Introduction

According to the Center for Public Education, one of the top four job skills for the 21st Century is "more collaboration." Collaboration, the ability to work with others toward a common goal, has always been necessary to complete large goals. Without collaboration, one individual would need to know every aspect of a job and complete it him- or herself. Imagine how that would work when making a car! A single person would need to know how to form the body of the car, build the engine, create a transmission, install the tires, and build a brake system. For one person to make one new car would take months. However, by using collaboration, each person completes one part of the car over and over again. Since all workers are specialists …show more content…
What Is Collaboration?

Collaboration can look different in different situations. Collaboration can be seen in a factory where each person is assigned a role that he or she must do before the next person on the line can do his job. In such a case, you are hired and trained to do a specific job, and your role is very clear.

You can also see collaboration in a school. All teachers are assigned the task of teaching a particular subject. They have ability to teach that subject with minimal direction. Even though they work in their own classrooms, they frequently collaborate with other teachers before and after school to get ideas for projects, new books and online resources, and ways to teach their students better.

There is even collaboration between teachers and you, the students. You expect your teachers will teach you what you need to know, but you've got some skin in this game, too. You must make an effort to learn what your teachers teach. Typically, that means collaborating with your teachers—asking questions when you're confused, applying the feedback they give you on one assignment to the next assignment, and so …show more content…
Let's say you get together with a bunch of kids. As a group, everyone must decide what game they want to play, which rules they will follow, and how long they will play. People who are successful in collaborating in play will tend to have more friends and because they have learned how to work well with others.

But I Don't Like to Collaborate!

Some people don't like to work in groups. Working on their own is so much easier for them. In many ways, they are right. Working in groups is work. Sometimes the other people in the group don't agree or are just difficult to work with. So why not just do it yourself?

Emily Eldridge gave a TEDx Talk on this subject. She was one of those people who hated working in groups in school. However, she learned several important things that convinced her that for certain projects, she needed to be willing to collaborate with others. Here are some take-homes from her talk that help explain how and why to collaborate:

If you want to be heard, you need to be willing to listen. Do you have good ideas? Do you have thoughts worth talking about? If you want to be heard, you must be willing to listen to others as well. Maybe by listening, the two different thoughts can be combined into an idea bigger—one that's better than either original