Collaboration and SVB

Dear Reader,

Although we are all somewhat familiar with the terms collaboration and cooperation and often use these words interchangeably, they actually mean two very different things. Collaboration can be defined as the coordinated, synchronous activity that is the result of a continued attempt to construct and maintain a shared conception of a problem, while cooperation is accomplished by the division of labor among participants as an activity where each person is responsible for solving a portion of the problem. Most people, based on their past experience, will say that it is hard to collaborate and in the same breath they will tell you that cooperation doesn’t involve compromise or consensus-building. Presumably, collaboration is about giving up control to others and, supposedly, this requires your vulnerability. I am here to tell you that such a wrong view is based on your involvement in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). People only say collaboration is hard when they realize it requires a different way of talking than the one which they are used to.

Collaboration is not hard once we know how to have Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), which, rather than making us vulnerable, unites us and makes us stronger. As we learn to have ongoing SVB and as we collaborate productively and happily, we find to our big surprise that the need to compromise or build consensus doesn’t even arise. Moreover, as we learn to practice effective self-management, we gain control over behavior, our speaking and listening, where previously we believed we didn’t have any control, due to which we were more prone to remain busy with trying to control others instead of ourselves.

As we were all conditioned by NVB, we mistake being open with conforming, giving in or falling on our own sword. However, when we engage in SVB, we don’t draw our sword, let alone fall on it and we don’t fight either, so there is no question about backing down. It is due to NVB we keep trying to ‘defend against’ the very possibility of collaboration by dismissively describing it as a messy process, as our collaboration would certainly prove that our forceful NVB is very primitive and unsophisticated and certainly not as orderly as it claims to be. In SVB, we enhance each other’s self-control, as we stimulate each other to listen to ourselves while we speak. The issue of coercively dominating others only arises during NVB. Nobody is giving up any control during SVB, only in NVB do we give up control.

Another myth that is perpetuated by our blunt NVB is that we will only be able to collaborate if we have some sort of enlightened leadership. We are presumably in need of the some visionary, some great thinker, someone with great ideas. All of this is a product of NVB, which prevents collaboration by selling people (hook, line and sinker) on the falsehood that novelty is always difficult. Supposedly, we are not open enough to the mumbo-jumbo and to the snake-oil pitches of the so-called professional speakers, the ones who presumably do the talking for others, the ones who supposedly are ahead of their time. In the name of innovation and improvement of the human condition, we should all jump on the band-wagon of their new ideas and be okay with the constant tension and divisiveness, which is the reliable outcome of their NVB. SVB exposes these sooth-saying preachers of discomfort and peril. There is no need for anyone in SVB to respect each other as we are already respecting each other. As the SVB/NVB distinction is a behavioristic construct, everyone who comes to know SVB embraces the fact that each of us has a unique behavioral history of conditioning.

Those with NVB endlessly talk about the need to trust, to be diverse and to collaborate. However, in SVB we are doing all these things. SVB, which is a scientific construct, is not made possible by the much over-rated different belief systems that people bring to the table. We leave our biases at the door in the room in which we engage in SVB! Furthermore, as we engage in SVB, we mutually reinforce each other, that is, we comfortably find that what we have in common matters more to us than our different values. Stated differently, SVB is about genuine cultural integration and collaboration. This new way of talking is needed to do justice to the fact that we are all different.

SVB doesn’t stress us accept different points of view. The question about respecting each other only arises due to NVB. In SVB, in which we all positively reinforce each other, we respect each other as we experience what it is like to be truly respected and validated. SVB is a behavioral cusp. Our participation in SVB is immediately reinforcing and future outcomes are predicted to be even more reinforcing as SVB increases our access to reinforcers. As everyone is reinforced, everyone not only collaborates, but is also responsible and accountable. We don’t need to work on getting better at collaboration as this is the natural outcome of our involvement in SVB. Our collaboration results from how we talk.