Three bedfellows: connection, collaboration, creativity + a hallway

Connection 

Heads up and hearts out, connection means extending yourself into other worlds, other perspectives, which ends up enriching your own.  How do we get to connection? Interests, curiosities, geography, hobbies, professional practices, beliefs, and values are all bridges to connection.

Collaboration  

To put our ideas into a communal brewing pot to come up with new ways of thinking, taking action and resolving issues is what collaboration is all about. Collaboration goes back a long way. Collaboration is from the Latin word collaborare, which means to labour together. When we connect, we’re taking the first step toward collaboration. 

Creativity

Putting A together with B and coming up with K is just one way of being creative.  Thinking outside the proverbial box, turning it inside out and making a castle is being creative. Knowing there are wild leaps of imagination AND quiet calls of curiosity, are all ways to creativity. Believing we don’t know it all and we do more and new and different is being creative.  And connection and collaboration certainly amp up creativity.

Connection, collaboration and creativity are three bedfellows.

They go together like a peanut butter jelly sandwich.

More connection leads to more collaboration which leads to more creativity.

And who doesn’t want more of that?

Opportunities to connect exist in every nook and cranny.  Even hallways.  

Especially when it’s hell in the hallway seek connection.

Now go on and learn, laugh and lead.

Learn

• Watch this incredibly touching video about connecting. 

Laugh

• Connection takes time, unlike this uber-efficient elevator calling method via Reddit.

Lead

What kind of connection can you go for? It doesn’t have to be a party in your hallway, just a simple connection, such as:

• Acknowledging a stranger at the bus stop.
• Smiling and waving to the person in the car beside you when you’re stopped at an intersection.
• Giving a colleague a specific and sincere compliment.
• Inviting a new neighbour or employee to coffee.
• Giving some assistance and support in an online group you’re a part of (with no expectation of return).