The Power of Collaborations - Part 1

Sheri: that's the beauty of getting to know somebody when you're sitting down behind a computer screen. But also leading into the conversation about collaboration, that's I think an instrumental part of our ability to collaborate is, is the increased accessibility of getting to know people and getting to see them. 

And there is another level, in my opinion, another level of relationship building. When you're able to talk to somebody and see their expressions and see their body language and see them drinking a cup of tea and all of that different stuff you get to know them more than just as a voice behind a phone call.

So I think the, you know, the explosion of video, while there is a downside. We can talk a lot of, you know, spend a lot of time on one of the values, one of the things that it adds to our businesses, I think is a stronger ability to collaborate. 

faisal: Yes, definitely. Actually, that's a great point.

I don't know if many of the collaborations would happen without video, to be honest. Yeah. Just, considering the fact that we actually I mean, just speaking on the phone, yeah. You can connect with people. Just seeing people on video and seeing them day in and day out like that's how we trust people.

That's how we communicate as human beings. We don't see the whole body, but, but at least you see the expressions and I think that makes a big difference. And I never thought of it in that way, but I personally don't think it would be going on if we didn't have video the way we do.

Sheri: Yeah, I don't think so either. You know, it's In my former life as a psychologist and a mental health professional, you know, there has been teletherapy, which literally was by telephone for, you know, it's been around forever and there's a lot of research. That's been done on teletherapy and doing therapy over the phone and the efficacy of it and the research shows that people can get as much value and benefit out of therapy if it's on the phone versus if it's in person.

Now, this was, this kind of research was hugely valuable, especially, you know, as Covid happened and people weren't able. To be in person as much. And of course over the years, that also shifted to research around video therapy versus just telephone therapy. And so, I mean, the good news is, if the efficacy of telephone therapy is just as statistically significant as regular therapy, why wouldn't video therapy even be?

I think it's a smidge better because there is much more of an opportunity to relate as humans. With more of our senses rather than just listening. I have done some phone therapy or now phone coaching and it is interesting that there definitely is a, a little bit of a difference I've noticed as a coach, but that's not what we're here to talk about specifically.

But I think there are nuances to being in person, to be on video, to be you know, just hearing the voice, which I think is, is super fascinating. And then as it definitely applies to collaboration and just building trust and you know, being able to communicate well is quite So, 

faisal: I'm actually curious before we move on.

So I sense that my perception of you has shifted a little bit. It's very subtle because I saw you in person. It's shifted a little bit. As a positive, not towards the negative. Okay. I wonder, was that, was it different? Is it different for you since you saw me in person or the same or worse or better?

Sheri: I dunno if I could categorize it as you know, like worse, better, same. But it did. I don't know. It's kind of weird because like you weren't wearing a black shirt, or maybe you were, maybe you were, but you had a jacket over it. And so like being able to see your shoes and your, like, your pants and your jacket you know, I felt like there was a smidge more of a personality component added to.

I know you already. So I think it, it adds a richness to the relationship and I'm sure if we had spent more than an hour, you know, there would've been more added to that. But yeah, that's, that's just off the top of my head. I think that there, there's a richness that's added and maybe.

You know, when you add the senses and the more experiential components, maybe that's it, is that there's more complexity and richness that's added to the relationship and the more complexity and richness if it's a healthy relationship, those are the things that can be fuel to the fire of collaboration.

faisal: Yeah., I just noticed a subtle difference in connection since I. And it wasn't that, oh, I decided consciously it was just, I think just, just us meeting in person. As I said, there's more complexity now. It's like I realized a different aspect of you in a sense when I was around you.

So I sensed your energy probably differently. Yeah. Which was really 

Sheri: cool. Yeah. And I think there's this other. There's this other component. And so, I mean, sometimes I like to bring up research with stuff cuz I've, I've spent a lot of years in psychological research and there's a lot of evidence that as humans we tend to gravitate towards people who are like us.

It's an unconscious thing. You know, that's part of what keeps cultures within cultures because the way that a person looks, we tend to be drawn towards people. Look the way we look, but I think it's more complex. I think we're also drawn towards people, whether we consciously are aware of it or not, towards people that think as we think or that do things like, you know, we do.

And you know, maybe it's this subtle ego, you know, egotistical just the way of, of being humans in, in the world. And so thinking about that as a backdrop, when we meet with people you know, like even for an hour, like you and I met, we've developed and recognized some commonalities and different things over the over time and so I just wonder if, if meeting in person helps solidify some of that because then there's like this increased level of knowledge,

which then can add to that level of trust and, you know, kind of being drawn towards somebody because you're kind of know, you feel like you know them a little bit more. So I don't know. There's, there's just, there's so many pieces that, that play into this. I just think it's 

fascinating. Yeah, it is very fascinating.

