The Power Of The Right Collaboration

All my life, I’ve never been a fan of being around people or, better still, sharing my unadulterated thoughts with people. I remember one particular time when I shared what I really thought about a project with a colleague, and he looked at me for seconds and later asked, “How do you think?” And I know what a compliment sounds like. That wasn’t one. He later said I was very complicated.

A few days later, we had to use that “thought” of mine to finish up the project. For this reason in particular, I’ve never liked working in teams, whether of 2 or 100. Some way, somehow, my thoughts or contributions always get undermined until the last minute, when they realize I was right.

This even goes beyond my colleagues. I’ve realized that one of the reasons why I don’t really have friends is because I mostly have daring thoughts. Thoughts that would make you take huge risks and bold actions: something most people never want to do.

But something happened yesterday. If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll realize that for the past three weeks, I’ve been working with a group of skilled professionals. I even wrote about one who approached me to tell me how inspired he was with the way I work.

Yesterday, we had to work on a project in teams of two, and coincidentally, the same person I spoke about was my teammate. I always doubted people whenever they said they enjoyed working in teams, but yesterday was an eye-opener. He began by asking me what I had in mind for the project. Right there, I was shocked because I barely have people asking me for my contributions.

I told him how I thought we should go by the project and what I knew was going to work out. He agreed in minutes and asked me what I needed him to do. You should have seen my face after hearing that. I kept asking him if he understood what I said. I kept asking if anything sounded complicated in his ears. I asked so many things, and I think at a point he was becoming confused, so I stopped.

He followed my lead, and in about 4 hours we were done. This was something that was supposed to take us 7 hours to complete. When we finished, we submitted it and then started brainstorming for the next project.

I started working in teams in 2021, and I never liked it. You know how sometimes things happen for so long and you eventually start believing that you are the problem? That’s how it was for me at a point. I came to believe that maybe I was never going to thrive in a team, so I planned on always being quiet whenever it came to teamwork. But for the first time in a long time, I truly believe that teamwork actually is a good thing, but of course with the right people or in my case, person. Smiles so wide