Take a beat from breakdancers on collaboration
February 17, 2025 by Athena Thompson
Over the weekend I was reminded of THE key element to successful collaborations.
Trust.
Collaboration is one way a business can innovate when two or more parties work towards a common goal. Each party has expectations of what the other will do towards that goal, and trust that they each will do their best to fulfil those expectations.
When does trust start to fall apart?
Trust starts to fall apart when people stop meeting those expectations, or those expectations are not clearly defined. For example, when agreed milestones are not met or there is overspending in a budget. Although it is normal to have variations and change (especially when innovating), unexpected events won’t necessarily catch all the challenges identified in a risk assessment.
However, for trust to be maintained people need to be prompt, direct, transparent, factual and clear in their communication. Otherwise —, when there are communication gaps or a mismatch of facts arise, trust disintegrates — and that’s when collaborations start to fail.
Can you salvage trust?
Trust can be salvaged by taking responsibility and acknowledging mistakes made. The journey for trust recovery is taking action with:
- Regular transparent and clear communication
- Agreement on future expectations; not over-committing or over-promising, starting small
- Being consistent and reliable
- Communicating challenges as they appear
- Giving partners the opportunity to engage in the problem-solving process
- Agreeing on an action plan to prevent past mistakes, including responsibilities and accountability
- Regular clear communication (repetition of regular communication is by design/intentional – it’s important!)
Collaboration — the ultimate dance
This brings me back to why I was reminded of this over the weekend. My friend Ben VanderZee invited us to the Double Trouble Jam 2 vs 2 breaking comp, a collaboration with Migrant Coffee and Misfits bar in Footscray.
Watching the breaking crews compete illustrated for me what successful collaboration looks like. The vision and end goal was clearly understood, inclusive of twists and turns along the way. A team’s movement showed clear and direct communication, in how they interchanged and tagged the other to dance, trusting their partner to pick up where they left off. They were consistent and reliable, and they were present the moment their partner needed them to make a move (as you can see in this video). You saw trust in action.
So for a good collaboration, get it into practice like a breaker and build trust, and be a winner like this crew was on the weekend.