 So in thinking about this knowing and communicating and collaborating, you know what are some of the epiphanies that you've had with collaboration in your professional coaching career?

faisal: Yeah. Before we go, should mention a little bit about the sponsor Yes. 

Sheri: Coaching Mastery community. Yes. Which is the epitome of collaboration for a lot of people. Because it's an opportunity for coaches to be coaching other coaches and to receive coaching, which is all collaboratively done to help grow each other, which is a fantastic model for being able to gain coaching mastery as well as business mastery.

Faisal: And so what would you like to add to that as you said, it's, the epitome of that. I mean, the experiment that we're running is to like, what actually helps people move forward in, life and business, in this case, in the coaching business. And what we've found is the feedback that we've gotten, that it doesn't just help them in their business but helps them feel more connected.

And that's personally true for, me too, to a community. That's really important for human beings in general. But more specifically, as you said, we feel commonality and similarities, especially in a field that's not fully recognized out in the world. You feel like there are people who understand you.

And so, and I think one of the most common things initially that ends up happening is that the coaches develop a higher level of confidence around who they are and what they're. And without that, you actually can't do a lot of stuff because if you don't have that confidence in yourself and your work, you're not gonna promote yourself.

You're not gonna reach out to people, you're not gonna do a lot of the simple things that we can do in business to move ahead. So it definitely makes a, I feel like it makes a big, a big difference. Absolutely. 

Sheri: Absolutely. So collaboration, what is that? How, did you shift into collaboration in your journey?

faisal: I think I have a personal bias around this. I'll start with that. I think my bias is I would say, well, a couple of personal biases and they're kind of weird and contradictory, but the first one is I come from a more collectivistic culture, so I grew up within. I mean, I grew up with aunts and uncles all around me.

We weren't just brought up by my parents. They had just as much authority in our life as my parents did. And I still remember being chased by my uncle because I did something wrong. And we would live in a general area where we would constantly have interactions with cousins aunts, and uncles, and we would see how they would operate.

If my parents weren't there, they would be taken care of us, or at least watch out for us. There wasn't much-taken care of. You're around, take care of yourself. That was it for the most part. So I, I got to see the, I would say the positive and the negative aspects of the community. These are some of the most amazing and exciting and fun and connected phases of my life.

Go back to those moments. When I would be sitting around with my cousins and, and playing games. And at the time we didn't have internet. We didn't have, we didn't even have tv, the way TV is. And so it'd be a lot of board games and like card games and stuff like that, or sports or anything that we could do.

We would do that. And also I saw the negative aspects of it, like how incredibly destructive communities could be to your psychology, to your well-being, to your physical and psychological well-being. And I saw that too. From what I could see it was a huge responsibility and it takes a certain amount of leadership within every community, from the people who are supposed to be the leaders.

To move it forward. And as soon as you let go of that, it just goes downhill. Mm-hmm. And then the other side of it for me was that even though I was part of a community, I kept to myself for most of my life, so I was in my own world, and I never really fully connected with people. I basically, and I say this often that I spent about the first three decades of my life in my own little bubble of life.

In my own mind, my mind is fairly interesting for me. So I can stay there for a while. It's not good for the social health that you might that that is, that is a human need. And I didn't recognize that was it just growing up just because. I didn't know how to express myself and I didn't know how to connect with people in the way that I wanted to.

And I felt odd. Other people thought that I was odd and just there was no way for me to understand how to communicate that better. So the personal bias, those two, one that I have seen, the positive and negative two that because I stayed away from it, I think I have a higher need to want to connect with people.

So I intrinsically want it like right now because I opened up more and I'm communicating more and I want to connect with people more. So I have an in, I think it's like an internal drive to wanna, so there are two things you will see. One is, is an internal drive to communicate more, which I didn't for the first three decades.

So you'll see me talking a lot. And the second drive is to want to connect more with people. And I realized it was interesting for me as I've gone through my own, through coaching myself, I used to think my highest value was freedom. It actually isn't it, it was a surprise for me. It was actually. Connection, then freedom.

So so that's the space, kind of the bias and the space that I come from. So I understand. So I am driven towards it, so I do want to see the positive in it. So there are obviously positives and negatives in collaboration and community and working with people, but then just expanding that a little bit.

Generally speaking, human beings are a collaborative species who are a social species. Everything we do is together. I mean, There wasn't somebody taking care of the Zoom system, the internet system, the electrical system, and all sorts of other infrastructures that have to be in place. It would not be possible for you, and me.

To talk with each other. We kind of, it's like one of those things we take for granted. It's like, is there, but one of these systems shut down. Everything else goes. So for example, we actually had a shutdown. I think it was a few, a couple of times that happened this year. It was the biggest network, internet net, one of the biggest in there, I think three in Canada.

