Your success doesn’t just depend on you: how to embrace collaboration to uplift your life & business

My career started almost 20 years ago. Throughout the years, I’ve had to collaborate with a massive amount of people, and yet, until a few years ago I don’t think I really ever collaborated with anyone. Born and raised in a top-down and left-brain society, I learned to mimic business behaviour and ritual from the – mostly masculine – examples I had in my life (my dad and the men in my family or close vicinity) and in the media (the men in movies, television shows, and magazines). Add to this that – like so many other women – I was raised to compete for attention and love by being “a good girl” and by “behaving myself”, so much so that working with others, especially women, has always been at least a tiny bit ambiguous.

My point is: when you’re taught to compete for attention, it’s hard to work together.

As a result, for years I thought I was being super flexible and collaborative, while in fact I was mistaking a widely-spread form of unspoken and patronizing control for what collaboration really is: I called the shots and pretty much directed everything. In an effort to avoid anyone making any kind of mistake – or in an effort to always be in control – I was micromanaging everything and reviewing every step anyone was taking under my supervision. It was terrible, for sure, and it definitely wasn’t collaboration!

And it left me miserable, and stressed, and unhappy, and resentful. Not only in my businesses, but also in my private life, where I was doing the same thing with the people who mattered most to me.

At its heart, collaboration requires you to share: ideas, work, responsibility but also recognition. It asks you not to put yourself above anyone else, but on the contrary to recognize the uniqueness and strength of those you collaborate with.

And it’s only in the past few years that I’ve really learned how to do that fully. To do this, I’ve had to tap into my right-brain potential and to let go of always needing to be in control. And yes, it was scary, but what I gained massively outweighed any fear that I could have had. Because real collaboration – at least, that’s how I see it – starts with a common wish to create something together, and recognizes that doing so brings everyone’s strengths and uniqueness to the table. Only then can we craft and build truly beautiful things.

In my businesses, allowing collaboration to really flourish has done many things for me. As a business owner (and a person!), it has made me happier, less stressed, and less busy. When you share the heart of what you’re doing as well as the workload, and the responsibilities with others – which is what you do when you really collaborate – more free time is a really nice side-effect.

But collaboration has also been instrumental in the growth and success of my businesses.

For more than a decade, I did everything myself. Even if I had people around me, I always put everything on me. And the reason I did that was because I thought I needed to be perfect, and always in control. I wanted to be appreciated, and loved. And I thought I could only do that if I was successful, and able to handle whatever came my way on my own. But I was wrong. Trying to control everything kept my businesses small, and me on the edge of a nervous breakdown. I worked day and night, but still there weren’t enough hours in the day to keep up with the pace of growth my businesses were taking. It’s only when I accepted the need to collaborate that things really changed.

The same is true in my private life, and especially with my partner. For a very long time, I thought I was the one that had to keep the partnership alive and going, and that the only way to do this was to control everything. Again, I was wrong. Partnerships – just like collaborative groups – are things you enter into with equal rights and capabilities.

In 2015, I really went all in on the collaborative side. I decided to trust my husband more, and to lean on him for a change. And the results have been grandiose to say the least. We’re a team now, in the most heart-warming sense of the word. We share, and learn, and grow together. A bit like what I’ve done in my businesses this year, too – witnessing them really flourish by taking the collaborative approach one step further and allowing my team to really help me bring their uniqueness in and share the burden of responsibilities with me.

But collaboration isn’t always easy. It takes practice and skill, and is something you have to learn. So let me share with you the 3 main things that have allowed me to profit so much from wholehearted collaboration:

#1: Understanding that collaboration is the only way.

The wired world we live in today is literally changing the way we work, make money, and run our businesses. Top-down functioning is over. Left-brain thinking needs help. People are aching to share their knowledge, passion, and purpose. Not only to create beautiful things on a small scale, but also to fix things on a bigger one. Collaboration in your private life, and in your career or business will serve you well, I have no doubt. But collaboration on an even bigger scale is what we are witnessing today too. And we are being called to participate: to protect, nurture and to give back to the planet, and everyone on it who needs our help.

#2: Collaboration is not a threat.

Many high-achieving and ambitious women, when they think about collaboration, will think about competition too. And competition in itself holds a threatening element to it. I believe that, because women are raised to be “good girls” and to “behave” for the love and attention of their parents (I’m no exception), working together has always been an issue for many us. And that’s sad. Because there’s nothing more beautiful than women who collaborate with one another. It’s not something to be scared off, but to strive for!

#3: Every woman is a leader.

Wholehearted and feminine collaboration asks every woman to step up into their leadership role and to be fully present and in their power. It doesn’t matter how big or small your platform is, what matters is how you use your voice, what you do with your strengths, and the kind of mark you leave on yourself, those around you and the world at large.

So you see how embracing collaboration can uplift your life and business. But there is more…

I believe that women leading the way to a new way of collaboration already is and will continue to lead the way to a new economy, and eventually to a new way of being in the world where love, compassion, and nurture will be at the heart of everything we do as a species.

Or at least, that is my hope and wish for the future.