In our column "Creative Catalyst" on Story Circle Network's blog Telling Her Stories: The Broad View, we have posted the first two of a three-part cycle on collaboration:

5.1 Collaboration: How to Make It Work
5.2 Collaboration: Trust Floats the Boat

What makes a good collaboration?

Janet: In part one we talked about how we met and began our collaboration that drew on:

1) Shared life and work experiences that formed a personal and professional bond between us;
2) Knowing and liking each other. Work as an extension of friendship and the other way around.
3) Interlocking Strengths & Skills

What else has worked for us?

#4 The same only different: Balance

Stephanie: We’re good partners. In addition to the complementary set of skills we bring to the work, we have different personalities and ways of working. That somehow balances out what we bring to our work together.

You're more directive than I am. You jump right in to shape a situation where I tend to work around whatever is going on. You're more "out there" while I'm more reserved. You're the frog, leaping into the water with abandon. I'm the one on the shore delicately dipping in a toe before making the decision to enter or not. We both see the whole picture, yet enjoy analyzing. I like to take a problem or piece of writing apart and make it work better as a whole. Imprecision irritates me.

#5 A shared sense of purpose, work ethic, discipline, humor, and desire for quality work.

Janet: It was sad really…when Stephanie became irritated by my imprecision.

Stephanie: Yes! This phrase of ours has helped us gain perspective and laughter over the years. Because of our time together, we can use verbal shorthand—no explanation necessary—because we have a history

Janet: It’s like a long-married couple who speak in code. Now that is really sad!
Carol Lloyd categorizes several different types of creativity. What I like about our collaborative relationship is that we not only have differences, but also over-lapping strengths.
We both are good at brainstorming and get a kick out of it, but that’s probably the phase of the creative process that’s my best shot. Carol calls that generative creativity.

While I'm analytical, you are even more so. We can both shape and structure, but you are clearer, pared down, and rigorous in what to leave out and when to push for clarification. In Carol's term, I see you as a "realizer." You move our work into form and hold it to a high standard. On my own I tend to be rather a seat of the pants gal and improvise as I go along.

#6 Knowing and Honoring Needs

Stephanie: “Rigorous”—I like that word. One of the reasons we can work together so intensely is that our communication is mainly by phone and email. This lessens the intensity so it’s not so overwhelming. That has made it possible to meet for longer periods of time—and sustain our working relationship over time.

We both find face-to-face interactions tiring. We’re good about honoring that. When we're together for more than just a quick visit, we build in alone time to have a cup of tea, relax and rest. The sensitivity of good friendship.

Janet: You are more inward that I am, but we both need that rest to recover and regroup. We share many of the INFP [Meyers-Briggs Introverted-Intuitive-Feeling-Perceiving], and those qualities and patterns helped us tune in more accurately and with greater understanding. Since the INFP profile is only 1 percent of the population, we’re lucky to have found that in a working partner.

Stephanie: Only 1%. We are rara avis indeed!

Janet: The underlying qualities in our relationship that melds our collaboration are a shared sense of purpose, humor, desire for quality work, a shared work ethic and discipline. We’ve both done extensive work for hire which requires working to client specifications, on deadline and within budget. These common values yield good communication, expectations, and trust.

#7 Truth, Trust, and Resolving Conflict

Let's talk about trust a bit. What is the nature of trust? How is it built? How does it feed into collaboration? How is it sustained?

Stephanie: True trust can come only through experience. Unless you've done things together, how do you know if you can count on someone? The more you interact the more comfortable you're able to feel.
Trust also involves being able to be truthful without feeling as if you're putting yourself in danger of being knocked down. Nothing worthwhile ever proceeds with some sort of snag, so it's critical to be able to talk about the snags and figure out what to do about them.
Without trust true collaboration isn’t possible. If you're holding back because of unease, then it isn't collaboration. It becomes a hierarchical work situation in which one holds power over the other. Trustworthiness itself sustains trust. Being trustworthy means doing what you've promised, respecting your partner, and resolving differences when they do arise.

