What Do We Mean by Working in Collaboration?

There’s a subtle difference between cooperation and collaboration.

Cooperation, while a great thing, is kind of like saying “good fences make for good neighbors”. You’re close, but you never really get to the deeper stuff.

Collaboration is the stuff of coaching and counselling at Clear Moment. It’s a core value of ours because our role is to work closely together towards a common goal – one that is named by you but that is derived through shared effort. In fact, the word collaborate literally means “one labor shared by more than one person”. So when we say “our role” we mean this in the sense “you and me”.

Here’s a story that we think illustrated the point.

Once upon a time, there was a young toddler sitting with her teacher trying to put a puzzle together. The toddler, because of her stage of life, had a very urgent need to collaborate. Literally, her fingers still didn’t have the dexterity to put the puzzle pieces together, at least not easily. But the teacher wanted to cooperate. In other words, the teacher tried to make room to “do her part”. The teacher tried to tell the toddler where pieces ought to go rather than helping the toddler with her fumbling fingers. Had the teacher focussed on collaboration, she would have realized the toddler really wanted to figure out how the picture would come together. Her collaboration would have been to help with the technique of getting the pieces to fit together so that they would hold in place. The toddler experienced the teacher as taking over and became frustrated to the point that the toddler literally took the puzzle pieces that threw them up in the air.

There may be a subtle difference between cooperation and collaboration. But at times, it’s the deciding factor about whether a picture comes together or not.

And that is a great move towards lasting hope and healing.

What do you think?