The Hidden Power of Female Collaborations
A new take on how women work.
Of the many unexpected byproducts of COVID-19, I count increased self-awareness right up there with bread making, family puzzle night and whittling down the to be read nightstand pile. Extra hours at home afforded more reflection about my values. This surfaced some surprising insights about how I lived out my values and who were influential collaborators along the way.
Girl power, squad goals, work wives … there are many forms of female alliances and all are powerful in their own right. But when it comes to building women up, particularly in the work world, there is a subtle quality sitting just below the surface: a collaborative mindset. Collaboration, specifically among women, moves us beyond supportive alliances to a new realm of camaraderie and richness. The act of collaborating is to push (sometimes) and pull (other times) in pursuit of growth. Here, growth is defined as an expansive set of big and small wins — a hard conversation handled with grace, speaking one’s mind in the face of adversity, taking a next step in a project after a setback or a significant personal or professional milestone. Whatever the objective, women’s innate and potent skill for collaborating offers us a new modality to attain fulfillment.
Collaborative acts between women are a kind of balm — they boost self-confidence, challenge and validate ideas, and encourage deeper inquiry. This is critical in today’s workforce as women are not only breaking barriers but finding the new terrain lonely.
Collaborations differ from cooperatives or mentoring relationships in a few important ways: First, they are bilateral and symbiotic where both sides derive some benefit even if the exchange is uneven. In Give and Take, Adam Grant described our interaction tendencies as being givers, takers or matchers. Matchers are transactional — for what they give they expect equal value in return. Takers strive to eke out as much as possible, while givers contribute without expecting anything in return. SHEconomics — shorthand to describe the unique skills women bring to their relationships — is a build on the matcher tendency with a twist. In female collaborations, the measure of value amortizes across time and experience. We give, trusting that we’ll enjoy a return, without needing to know what shape it will take.
In this way, collaborations are multidimensional often blending personal and professional goals towards a more whole being. (Or perhaps it is simply in the time of COVID-19 it is harder to segment work from our personal lives.) The richest female collaborations are like doctors without borders — they go to the need.
The most prolific collaborations are resourceful and architectural — they weave ideas, suggestions and open-ended questions to get the juices flowing. We work the problem. We pull in unexpected connections. (Example: Challenged to devise ways to drive adoption for a new product, my chief collaborator organized a lunch with an industry expert to brainstorm ideas. The introduction yielded some immediate solutions, but importantly the relationship lasted and grew through new projects in subsequent roles.) In the process of breaking down a challenge together, female collaborators construct a new foundation — one that layers idea upon idea. This act of joint effort redirects energy into a new, forward, trajectory.
One of my most influential collaborators, Linda Dupree, began as a manager/mentor. During that era, I took far more than I gave. I observed Linda as what Liz Wiseman calls a Multiplier. Her distinctive trademark: amplifying the strengths of team members, creating clear goals and holding people accountable with heart. Working together through various roles, Linda’s confidence in me blossomed into confidence in myself. (“If Linda thinks I can do this, I believe I can too.”) Confidence grew into courage to try new things and step into expanded leadership roles. Along the way our friendship grew into continuous collaborative acts — a phone call to run an idea by the other, an email to share an article or story we knew would enrich the other or expand her thinking. Over the years our social experiences (dinners, theatre) have been marked by our signature segue into discussing a “work thing” which involves no segue at all. We move seamlessly from text, phone, email often threading a single conversation across all modes. Sometimes this feels like just being on the same wavelength, but that makes it seem like happenstance when in actuality our collaborative gestures are the scaffolding of something much greater.
As we celebrate IWD 2021, it is timely to bring these self-affirming, rich and productive female collaborations to the forefront. What traits do you see in your collaborations that add depth to the descriptions here? Let’s use the power of storytelling to demonstrate the purpose and productivity of female collaborations. What’s your story?