Janet: Yup. Yup. Resolving conflict—either through exploring it directly or just laughing about it—is vital. And, yes, for us being willing to stick with it has allowed trust. I feel secure because I believe this is a friendship that will go the distance rather than crumple at the first wrinkle. Perhaps for others that security and depth can come through shorter acquaintanceship, but it’s the longevity that seals it.

Stephanie: Yes, stick-to-it-tiv-ness.

Janet: Yup.

www.riehlife.com/2010/01/30/making-collaboration-work-part-1-with-womens-memoir-duo-kendra-bonnett-matilda-butler

www.riehlife.com/2010/01/30/making-collaboration-work-part-2-womens-memoir-duo-kendra-bonnett-matilda-butler/

storycircle.typepad.com/scn/2010/01/collaboration.html

In our first 2-part interview Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler told us how they met and shared five tips for successful collaboration.

How Stephanie & I met and began our collaboration

Today we offer the first of a second two-part interview on collaboration between Stephanie Farrow and myself. It’s a working relationship within the context of a long friendship that’s been going on for 37 years, longer than many marriages.

Stephanie and I have collaborated on many writing and training projects. Most recently we’ve joined up to write our Creative Catalyst column for Telling Her Stories, the Story Circle Network blog.
In our column from February-March-April we're running a 3-post Creative Catalyst cycle.

5.1 Collaboration: How to Make It Work
5.2 Collaboration: Trust Floats the Boat

Stephanie lives in New Mexico while I live in St. Louis. We haven’t seen each other for four years. Our collaboration takes place via phone and email.

For this interview we experimented chatting by Gmail. Our phone time tends toward delightful jazz conversations as we branch out discursively and then pull it back in to a point. We found we enjoyed the Gmail technology to capture conversation. It allowed time for on-the-spot reflection.

We first met in Ghana in 1973 when we were both teaching in Peace Corps. She lived in the South while I lived in the North. When I traveled to Kumasi during school breaks, we’d spend time visiting over tea. Those conversations began building the foundation of our collaboration back in the United States in New Mexico, and then continued when I moved to California and then to Missouri.

#1 Shared experience to build upon.

Janet: Stephanie, I remember sitting in your house outside Kumasi visiting and sipping tea as we first got to know each other. It seems to me that beginning started building the foundation of our collaboration.
Stephanie: I remember first meeting you when we got in country the first day. You and your husband came to our room and we lounged on the beds. Everything seemed so new—Africa, that is—and here you were—old Africa hands with experience in Botswana.
Janet: With your perspective of coming from Honduras and Guatemala, you and your husband John quickly became old hands yourselves. You spoke flawless French and Spanish. Coming from Botswana we knew Setswana. Those two perspectives gave us a point to start our long conversation of 37 years.

Stephanie: You're right, in some ways Ghana didn't seem strange at all—it was just different—another 3rd World country. I think that previous experience made it easier for me to adjust and feel at home straight away.

When you share an overseas experience of any sort—even just going to France to visit the Eiffel Tower or whatever—it changes your perspective on the world. Others who've been outside the country understand what this means in a way others can't.

#2 Knowing and liking each other. Work as an extension of friendship and the other way around.

Stephanie: I can hear your typing over the speaker phone. It sounds like there's a demented mouse gnawing away.

Janet: Gnaw, Gnaw! We were so fortunate to meet up again in New Mexico in 1979 when we'd both been back in the States a short time going through cultural transition and getting settled in the United States. That reconnection became one of the most important shaping influences of my life. For one, it gave me one of the longest-term friends I've ever had in my life.

Stephanie: It's rare these days to have such a long-term friend. Connections seem much more tenuous these days. We're such a mobile society that it's hard to stay connected—especially those of us who don't even stay in the country!

