How we show up together
At one point during our conversation, I remarked to Paulina Larocca “you yourself are a transdisciplinary project.”
She agreed, and this is why I wanted to include Paulina in my Near and Far writing project.
Near and Far is about artistic and creative practices as transversal skillsets and processes. What happens when you bring an artist or creative into an interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary setting?
Now working independently as a consultant, author, and keynote speaker, Paulina’s career has mixed working in innovation in the corporate sector (she has worked with Absolut Vodka and Pernod Ricard Winemakers among others) with current work on a PhD in creativity and innovation (including theatre and visual arts practice in her research) on top of a Masters in Science in Creativity and Change Leadership.
Given that Paulina has looked at creativity through several different lenses over the years – corporate, scientific, artistic, now all being pulled together academically – I felt that she has a unique perspective on how creative practice can be used to shift mindsets and enrich collaboration.
The value of respect
It’s never a surprise that, when talking about collaborations and what makes them work, the theme of shared values keeps on popping up. A team that shares a value-set in regard to the way they see their project will cohere much better than one that doesn’t.
Tacuinum Sanitatis 14c.The value that Paulina, an experienced leader of innovation project teams, and I kept circling back to during our recent conversation was the value of respect. The respect, or lack of it, that people from different sectors hold for each other and how this might inform their work together. The way that disrespectful behaviour can flow from someone who may be struggling to respect themselves, and the societal or cultural influences and pressures that can underpin this.
I look forward to unpacking all of this more for the longer pieces I’m writing for the Near and Far e-zine but in this blog, I want to share a couple of great quotes from Paulina.
I think this one really sums up what collaborating is all about:
“If we have an agreement about how we're going to show up and how we're going to treat each other, especially when it gets shitty, yes, we'll be fine. But we can't skip over that conversation: And that is about respect, about how we're going to work together, show up, and a little bit about how we're going to show up when it gets hard. I think the relationship is vital. If you have a good relationship, the rest will take care of itself because it also allows for conflict. Conflict's going to be a part of it. So, in a good relationship, you can fight about whether or not the floor should be pink and still be friends. Because then it’s not an attack. We're just saying: ‘actually, creatively I don't see it that way.’ And then that's much easier to deal with, and we can have this quite heated discussion about why we see the world the way we do with good intent.”
Paulina reminded me that her PhD is about deferring judgement when it comes to creative problem solving or, as she prefers to frame it, “generating creative insights”. So, I loved her response to this question:
“Me: Do you have any sense of how you overcome resistance to creative practice or arts practice?
Paulina: Oh, yes. I guess I do. I'll put it another way: How to get people to defer judgment? And that's the way I would approach it. You need to embody that spirit where you are creating a space (of deferred judgement), and this is why the theatre interests me, where you're creating a space that really holds that in a non-judgmental way. So, how do you actually do this? I guess that's part of my PhD, but it really is about the cues that open the space. And almost that there's a threshold to cross, and you don't have to cross it, but something potentially awaits you on the other side. I think the underlying sentiment is about opening up a space, inviting people in, and also allowing them to feel like if it gets uncomfortable, then they can take a step out: ‘You won't be judged for that. Come in however you need, sit however you see fit.’”
I think the word I would use for that threshold space is trust. And from trust flows respect: Respecting people enough to invite them to the threshold, respecting potential collaborators enough to defer judgement on their backgrounds and disciplines, respecting collaborators enough to show up, even when it gets hard and even when you need to disagree.
Trust and respect informing how we show up together. I can’t wait to write more about this.
Curious? Then come along to the free online event I am facilitating to talk about what I heard during my research. It’s on at 6pm, 28 February 2024 AEDT. I’d love to see you there.
And, of course, I would also love it if you bought the book! You can do so HERE!