One of the biggest internet net networks shut down completely. They couldn't figure out what was happening, was like a day and a half. And a bunch of banking system was connected to it. Like businesses are connected. And so my first, I opened up the computer I can't access and problem was that I was, I had my phone and internet and everything connected with that same network.

So I turned on my phone, had no internet, I turned on my laptop that day, No internet. Am I insane like, okay, let's go to the coffee shop. Good thing the coffee shop had a different network. So I got some connection and I got there very early. I was able to do a couple of my stuff and as the day went by, the connection started getting slower and slower and slower.

And what was happening is everybody was walking towards the coffee shop and just thinking of it like one simple thing. One system breaks down as nobody could access it. So like this whole thing is possible because of collaboration at so many different levels. That we can't actually, even if we listed here, it would be too long.

So there is, I think there's value in thinking about how that has happened. And so when we're structuring our business, are we actually thinking about that? And one other point might be that I think there's an illusion that especially people in the Western world, including me, consider myself from the Western world too.

Since I've been here for 20-plus years the illusion might be cuz we're given this idea of individual we do have an individual perspective, but our mind and you can elaborate on that, our mind doesn't actually work in an individual way. It works in relation to other people's thoughts.

It, our language is not an individual language. I mean, you can invent it, nobody will get it. But our language is a common language. So our thoughts operate based on our environment. Our emotions are deeply interconnected with other people in the environment. So the fact that that's the case as much as the idea of it being individuals empowering, the reality is that we are.

And in an intricate part of the whole group or community that, that we're a part of. It might not be the actual community that we describe it, but we're interconnected. Any system that breaks down any set of systems break down, will our life will be affected terribly so. So, Considering all that, are we thinking about creating those kinds of collaborations in our sit in our business?

And it could look like, it could be different ways that you can approach it, but those are, those are just high-level principles around how this, you can look at it at least.

Sheri: Yeah. You know, as you were talking, I was thinking about some of the stories and messages that I've heard from other people over the years about different types of collaboration as well as my own experiences and collaboration is, is a very broad term.

You know, I have been in the position of being an employer. Right. That, that's a collaboration, what, you know, hiring people and we're trying to work together towards a common goal. That's a collaboration. You know, and or how about not hiring people, but it's hiring a contractor, you know, a ten ninety-nine as we call it in the US.

Somebody that you know is fully independent and you're hiring them to do a task or have a specific outcome. That's still a collaboration, but it's a lot less of a responsibility for the person who's doing the hiring or doing the paying in some respects, and so, So I'm just thinking through like, there's a lot of different ways of collaborating, and then there's collaborating as like a joint venture where you have two people that are equally contributing to the, the development of something and they're, you know, fully invested financially, you know, with energy liability.

But also the upside. You know, and so for example Faisal and myself and a couple of other coaches who, with the Coaching Mastery community, it's a joy adventure. All four of us are fully invested and, you know, and contributing and there's just endless amounts of structure.

But one of the things that stuck out to me, you know, and it's one of those things that sometimes we hear somebody say something, They share an experience, or maybe it's not even their experience, but it's somebody else's experience. But they share a story with us cuz stories are powerful and it lands and it keeps us in this perspective for quite a long time until something else comes to challenge that perspective.

And it was simply this. It was probably about 16 years ago. And my husband and I were just starting to do real estate investing and I don't even remember the scenario, but my sister, who's also an investor out on the West Coast, she, I think my husband and I were talking with her about something related to, you know, doing, investing in a property with somebody else and she's like Sheri, And she told me this story about these two business partners that she had had at just recently who just were so hard to work with, who screwed things up, who, you know, made things more financially difficult for her for a period of time.

And she's like, I don't, don't remember what she said, but she said something to the effect of like, I would never. Have a business partner in investing again. And that scared me. I was like, oh my gosh, like here, here's somebody that's more experienced and, you know, and as, so I was like, okay, we can't invest with anybody else.

And like, that's just a decision and assumption I made for the next 15 years. And out of this story, this negative story one that was laced with fear and, you know, and I didn't even know all the details, but it's interesting how we hear one little thing like that and we'll just make a quick decision about whether we will or won't do something, and then we'll just continue on without revisiting that decision and, and the justifications around it.

So as you're listening to this listener, what, what stories have you heard about collaboration? Either the good or the bad, but I would say more about the negative things, the things that, you know, people have said to you about, oh, you don't want to, you know, you don't wanna be a partner with somebody, or you don't wanna have to depend on other people for things, or you don't want to, you know, and some of the stories sometimes we tell ourselves are things like, nobody can do it as good as us.

These are all stories and beliefs that we can have that will absolutely have the potential to impact our decision-making process. And so I'd encourage you, as you're listening, what are some of those messages or thoughts that you have and beliefs you have around collaboration and, and all the mar you know, varied forms.

And then is there the possibility that some of those beliefs are actually counterproductive to what you are really wanting to do with your coaching?

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