“If we can have a curiosity to develop our self-awareness, every new collaboration is going to be that much stronger. So when we are showing up in our collaborations, we aren’t bashful with what our superpowers are or what our gifts are… And we have to know where our boundaries are…and know when we have to say ‘no'”. ~ Gregg Potter

Once you know it, you see it everywhere. Ever since Gregg Potter put collaboration on my curiosity radar, I’m discovering it’s in everything.

Gregg is a collaboration coach, and is founder and executive director of the International Institute on Collaboration. He knows a thing or two about how people work together toward shared objectives — whether they think of it that way or not.

Spoiler Alert: Five skills form the building blocks of collaboration –and curiosity just keeps coming up. We cover them all in this conversation. You’ll notice they relate back to one another in the most delightful and reinforcing ways.

• Self-awareness
• Friendliness to collaboration (surprise!)
• Transformational leadership
• Facilitation
• Conflict resolution

As he puts it, “Curiosity is at the center of getting at what we don’t want to do.”

It’s a transformation, from feeling forced to collaborate to having curiosity and wanting to work with other people. We are built for collaborations. It is what we want to be doing.
It is what we yearn to be doing.

Listen to Choose to Be Curious #246: Collaboration Is a Curiosity Practice, with Gregg Potter

Check out the International Institute on Collaboration.

Learn more about Gregg Potter, your coach for collaboration.

Many thanks to Andrés Marquez-Lara for introducing me to Gregg. Listen to our conversation about Facilitation, Leadership and Curiosity.

If you enjoyed this conversation about working well with others, you might like these C2BC Classics: Curiosity, Community Radio & Choosing to Trust, with Katya Gordon; Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times, with Monicá Guzmán; Curiosity & Peace Building, with Alp Özerdem; Bipartisanship & Curiosity, with Bob Mitchell; Leadership, Inclusion and Curiosity with Karen Coltrane; & Building Bridges with Vivek Patil..

Theme music by Sean Balick; “Spins and Never Falls” by Tiny Tiny Trio, via Blue Dot Sessions.

You can subscribe to Choose to Be Curious on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. 

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