Generative Collaboration

VVRRR — Manolo April, 2018

This audio recording was created using a text to AI voice generator.

Conversational co-authors: Kristin Bodiford, Papusa Molina, Haesun Moon, Marge Schiller, Susan Swim, Alita Taylor, Paloma Torres-Davila

In this article, we are engaging in conversation about the different values and ideas that we find useful in our lives and work.

Kristin: At times, I find myself pushing up against an edge in my work. These are times that I discover opportunities for growth and learning. When I slow down to pause and reflect, I am more able to make visible what I value and articulate what I find useful in supporting a more generative collaborative space.

I am excited that we can play with some ingredients in this article that we hope bring a sense of appreciation and nourish opportunities for collaboration that generate new possibilities. We also invite others to join the conversation, share their ideas, identify where there are connections, and also push and challenge the conversation to provide opportunities for growth and reflection.

Papusa: I find it valuable to reflect on our politics of location, including where we are coming from and to whom we are speaking. Language, assumptions, and intentions are all influenced by politics of location.

Haesun: I am also curious about the other ways we might engage in this conversation? Do we find ourselves “evaluating” the other or the process, or might we find ourselves “valuing” what is possible and progressing? Which brings us to the concept of “appreciating” — or literally, increasing in value.

Papusa: When I think about collaborative work, it is not something I do, but it is a way I strive to be. It permeates my life and, consequently, all my relations.

Haesun: Building on that idea, do we view collaboration as a means to “produce” rather than seeing it as the co-production itself? For example, is relating our purpose and possibility and/or do we see relating as a means to another possibility?

Marge: So, thinking about our purpose in relating, we can ask ourselves, “what does it mean to be human”? Relationship and relationality are the essence of the human experience in my book.

Susan: Relationships and ethical possibilities and non-possibilities are topics very close to my heart and work for many decades. I am excited to journey with these themes and authors.

Kristin: This feels like a good spot to recognize a shared value of a relational and constructionist orientation. From this orientation, there is an emphasis on the process of relating. I value this conversation to draw connections to how we might relate in order to facilitate spaces where we might all work towards a more just and equitable world (1). Through this focus, we are more able to transform our thinking, in ourselves and in our relationships with each other, which can lead to concrete actions for change (2).

Generating spaces for pause — Our ability to find ways of tuning into what is important.

Paloma: What about the power of pausing when one is in a constant state of survival and doesn’t have what might feel like the luxury of time for pauses? Remembering a digital story I created about my experience after Hurricane Maria reminds me of the power of laughter in healing — “reir pa’ no llorar” — laugh so we don’t cry. I connected with the wisdom of my ancestors and what they taught us about faith. We learned from this experience about, “being OK feeling sad and angry and scared and anxious and joyful and guilty all at the same time” (3).

Marge: There are also playful ways of embodying pause. I love putting my hands up and making “paws” when I need to take a breath. Body, mind, and spirit come together in this simple gesture.

Paloma: Let’s consider assuming these stances to also generate the space when we find it difficult to pause and think, to generate the space with others. This is a revolutionary approach since survival and thriving are at times a collective effort, not just an individual one reliant only on the “self”. How might we collectively support our ability to pause, resist, and to shift in ways that help make our values and what is important to us more visible?

Mutuality and reciprocity — Our ability to trust and respect each other and commit to building an equal relationship with a sense of shared purpose and values.

Kristin: For me, mutuality and reciprocity begin with a recognition of our shared humanity, dignity, and sense of value and worth. From this place, we can bring curiosity and an openness to understanding each other. This commitment is essential in work to build more equity in our society. A critical first step is repairing harm and trust that may have been broken over generations of racism, classism, ableism, sexism, nativism — all the isms that separate people from each other. The second step is showing up in all places to work together to promote equity.

Paloma: When thinking of mutuality and reciprocity, it’s important to acknowledge privilege and intersectionality — a framework developed by Kimberlé Crenshaw. This framework states that our identities can intersect in ways that create disadvantage or discrimination and at the same time they can intersect in ways that create privilege (4).

Kristin: Recognizing this we can pay attention to diversity — respecting and celebrating all the intersections of our collective identities (5). We can pay attention to whose voices are privileged and whose are often left out or silenced.

Paloma: This is an urgent and necessary concept to include in our thinking and work, yet also seems to provoke feelings of discomfort or dissonance at times and are often not included. How might we bring our lived identities into our conversations in order to build solidarity with “the recognition that struggles for freedom from oppression are interlinked and that we can all benefit by interacting with each other” (5)? How might we bring forth our different resources, reflecting on our privileges and how we can use them to generate equitable solutions in a relationally responsible and ethical way? Appreciating what we have and what we can collaboratively construct, we are able to create a dynamic space for responsiveness to our current problems and issues — locally, regionally, and globally.

Susan: I wonder how we might enter into relationships, conversations, and helping actions with what we may feel or strive for as good intentionality? It may often not be visible at the start of conversations what’s valued or where it’s headed. In therapy, we know more how to speak and act when the other person starts to speak. I envision a waltz, with relationships and ensuing conversations that are important to this particular dance at this particular time. And the purpose is for the therapist to waltz in a manner of trust and caring with a sense of mutuality.

