Conscious Collaboration is different than team building or traditional ways of business. In practice environments, when studied, this way of being with each other allows us to not only accomplish much more - it allows us to make decisions that are in the most alignment for long-term sustainability and survival of the species. Conscious Collaboration is not a 'nice thing to have' it is a necessity for communities, if they hope to live in a world that can sustain life on-going. 

We invite you to review the following blog post and please give your feedback and questions. Does any of the text in this document need augmented to fit our community? Are we missing anything or the mark entirely? Please comment on this post or join us in person for our next meeting: Monday, February 5th in he Hoyt room at the Rapid City library at 9am. 

Conscious Collaboration

Conscious collaboration refers to a new, specific and unique paradigm of scalable collaborative process and it can be participated in by teams, crowd sourced efforts, network efforts or corporate consortiums. In this ever-evolving dynamic individuals and/or representatives of organizations, institutions and networks learn to foundationally change, dissolve their tribal and egoic dynamics, shift their foundational values and operate with a shared purpose to achieve collaboratively arrived at common goals of global sustainability. 

These goals transcend tribal, national, religious or political party affiliations, and operate beyond prior historical conventions, processes or social and relational habits of any kind. They accomplish this in a comprehensively new way. Rather than operating as members of factions, teams, tribes or as self-interested entities seeking “what’s in it for me or us” this approach generates a wholly new methodology of decision-making, truly green innovation and solutions generation and resultant sustainable life process for humanity.

In fact, in this new and transcendently capable collective mode and practice, people come together, self-organize in common cause and collectively architect and generate a new and agreed upon transcendent collective awareness and operational process. From this awareness they generate superordinate evolvable values and intentions beyond themselves, their egos, personal gain, local or tribal interests, needs, goals or historical approaches. 

Like other traditional forms of collaboration, conscious collaboration also involves a mindful, empathetic, compassionate, patient, tolerant, forgiving and thoughtful approach to working together, focusing on building relationships, fostering open communication, and promoting synergy among team members. Conscious collaboration is not bounded or defined in its process nor its results by historical reference points of knowledge, experience, methods, technologies, common practices, beliefs, transaction and exchange dynamics, greed, competition, habitual solutions approaches or mindsets, selfishness nor narrow personality-based dynamics and focuses.

The collaborative process itself involves the courageous, selfless, willful, conscious, active and chosen dissolution of tribalism, ego process, identity and personality dynamics and constructs along with their historical limiting tendencies and habits, associated agendas, ambition, competition, personal benefit seeking and greed. The only priorities in this new paradigm are optimized collaborative capacity for the common good and associated results.

Here are some other key characteristics of conscious collaboration:

1. Shared Purpose: Conscious collaboration emphasizes the importance of a shared purpose or vision that all participants are aligned with.  It involves clarifying and communicating the goals and objectives of the collaboration to ensure that everyone is working toward a common goal.
2. Active Listening: Active listening involves paying full attention to others, seeking to understand their perspectives, and responding thoughtfully. It encourages empathy, respect and the valuing of diverse viewpoints.
3. Trust and Psychological Safety: Conscious Collaboration thrives in an environment where team members feel safe to express their opinions, take risks, and contribute without fear of judgment or negative repercussions.  Building trust and creating psychological safety allows for open and honest communication, creativity, and innovation.
4. Inclusivity and Diversity: Conscious collaboration embraces diversity and inclusivity by valuing different backgrounds, experiences, perspectives and expertise. It recognizes the strength that comes from a diverse team and fosters an environment where everyone feels valued and included.
5. Collective Intelligence: Conscious collaboration harnesses the collective intelligence of the group and also actively draws in outside views in real time from all available sources and references. It encourages collaborative problem-solving, knowledge sharing, and leveraging the expertise and skills of each team member in a vulnerable, humble and receptive manner.  The focus is on creating synergy and generating innovative solutions that benefit from the collective wisdom of the group. It also involves the egoless collaboration between many of these groups working in murmurative harmony towards a common goal.
6. Clear Roles and Responsibilities: Initially and formatively establishing clear roles and responsibilities within the collaborative process helps to ensure accountability and avoid confusion.  As collaboration evolves roles and responsibilities are transcended in a totally fluid and conscious manner. i.e., no one owns any of the process or controls it in order to bend it to their personal agenda, values, beliefs or preferences.  The values of the collaborative body evolve constantly, and any previous belief, data, operational definition or value can be replaced or discarded at any moment in order to achieve the common goals of the group. Each team member understands their contribution and how it aligns with the collaborative achievement of the collective goal.
7. Continuous Learning and Adaptability: Conscious collaboration recognizes that learning and UNLEARNING and growth are a constant, necessary and ongoing process in the individual and the collective simultaneously. The process encourages the transcendence of all fixed or referenced mindsets into fluid continuous learning, adaptability and openness to feedback. Team members are willing to iterate, make adjustments and learn and unlearn from both successes and failures and are accepted and rewarded for doing so.
8. Ethical and Sustainable Practices: Conscious collaboration considers the broader impact of its process, actions and results on people, the environment, the planet and all societies globally. It promotes ethical evolution, values evolution, consciousness evolution, transcendence of limiting values, beliefs, positionalities, mindsets, paradigms and ignorance. It promotes wise and conscious decision making, sustainability, and responsible practices throughout the collaborative process.

Overall, conscious collaboration is characterized by egoless intentionality, transcendent consciousness, mindfulness, inclusivity, open communication, trust and faith. It is an ever-evolving shared commitment to dynamically and constantly redesign and redefine approaches and processes, from the ground up, in order to achieve common goals, while fostering individual and collective evolution and growth and well-being into factual, standardized, functional global and local solutions to the climate crisis that result in sustainability and renewal. It is the operationalized process of placing the global common good above one’s own values, beliefs, desires, needs or wants. 

A last foundational precept is that in order to generate global sustainability we must be willing to proactively change every aspect of current human life process, economic process, innovation cycle dynamics and political processes on this planet in this conscious, granular and comprehensive and integrous way in order to generate true and lasting sustainability.

*Black Hills Environmental Coalition works with World Systems Solutions www.wssnow.org to synchronize the global community to solve the climate crisis. We welcome volunteers and donations to support this work.