The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together

I was on an 11 hour overseas plane ride and read this book on the way to Europe. It was sooo good and informative, that I read it again on my way home from Europe. Great for anybody that works with others in ANY capacity, whether you are a dancer, coach, doctor, law inforcement....it's all the same when working with others and understanding your role in the cooperation/collaboration process. Amazing.

From politicians who embrace transparency to progressive CEOs who value employee engagement, it's clear their success is driven by their proficiency at getting others to "buy in" to what they're "selling"; and what they're selling is "trust". By building enough trust, they can usually achieve their goals with a great deal of mutual collaboration. Both parties win when the collaborative process goes smoothly; of course, when it doesn't, the results are rarely favorable. Twyla Tharp certainly understands this, and has compiled this highly engaging book detailing her personal collaborative experiences. Although most of those experiences have been successful, she's quick to point out some of her less than stellar moments, with her spin on why things didn't go as planned. Her approach is refreshingly candid without blaming others for the problems; like any good collaboration, egos are kept in check. Results are much more favorable when the parties can communicate openly, with no hidden agendas. This is a most enlightening perspective from an extremely successful person, who's built an entire career on making the most of her collaborative efforts. In this day and age of instant information, practically everyone needs to learn the skills of making collaboration a good habit; one you'd never want to break. Going it alone just won't fly these days.

The first time I took the elevator to Twyla Tharp's penthouse was a grey, chilly morning in early April. We sat in her minimalist office that overlooked a terrace that overlooked Central Park, but when you're in a room with Twyla Tharp, it's hard to notice anything else. To say she can be intimidating is to understate. Her features are sharp, her hair is no-nonsense white, her glasses are oversized and round. Somewhere below her neck is a small, taut body, and a white shirt and loose jeans, but none of that matters. Only her gaze does, and it was focused on this newcomer with curiosity and skepticism. I thought: I am not worthy. I'm surely not the first to think that. Tharp revolutionized dance with her insistence that classical ballet and modern movement need not be antagonists, and over a 40-year career, she's explored that breakthrough idea in a dizzying catalogue of greatest hits. She's choreographed movies. She's had a Broadway hit. She was anointed with a MacArthur Fellowship, the one that certifies you as a "genius". And she's written two books. One is an autobiography,"Push Comes to Shove". The other, "The Creative Habit; Learn It and Use It for Life", is a surprise --- a wise guide for the general reader about harnessing your personal creativity. It was a book that brought us together. Her new one, "The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together", would be published by Simon & Schuster in November. She'd written enough for several volumes, and would, in time, surely have been able to carve a book out of it. But she was also embarking on a new show --- "Come Fly With Me", a night of dance built around Frank Sinatra songs --- and her time was tight. If the book was to be published on schedule, someone was needed to help her get to the book's finish line. I have done this work before, with mixed results. In 1986, I collaborated with Roger Enrico, then the CEO of Pepsi Cola. He worked as hard as I did, all the while running a giant company; all these years later, we still get royalties. Less happy was my experience with Kelsey Grammer. I was hired to write his memoir just six weeks before an inflexible deadline; Grammer gave me little time or guidance, and I succeeded only in turning a total disaster into a mere failure. If I was skittish about signing on to a new collaboration, I had an additional reason --- Twyla Tharp has a reputation as an artist who finds even perfection inadequate; it was easier to picture her as an autocrat than as a collaborator. But I didn't sense that at our first meeting. She grilled me about Balzac, Tolstoy and Proust; I parried to the best of my ability, painfully aware she'd practically memorized every word they'd written. After a half hour of literary tennis, I suspect we were both pleasantly surprised, she that I had read a book or three, me that that her work ethic seemed fairly reasonable. One thing I should know, she said: She got up early, worked all day, went to bed early. She expec