Relational responsibility and reflexivity — Our ability to be responsible and attentive to the process of relating so that change and meaningful action is made possible (6).

Kristin: Relational responsibility supports us to engage in deeper listening and attunement and increasing empathy towards each other (7). A sense of relational responsibility invites reflection on the privileges and rights that come with being part of a dominant culture or group and encourages us to collectively work for increasing equity and creating a more just world (8).

Built into this is our collective ability to question what is taken for granted (1, 9). As we engage in reflexivity, we can question ways of talking and being — our everyday interactions — in the world that hold existing systems in place. This also invites us to pay attention to how power and privilege are showing up in how we are relating.

Susan: A focus on relational ethics also helps us to be relationally connected with a sense of presence. For this, I think it’s important to live with a sense of “withness” and recognize the sacredness of others (10). In our work at Now I See a Person Institute, we recognize that labels and diagnoses can often result in a loss of hope or not being seen in our full humanity. By being with people in this relationally attuned way, we hope to support healing spaces.

Alita: I support this relational attunement by letting go of goals and focusing on the space between us — being open to seeing what happens.

Susan: In this space between us, I find it useful to reflect on how openness is desired by those who are in the space. Being open and seeing what happens gives us direction as well as new opportunities for reflexivity.

Haesun: I love this image of “attunement” as constant calibration rather than seeing interactional spaces as something static and fixed.

Appreciative mindset — Our ability to discover and engage in more appreciative and affirmative ways of relating, opening up new possibilities.

Kristin: From this place, we are able to take action through approaches that appreciate strengths, inclusiveness, and foster collaboration (7). A critical element of an appreciative mindset is an orientation towards curiosity. In this sense, we remain open to seeing new potentials and possibilities (11). An appreciative mindset can get us closer to working from a heart space. To support our ability to work together in this way, it is helpful to be curious about how we want to build ways of relating and things like trust and respect.

Papusa: Our tendency to move to create shared understandings or visions of what this might look like may reduce where and when we can work. So how do we stay curious and open to learning?

Kristin: That is an important point Papusa! I find in many projects and processes, there is often limited time allocated to co-explore what we need to have for relationships and conversations that are more generative and allow us to share sometimes deeply personal and often powerful stories. What if we were able to invest more in the process of relating to support us to work at a deeper level? Might this lead to clearer insights, intentions, and stronger commitments moving forward?

Susan: And how do we remain aware of the heart space of each other? When our agendas may not be readily seen within words and actions of appreciation and heart space, what are the dynamics of conversation and relationship that move towards this parity we desire to create?

Differences as a resource — Our ability to see and engage differences as a relational resource for creativity, innovation, and transformative potential.

Kristin: When we appreciate differences in collaborative work — different ages, races, ethnicities, cultures, skills, abilities, experiences — we find ways of connecting across differences, learning from each other, and creating new ways of going on together. We create an “intergenerative” space (7).

Papusa: Difference is always present. We assume many times that because difference is not visible, then it is not present.

Marge: I am attracted to intergenerative collaboration. All things “inter” makes the most sense to me.

Haesun: When we enter the space and/or time of inter-generative conditions and actions, what gets born (produced and reproduced) and for whom? This very expression of ideas creates a plurality of voices beyond us. We can create a space for being surprised, integrating different points of view. We might have an agreement for space to disagree. As we keep this commitment, we give each other the beauty of saying, “I never thought of it that way”. Harlene Anderson wrote that “dialogue requires trust in and openness to the other and their difference as well as openness to being questioned, critiqued and not agreed with by the other” (12).

Susan: I love that quote. How is difference not an obstacle but a welcomed and open-hearted embracement? Is the relational responsibility on our part to find this in our appreciative journey? Especially when we may or may not share themes in thinking and actions, I wonder how we might invite many voices and ideas that we may not at first desire, respect, or want?

Paloma: We live in times where we’re wondering how we can bridge the disconnect between knowledge and solutions that respond ethically and responsibly to the urgent social and global problems we’re facing. So, these principles provide a response. Our intergenerativity, seeing the beauty and richness in the difference and plurality of voices, is what generates openness, approaches the “otherness”, and sees us as a shared humanity where we can all contribute resources and skills, and together learn and contribute to building a shared desired future. This collaborative future forming is a radically political act and I truly believe it can generate meaningful and positive transformations.

Openness to learning and growth — Our ability for continuous learning and growth.

Kristin: As we engage in collaboration and the critical work of social change, we must be challenged in our thinking. This is the path of transformation, the way that we grow and become more responsive and responsible practitioners.

