I have a fellow admin at work, Erin, who sits on the “Head of School Symposium” committee with me at Lake Forest Academy. I had suggested a project to be undertaken by our committee and the committee approved the project. Of course, I volunteered to head the project and left the meeting with a head full of ideas and a need to put together a plan of action. Erin caught me in the hall and we talked about the project on the way back to our offices. Erin generously offered her time to help me out on the project. We talked a little about ideas and agreed to set up a time to seriously talk about our ideas and come with a solid game plan.
A week later we met for lunch to map out how we could have the greatest impact on our community with this project. I hardly ate at all because the ideas we were exchanging were magnificent. We both brought a different perspective to the project. We both were feeding off of each other’s suggestions and my paper was filled with well thought out ideas that by ourselves we might have come up with some but together – well we mapped out the entire campaign pretty much from start to finish.
We also shared about ourselves. We had been honest with each other before, but we felt that a safe place had been established for us which allowed us to be vulnerable and in turn creative. In Peggy Vasques’s new book, Mean Girl No More, Peggy invites us to “celebrate each other”. I wish this would be possible more often and with Admins and Executives alike.
I wrote up our ideas and sent them to Erin to add any additional ideas or information that she had promised she would obtain. The proposal looked great and what was better is that it had the potential to have a big impact on our community and those individuals who choose to participate.
We received approval and moved ahead. I contacted the organization that we were going to partner with and Erin began creating documents and forms to be shared with the committee and the community.
What, you might ask, does this have to do with celebrating each other and/or collaboration? EVERYTHING!!!
- Accept help – I could have put the proposal together by myself. It would have been good, but because Erin and I collaborated it is now great. Erin questioned some of my ideas which made us delve deeper into the process. By accepting Erin’s help, I am extremely proud of the project we have embarked on and so is Erin. We both feel ownership based on our contributions. Win (me) Win (Erin) Win (those who will benefit from this project)!
- The more the merrier – I am sure you have heard the saying two heads are better than one, or the more the merrier. I know that it was drilled into me when I was young. But as we grow older we are taught to think for ourselves and we become more competitive and less collaborative. Only one person can be _______________ (fill in the blank) so we compete against each other instead of with each other. Afraid of not getting recognized, some people will take credit for collaborative work or even worse, throw a colleague under the bus because the collaborative work did not work out as planned.
- Be vulnerable – I volunteered to take on the project that I submitted. Erin offered to help me with it. We both shared about ourselves allowing each of us to see how we were the same as each other and to observe how we’re different from each other. We bring our life stories with us to every conversation we have. Each person’s life story is different and influences how we think and react.
Thank you, Peggy Vasquez, for the invitation. By celebrating each other, we created a safe environment to dig deeper, be creative and to throw out ideas (no matter how crazy they might have seemed) knowing that we would not be judged but instead lifted up. And in doing so, those ideas became our project that has and will continue to bring much joy to those in our community and surrounding communities.
How do you “Celebrate” others? Please leave us a comment below and let us know.
Jackie