Collaboration, almost all of us collaborate in our working life being part of a team means cooperating with other people on all kinds of projects.

But the reality is few of us learn how to collaborate. And when a collaboration fails, it can leave such bad scars that people involved never want to work together again.

This is Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Ashley Milntite.

And I'm Richard Davies.

Today we're bringing you another episode in our series on how businesses and nonprofits can help cut down on polarization.

We hope to give you some ideas, things you might try in your workplace.

In this episode, we speak with Professor and Collaboration expert Dr. Deadmashek, author of the forthcoming book, Calabra Hate.

How to build incredible collaborative relationships at work, even when you'd rather work alone.

Deb says if more of us learn some simple skills, disastrous collaborations can be avoided. And she should know,

Deb's an expert on the psychology of human relationships and shares how she gained that expertise on her own journey from growing up in a trailer park to studying for a PhD.

Here's our interview.

Deb, I think most workers and employers recognize that collaboration and teamwork are a big part of their job. All they good at it.

It's such a great question. And I think one of the things that's useful is to say, what the heck do we mean by collaboration in the first place?

You know, I see it on a lot of letterheads like, hey, our company values collaboration.

And few companies actually spend the time to define what that means and why it matters.

And as a result, they fall short. So they're not particularly good at it. So you're right, there's this general sense that it's a good thing that it's something we should do.

We believe it's going to help make the world better, help our products be amazing, all that, all that good stuff.

But we don't actually invest in the expertise it takes or the talent it takes to be able to do it well.

And so as a result, you know, despite high hopes and great visions, heading out, what ends up happening is if people start pulling in different directions, there's very little communication even less follow through.

And then, you know, tension mounts and projects with all and good people walk away because we're not actually investing and helping our people do this essential skill well.

So just because you're collaborating a lot doesn't mean that this collaboration is productive or good, right?

And for the book that I wrote, I collected data from 1100 people and three quarters of them said that they had been in a collaboration that was absolutely horrendous.

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