

If you think about something like, say, the Founding Fathers or the Declaration of Independence, everybody's contributing and connecting with all these ideas and Enlightenment philosophers. There's lots of different people that contributed to the ideas of the Declaration of Independence. But then at some point, TJ had to just go up on a room and write the thing. James Madison did that with some of the Constitution and with the Bill of Rights. I love one of my favorite lines in Hamilton is when they talk about the Federalist Papers and that line, and Hamilton wrote, the other 51! Oh my gosh, that gets me so pumped up. This guy went off on his own and just hammered these things out, right? And so it wasn't that the other Founding Fathers weren't contributing to the ideas he wrote about in those papers, right? But it's just like at some point, hey, Alexander had to just go off and get it done, okay?

And so that's the way I feel like a lot of things happen in the real world, too. We make fun of this with group projects. As teachers, we always make fun of this whole principle of group projects because we know that oftentimes what happens is a group will procrastinate, do nothing for a while, kind of meander around a little bit, and eventually one person takes that thing home and does it and everybody signs their name to it. That's, hey, that happens all the time. We know that happens all the time, right? And there's lots of different ways that you can account for that and try to deal out. Whatever. We know that a lot of times a group project, eventually when it comes to crunch time, somebody takes that thing home and does it. And although we make fun of that with school group projects, it's kind of true in the real world, too. That's kind of the way the world works as well. And I think that's okay. It's not that other people didn't contribute. It's just sometimes it's just more efficient for one person to pull it off. And this is just a hypothetical situation. Please don't take this seriously. Just a hypothetical situation.

Let's say that I ask you, I show you a plate of food and I say, hey, how long do you think I should put this in the microwave? And you say 90 seconds. And then you see me go over to the microwave, I type in 75 and I put it in. And then you say, I say to you, how long should I defrost this for? And you say, uh, I think five minutes. I go over and I type in six in the microwave. And eventually you see that enough time, you might be like, hey, why are you even bothering to ask me my opinion on this? If you're not going to take it, well, see, that's not true. Your opinion was valuable to me. I wanted your advice in this situation. And then I merged that with how I felt about the situation in order to come to a more informed, informed decision about what to do. So when you said 90 seconds, I might've been thinking 60, but then you said 90. I'm like, oh yeah, they're probably right. It probably needs a little more. I'm going to go to 75. I absolutely used your opinion. I absolutely took your advice into account in order to create the plan with which I move forward.

Okay. And so this is something that I think is super important. When someone asks you for advice and you don't do exactly what they said, it doesn't mean that they didn't value their, uh, their advice. It just means that they wanted to get contributions from lots of different people. They wanted to connect and collaborate and get all kinds of ideas. And then they could curate those opinions and move forward in a more informed way.

Hey, I've got, I've got this issue right now, plantar fasciitis. It's been keeping me from running for a couple of months. It's very frustrating, right? And so I've had a couple of stories on social media where I put out something about plantar fasciitis and, um, all kinds of people have weighed in with advice and ideas and treatment plans and different things that have helped them. And I have, uh, I've loved every single one of the people that have contributed some sort of idea, um, to try to help me. Right. And I have, this is not an exaggeration. I've probably listened to 30 to 40 different podcast episodes from, on different shows about plantar fasciitis, probably at least 40 YouTube videos on plantar fasciitis. And although I haven't done exactly what any of these people or videos or podcasts have said, they have all contributed to informing my treatment plan and how I am trying to tackle this issue and get healthy enough to run again.

Okay. And so that is one of the ways that I look at collaboration. Again, it's not about just doing what other people are saying or what they're doing and all doing everything the same. It's about learning and getting better and connecting and becoming more informed and getting ideas. That's why, uh, I have a episode 41 classroom Kung Fu. I talk about this is that we want to take the best from lots of different areas in order to come up with what we want to do as our particular strategy, whether it be in education or outside of education. I talked about this in read wide, live wide, which is the first episode of this podcast. The idea that maybe the best ideas for moving you forward in education might not even be in the education section of the bookstore. It might be somewhere else. They might be from someone in the business world, an idea, a concept that they're using, which you might be able to use effectively in your school, in your classroom. The best leadership book might not be an educational issue. It might be, but it might be outside of education and you tap into some of their ideas and combine them with educational leadership ideas to create something that's even more powerful for you personally in your profession.

Okay. And so we should always be looking to connect. We should always be looking to collaborate, but we should make sure that this is not about creating some sort of cookie cutter situation where everybody has to agree and come to a single conclusion.

And then that the conclusion is often very generic, very watered down. So that's why things in committee often aren't as good as because they get watered down. Because when you have to have the approval of everyone, then all of those rough edges that make things special, unique, and stand out get shaved off in order to get through the committee. Okay.

And this is the way that I wrote about it in Teach Like a Pirate, the section again is called Collaboration Versus Killaboration. I strongly believe in the power of collaboration, but I don't believe the final goal of such work should be to come to a single right way of teaching. Collaboration can make all contributors better teachers as they are exposed to others' ideas and have a chance to draw on the collective intelligence of the group. Collaborative environments can challenge your thinking and push you to places you might not have reached without the support of your peers.

However, I have also seen collaboration used to force conformity and stifle creativity. It's a fine line. I like to think of collaboration as a type of mastermind group as described by Napoleon Hill in his classic book, Think and Grow Rich. Hill defines a mastermind group as, quote, coordination of knowledge and effort and a spirit of harmony between two or more people for the attainment of a definite purpose. He further says that when a group of individual brains are coordinated and function in a spirit of harmony, the increased energy created through that alliance becomes available to every individual brain in the group.

He doesn't say that every individual will start thinking alike or come to any one single answer, but rather that each individual will be able to function at a higher level through their harmonious participation. In contrast, if the way collaboration is set up and driven and monitored on your campus does not contribute to being accomplished in a, quote, spirit of harmony, it will not be effective.

Wonderfully creative, innovative, and practical results can come out of the collaborative process. Therefore, increasing communication, thoughtful conversation, and opportunities for educators to interact and collaborate should be a major goal on your campus. Let's just be sure that the definite purpose of collaboration is improving education, not simply standardizing it.

Be wary of people selling complete programs that will supposedly solve all educational problems. I believe there is no single answer for how to fix our schools, but that we should take the best ideas from everything that we can find.

All right, so collaboration, yes, I am all for collaboration. It has made me a remarkably better teacher. I do it every single chance that I can get. It has taken me to places which I never would have been able to reach without the help of my peers and people that have contributed to me moving forward in this life, in this profession, right?

So yes to collaboration, but let's make sure that it's collaboration for all of us to get better, not just for all of us to become the same. It's collaboration for us to improve what we do in education, not simply standardize it.

Yes to collaboration, but killaboration, K-I-L-L? Let's never do that again.

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