#3 Interlocking Strengths & Skills

Janet: In the 1980s in New Mexico working together emerged organically from our friendship and similar work interests.
You worked with a variety of nonprofit volunteer organizations—like Amigos de las Americas, Parentcraft, Partners of the Americas, and Coalition for Children. Mostly your work then centered on children and overseas, cross-cultural issues. I worked with community education and later in my consulting firm Clear Communication.

The underlying skills for us both were training and development and communication. With this bond in place we began designing and giving workshops together.

During our three years in the Kellogg Leadership Fellowship for Partners of the Americas that our relationship became closer and we collaborated more frequently as we traveled to Latin America and the Caribbean experiencing places and development issues first hand. I’d never participated in seminars like that before—or met socially with high-level officials.
Stephanie: I hadn't experienced that before either, so our bond grew. The work we’ve done together since then sprung from that time. The joint understanding we have of the world and of each other informs our work today.

In the second part of our interview we'll continue our discussion on how to make collaboration work.

How do we do that to make our work better, further-reaching, and...more fun? I invited Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler of Women's Memoirs to tell us the story of how they met and what makes their sizzling and productive collaboration work.

This two-part interview with Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler kicks off our Riehlife Blog-of-the-Month series. It’s a linked interview with Creative Catalyst, the column Stephanie Farrow and I write for Telling Her Stories. From February through April on Story Circle Network's blog we’ll present three posts on collaboration.

I first met Kendra and Matilda through Story Circle Network. Together they write and manage an ambitious, productive, and helpful blog Women's Memoirs. The entire range of their creative and entrepreneurial collaborations are beyond my ability to describe or even list. I’m constantly agape at the amount and quality of their work.

During last summer’s blog tour to launch my audio book “Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry and Music,” Kendra and Matilda were generous collaborators. We blog for Story Circle Network’s “Telling Her Stories.” My column is Creative Catalyst. Kendra’s is "Getting Read," and Matilda's is "Opening Salvos." At the February Story Circle Network Memoir Conference in Austin we’ll be there together presenting workshops, coaching, reading…and, generally having a good time.

Here's Part 1 of Kendra and Matilda's interview. Here they tell us how they met and began working together.

Women’s Memoir Duo on Collaboration

Riehlife: Kendra and Matilda, this year marks your 30th year of collaboration. That’s a long time! I’m glad you’re here to share with us what you’ve learned about working together as a team. First, tell us the story of how you started working together.

Kendra: I always feel this is my story. You see, Matilda was my first boss. Just out of graduate school at UC Santa Barbara I felt I needed to go to the city to get a good job. Even though I’m originally from the East Coast, I didn’t feel ready to tackle New York City. Instead, I choose a city where I felt very comfortable--San Francisco.
A friend helped me become a temp at the Far West Laboratory for Educational Research and Development. After a few months, I was getting a pretty good reputation for my editing and writing skills, and that’s when the editor position opened with the Women’s Educational Equity Communication Network. I interviewed with the associate director along with about 25 others (although I didn’t know that at the time).

Matilda: Kendra, let me jump in here. My associate director was Jean Marzone. After the interviews, she told me that Kendra was her first choice. I looked at her resume and hesitated to even include Kendra in the top three candidates I’d interview. I remember saying, “Jean, she doesn’t have the right experiences and hasn’t written about women’s issues.” But Jean insisted, and I agreed to the interview. Even after I talked with Kendra, I was somewhat hesitant.

Kendra: Matilda, I knew I was a quick study and obviously persuaded you to give me a try. Being editor turned into a great learning experience. I was responsible for dozens of publications each year. I remember the first time I was faced with a publication layout, I sneaked in on the weekend, and found the mechanicals for some previously published materials piled in the closet. I pulled them out and began taking one apart.

“Rubber cement!” I shouted to the empty office. You have to remember that this was 30 years ago. Our page layouts were still done with rubber cement and layout boards. Well, my mother was a commercial artist, and she’d taught me long ago the proper way to work with rubber cement. That was when I was certain I could do the job.