Mutual learning is only possible when all participants are willing to be wrong..willing to learn, to explore new ideas, to go off the map, out of the known, and together grope in the shadowy corners of new ideas, new plans, new territories (13). Nora Bateson

Michelle McQuaid, Lindsey Godwin, and a team of researchers did a study of workplace change and found that thriving workplaces “focused on their levels of ability, motivation and psychological safety to amplify the positive possibilities of change for everyone (14)”. It takes an intentional commitment to nurture and build our abilities, with ongoing practice. When we are creating something new (generative), it is useful to attend to how we are creating it and how we are responsive to each other and the creative process. To support this, we can focus on building our skills and abilities. The metaphor of jazz improvisation has often been used in describing a method of creativity that helps propel social action. Michael White proposed the craft of musicianship as foundational to improvisation, that everyone must first learn how to play and only then can they improvise (15). We can invest time in learning together and developing skills and collective leadership in order to “perform” generative collaboration. This has significant implications to individual, organizational, and community change initiatives. First, we can learn together and develop our craft, in order to improvise and create something new.

Haesun: At the same time, how can we celebrate the wisdom and knowledge that we all bring to collaboration? How might we think of learning and growth from a valuing mindset (rather than evaluating)? How do hierarchies of knowledge and skills pose a risk of continuing a legacy of colonization and dispossession of different ways of knowing? Might generative collaboration also democratize knowledge “preserving the diverse ways of knowing that exist among humanity” (16)? This invitation may also prompt us to consider other ways of being in conversation about this topic and with the topic itself!

In closing

At this point in the conversation, we ask ourselves where do we close this conversation?

Papusa: When I am working with students who are engaging in dialogic social inquiry, a methodology for responding spontaneously to conversation, they explore at what moment we might say “it is done”. We might say, but for today this conversation is done, to be continued in a new conversation. The ideas co-created here will be continued in another stage, another article, and another moment.

Paloma: The power initially given to some, like Kristin in this case who invited us, has been used with relational responsibility to generate a more equitable space and approach to rethinking our current world. In this approach, differences are not obstacles or contrary ideas to overcome, but they can come together as a richness of resources to think and act in response to very specific and ever-changing contexts, where one-size does not fit all. This, to me and I dare say to all of us, is a 21st century appreciative mindset. With these generative and collaborative principles we can look at the problems of our current world, acknowledge them, and work with them to create shared understandings and solutions. We are thus open to the kind of growth that welcomes possibilities for change that form a future where we can ALL thrive, not just a privileged few. It is our ethical responsibility as thinkers and systematic change makers. And through our little experiment, it turns out we have begun to generate an ideal future we ideated.

Notes from the co-authors

We acknowledge we may struggle to communicate and fully understand what we are trying to convey. Our hopes are that there might be a one true thing for anyone who reads this article, a gem that opens up possibility, that speaks to the transformational. We would love to hear your thoughts by posting to the conversation. Was there anything confusing or unclear, what was useful, how you might think of things differently? Please share your thoughts by clicking on the response bubble at the bottom of this article.

Resources

1. Sheila McNamee (2019) speaks about relational engagement as essential to changing institutions and ways we relate at the broader level, how we talk to each other, and how we “do” things in organizational/community life. She invites us to think of the small/micro-moments of everyday actions that we can change in order to co-create with others something different. View a video here.
2. Bodiford, K. (2012). Choppin’ It Up: Youth-led Dialogues for Positive Change. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Tilburg University, Tilburg, the Netherlands.
3. Torres-Dávila, Paloma. “Reir pa’ no llorar.” YouTube, uploaded by StoryCenter, Apr 1, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14tkAszRTEg.
4. To learn more about intersectionality visit Kimberlé Crenshaw: The urgency of intersectionality — TED Talk. or Kimberlé Crenshaw on Intersectionality, More than Two Decades Later (2017)
5. Giorgadze, A et. al (2014) Intersectionality Toolkit. IGLYO
6. McNamee, S., & Gergen, K. J. (1999). Relational responsibility: Resources for sustainable dialogue. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
7. Bodiford & Whitehouse (2020). Intergenerative Community Building: Intergenerational relationships for co-creating flourishing futures. Sage Handbook of Social Constructionist Practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
8. Waldegrave, C., & Tamasese, T. (2012, March 20). Keynote presentation. Speech presented at “Enriching collaborative practices across cultural borders’’ conference, Merida, Yucutan.
9. Ann L. Cunliffe (2017) shares that reflexivity is an ethical, responsive, and responsible practice that questions what is taken for granted. View a video here or read a paper here.
10. John Shotter shared this kind of thinking involves a special way of being with, responding with and doing with-participating spontaneously in the moment rather than thinking about for or to another person as an object of study or mastery. ​​Shotter’s Getting It: Withness-Thinking and the Dialogical…In Practice (2011) is a good resource to learn more.
11. Cooperrider, D. L., & Whitney, D. K. (2005). Appreciative inquiry: A positive revolution in change. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.
12. Anderson, Harlene (2016) Listening, Hearing and Speaking: Brief Thoughts on the Relationship to Dialogue. Psychological Opinions.
13. Bateson, N., & Brubeck, S. B. (2016). Small arcs of larger circles: Framing through other patterns.
14. The Change Lab 2020 Workplace Report
15. White, M., & Denborough, D. (2011). Narrative practice: Continuing the conversations. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.
16. Hall, Budd (2014). No more enclosures: knowledge democracy and social transformation. openDemocracy