3 types of relationships you’ll form as a creative collaborator
Tags: Creative, Creative Collaboration, Creative Process, Workplace Relations, Workplace Culture

As a creative, whether at work, for your business, or a side hustle, you’re bound to collaborate with other beautiful creative minds at some point. Who doesn’t love working with other creatives, right? Picture pop culture scenes from the 90s with a small crew of cooky painters, writers, songwriters, and dancers crammed into a new york apartment with all of their creative energy working in synergy to create a massive work that will save the day. Well, now that you’re back to reality, you know that creative collaboration isn’t always as picturesque as we’d like. Here are three types of relationships you’ll form and how to use them to your advantage.

People you work well with

You ever collaborate with a partner on a project and everything works smoothly? You match each other’s work styles, the communication is on point, and the synergy helps you work like a well-oiled machine? Sound rare? But it happens. These are creatives you work well with but aren’t necessarily buddies with. If you have the mentality that you go to work “to work” and not make friends, these teammates are perfect. These are the creatives who throw on a whiteboard at the right time and make sure you’re in all of the right meetings. It’s pretty self-explanatory why these creatives are good to have in your corner.

If you find someone you work well with, stick with them. You don’t have to like their personality to work well with them.

People you get along great with

You know those teammates you love so much you either talk with them outside of work or you wish you did. They’re also valuable in the workplace. Those people make great allies in and outside of the workplace. You don’t necessarily have to work well with or work with them on a regular basis to build a connection with them. It’s great to see them in a meeting and know you have them as a checkpoint or point of contact to follow up with after the meeting for additional information. If you don’t have an ally like this on your current team, look nearby. It doesn’t have to be someone you even see regularly. Dig in your employee directory and find a new face. Reach out.

People you don’t work well with

Ok, so these can be a bit of a challenge. These are the teammates who you don’t necessarily dislike, you just don’t work well together for whatever reason. They don’t communicate enough or communicate too much. Add you to too many meetings or no meetings. Need you to answer every question or never consult you for anything. Whatever it is, you seem to bump heads a lot, and it’s affecting your workflow when you have to collab with them. Well, you can’t stop working with them, and, as a professional, you’ll have to learn how to cope with these types of problems.

One possible solution is to learn to at least understand what drives them to do what they do. In psychology, there are two things that drive you to do anything: intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation are those things that we hear about all of the time like money, fame, materials, grades, etc… We do these things to receive a reward or to avoid punishment. The other is intrinsic motivation, which are the things that we do because of personal goals. They make us feel good internally like self-value.

Chances are, as a creative, you’re intrinsically motivated by your work in some way. Creative work is so exploratory it’s hard to think that someone may only be motivated extrinsically by their work, but it could happen.

Chatting with this teammate at a work event or some other event that holds less project pressure is a great time to find out what’s driving them and finding a point of common ground. Hey. Maybe it’s not even that deep. Maybe they love Red Dead and so does your gamer roommate. That’s good enough. Bond over the visuals and the great storytelling and use that to break the ice. Use your team mate’s motivation to better connect with them and collaborate better. When you’re better able to bond with your creative collaborator, it’s easier to work with them on projects. They don’t need to be your best friend, they just need to be easier to work with. You may find that after a conversation or two you can be more forgiving of some of their problematic workflows and they may become more accommodating to some of your requests.

Of course, any of these scenarios can be applied to nearly any role, but it can be particularly challenging in a creative field as someone who doesn’t have an option to not collaborate, unlike some business roles that may well-suited for those who prefer to work alone as much as possible.