Matilda: That was the fall of 1979. We could never have imagined that 30 years later, we’d continue to be friends and now co-authors, colleagues and business partners.

Riehlife: How did your collaboration develop across time?

Kendra: Matilda left Far West Lab in 1982 to co-found her own company, Knowledge Access, a CD-ROM indexing and retrieval software company. We continued to stay in touch and became more friends than business colleagues. However, there were always shared professional interests in the air. For example, when I was editor in chief of IBM’s Profit Magazine, I had an opportunity to feature Matilda and her company on the cover of an issue we did about CD-ROM technology.

Somehow the years passed. I now lived on the East Coast and worked in marketing for several companies. If I was in California, I visited Matilda. When she found herself in NYC on business, she’d call me and I’d come into the city for a museum visit and a meal. Since we’re talking about collaboration, I’ll skip the things we individually did professionally in those years and bring us to 2004.

Matilda: Well, let me back up just a little. Once I sold my company, I was eager to return to research and writing. At my 40th high school reunion in 2000, I became intrigued by the changing expectations and experiences of women in the various graduating classes.

I was struck by the mismatch between the expectations and experiences of women in my class. Our main expectation was to become wives and mothers. In our actual experience we also became judges, lawyers, doctors, and business executives. I decided to research this topic and write a book. After interviewing more than 100 women born during World War II and writing a first draft of the book, I asked Kendra to read it during her 2004 visit. She was polite, even helped me get an agent. However, I knew Kendra well enough to know that the book wasn’t all that I wanted it to be.

Kendra: Gee, I thought I had hidden my initial concerns better than that. I remember the phone call in early 2005, Matilda, when you asked if I’d co-author the book with you. I don’t think I missed a beat and replied, “Of course. How do you want me to help?” The business-minded of you may notice that I agreed before I even knew what she wanted me to do or how we would share royalties. We’ll get back to this point about our collaboration in a minute.

The outcome of our co-authorship of what became the award-winning collective memoir Rosie’s Daughters: The “First Woman To” Generation Tells Its Story. This project re-focused our lives on memoir writing—especially women’s memoir. Research for Rosie’s Daughters showed us the power of helping women tell their stories. Initially, Matilda began teaching memoir writing workshops and I began coaching women on writing and publishing their memoirs. We started co-teaching online classes, and are now working on a book about writing.

Riehlife: This is an amazing story.

Read part 2 as Kendra and Matilda tell more about their working process and share five lessons they've learned about effective and fun collaboration.

Later in February Riehlife will run another two-part interview between my collaborator Stephanie Farrow and myself.

These four posts anchor the theme of collaboration for Riehlife's Blog-of-the-Month. Please leave your ideas about collaboration and your collaboration stories in the comment section of these posts.

Read the January post for our Creative Catalyst column. "The Critique Waltz" on Story Circle Network's blog Telling Her Stories.

Written by Janet Riehl of St. Louis and Stephanie Farrow of Albuquerque

"Art of Critique" is our keynote post in this cycle of three.

Stephanie Farrow collaborates with me in writing our Creative Catalyst column for Story Circle Network's blog: "Telling Her Stories."

We establish a theme in the anchor post and continue with two additional posts to deepen the theme. Cycle 3 in May-June-July considered "Fear: The Friendly Enemy."

This month we begin to deepen our consideration of fear with "Fie on Fear! Success & Failure: Two Sides of a Coin." We'd love for you to read and comment on the post. As creative people, we'd like to hear from you.

Catch up on the entire Creative Catalyst archive here.

This column is written in collaboration with my dear friend Stephanie Farrow of Albuquerque. We're assembling them in themes written in cycles of three posts. Later, these will be available in an e-book and a printed book as well. Love for you to comment on the new post; also, if you have questions or suggestions for a topic, please write me at janet.riehl@gmail.come.