Under stress, the mind can get caught in comparison, demands, resentment, and obligation and you may act in ways you later regret. Learning how to collaborate with others under stress enables you to maintain integrity and strengthen your relationships. Collaboration is an effective, relationship-building strategy for meeting needs. True collaboration gives you a sense of deep support and companionship as you face life’s challenges.

In the framework of Mindful Compassionate Dialogue, collaboration is a consciousness in which you trust that when a particular quality of connection is established, you can access a generosity of heart and the creativity to honor all needs in a given situation. Trusting connection is the biggest step on the road to collaboration. Once this trust is established, the skills of collaboration can be broken down as follows.

Distinguishing needs and strategies

To engage in this kind of collaboration it's essential that you have a vocabulary of universal needs. Without this vocabulary you'll be stuck again and again in the confusion between a need and a strategy to meet a need. Confusing strategies for needs leads a person to hunker down around a particular preference and refuse to move. It closes down the heart and leads to hopelessness, anger, and a sense of threat. Any time you believe you must have it your way, you have confused a need and a strategy to meet it. Memorize the needs list so that it is a natural and accessible part of your vocabulary. 

Confidence in your autonomy

In the consciousness of collaboration, the other person is not a threat to your autonomy. Collaboration asks you to find the inner stability that allows you to stay true to what’s most important to you even when it differs from someone else’s priority. You trust that you will remain true to your values and needs regardless of the other person’s ability to show support for your choice. Collaboration isn’t about smoothing things over into a one-size-fits-all solution. 

In compromise, both people begrudgingly give up something of what they want to create a superficially harmonious way forward. Compromise typically has painful side effects. Collaboration, on the other hand, means that you can be flexible with strategies for meeting your needs without sacrificing your authenticity or what you care most about. 

Prioritizing connection

Collaboration asks you to trust that when each person prioritizes groundedness and connection, a solution will arise even if you can’t see any sign of it when you begin a dialogue. It requires dedication to tending the connection throughout the dialogue. As soon as the content of the dialogue becomes more important than the quality of connection, you have slipped out of collaboration.

Courage and mindfulness

Collaboration often requires the courage to notice your fear of a potential conflict and jump in anyway. In the beginning, collaboration may involve tolerating fear of conflict, anxiety about the unknown, your own reactivity, and another's reactivity without letting it run the show. This means maintaining the mindfulness to watch these things arise and staying true to your priority — supporting the quality of connection, and staying grounded in your values. 

Collaboration is an incredible opportunity to synergize with others and access care, creativity, and insight. 

Practice

You can build trust in collaboration by looking for opportunities. Start with simple things that you normally would do on your own and experiment with inviting someone in to a decision, project, or activity. Here are some examples:

1. When facing a decision that you might normally make on your own, ask someone who will be affected by your decision what comes up for them while considering the options.

2. When you and your partner go grocery shopping, instead of dividing up the tasks, do each part together.

3. When initiating a fun project think about who might share your interest and enthusiasm and invite them to do it with you.

4. When you face a chore or a task that you don't want to do, invite someone to do it with you and then help them with a task or chore.

5. When starting to dream about or visualize about doing something big, let the relevant people know of your dream and dream together.