Collaborating with the Enemy
How to Work with People You Don't Agree with or Like or Trust
Number of pages: 160
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
BBB Library: Communication
ISBN: 978-1626568228
Editorial Review
Often, to get something done that really matters to us, we need to work with people we don’t agree with or like or trust. Adam Kahane has faced this challenge many times, working on big issues like democracy, jobs, climate change, and on everyday issues in his organizations or family. He has learned that our conventional understanding of collaboration—that it requires a harmonious team that agrees on where it’s going, how it’s going to get there, and who needs to do what—is wrong. Instead, we need a new approach to collaboration that embraces discord, experimentation, and genuine cocreation—which is exactly what Kahane provides in this groundbreaking and timely book.
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Wisdom to Share
We can’t work out how to collaborate until we understand when to collaborate. Collaboration is only one of four ways that we can approach situations we find problematic. Collaboration is not always our best option.
Whenever we are faced with a situation we find problematic, in politics or at work or at home, we have four ways that we can respond: collaborating, forcing, adapting, or exiting.
Being certain that we know the right answer doesn’t leave much room for other people’s answers and therefore makes it more difficult to work together.
Conventional collaboration works only in simple, controlled situations. In other situations we need to stretch.
If our challenge is complex and contentious, then the conventional approach to collaboration will not work and we will need to employ an unconventional one.
Stretch collaboration requires all of us to embrace both love and power. If we constrict—if we weaken our stronger pole or outsource our weaker pole—we will not be successful in collaborating in tough contexts. So we need to do the opposite: practice employing our weaker pole and thereby strengthen it. We need to stretch.
In stretch collaboration, we cocreate our way forward. We cannot know our route before we set out; we cannot predict or control it; we can only discover it along the way.
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