Collaborate or Compete?

What are the benefits of collaborating?
This was a question I asked myself 9 months ago when I entered into a joint venture with Jo Outram - Financial Fitness Instructor to work with 10 other women in business to share their inspirational and fabulous stories about how they have overcome challenges by facing their fears, being courageous and adding value to others in their pursuit of happiness. 

Reasons to Collaborate

Share the workload 
Whether you are employed or self employed it's far easier to achieve the deadlines, goals or vision if you work with others. Sometimes a project or task can appear so big that working on your own means that you procrastinate, miss the deadline or in some cases, don't even start and hope that by burying your head in the sand the task or project will just disappear! By working as part of a team others can support, encourage and inspire which in turn increases motivation to get the job done.
Play to strengths 
We all have different strengths and weaknesses and our confidence is inspired when we do more of the things that we are good at. Whilst I am a big believer in the importance of stepping outside our comfort zones to develop our weaknesses and grow, we should also seek to exploit our expertise especially when working towards a tight deadline or project.
Increase your skills and knowledge 
When we work with others we identify our own strengths and weaknesses as well as others. If we work with someone whose strengths are our weaknesses, then we can learn from them by developing our knowledge and then implementing the learning to develop our skills. If we are a subject matter expert then what better way than to showcase skills and knowledge to engage, empower and inspire others.
Improve communication 
Working as a team means that we have to think about the intent and impact of our actions whether this be verbally, face to face or written via email. We have to consider the needs of others and how they like to receive information. This was a particular learning curve for Jo & I when we were working together, needless to say the number of times we picked up the phone to talk increased rather than bombarding each other with email ping ping
Increase emotional wellbeing
Working on your own can be a lonely place where you are consumed by your own thoughts, feelings and emotions. This can be healthy if those thoughts are positive, encouraging and empowering, however if you have that self doubt that creeps in and the little voice inside your head continues to tell you that good is not good enough then you can very quickly head into a downward spiral. It's good to talk and share your feelings so don't bottle them up. Build healthy relationships based on know, like and trust. 

What's the most important reason why you should collaborate rather than compete?

Together
Everyone
Achieves
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