Good collaborator or pliable pushover?
How to tell where you’re at on the spectrum
Hi there! You’re reading the Bonfire newsletter from Kevan Lee & Shannon Deep. Each week, we highlight learnings from our experience as in-house marketers turned agency owners who think a lot about creativity, our relationship to work, and how all of that impacts our identities.
Wishing you a great week!
Healthy Business Paradigms of Aliveness? What a compliment to get from The Joel Bein Show, which gave our podcast interview that glowing title. You can listen to me and Shannon tell Joel all our biggest business feelings, in a conversation that definitely felt healthy and alive. Thank you, Joel!
The collaboration spectrum
The other day, having just completed a very pleasant exchange with one of our clients, I thought to myself, “Boy, I am a pleasure to work with!”
This thought was immediately followed by the realization that I had completely caved in to the client’s demands and did exactly what they wanted me to, with nary a second thought.
Does this make me a good collaborator or a pliable pushover?
Truth is, my identity as a “joy to work with” dates back to my in-house days as a content marketer and a startup executive. People liked working with me (any former colleagues or bosses or clients, feel free to weigh in with a comment to disprove this!). Was it because I very frequently compromised in order to maintain harmony, contributing to a pattern of me not getting what I want so that I could preserve the peace and ensure that others got what they wanted? Does my self-sacrificing and people pleasing know no bounds?
To be fair, a certain amount of compromise exists in any solid collaboration. And building harmonious teams where everyone likes working with each other is a wonderful skill, especially in notoriously unharmonious startup environments.
But these reflections nevertheless have me thinking about the hidden costs of collaboration—or should I say collaboration at the extremes. And how to be more mindful of the tradeoffs.
Good collaboration is a spectrum… with some spiky ends
Like most things in life, collaboration exists on a spectrum.
There is no single right way to collaborate, which means that “good” collaboration can look a number of different ways. The spectrum for good collaboration is wide. But as you move toward either end of the spectrum, you start to notice two pretty clear archetypes of harmful collaborators: one harshes the vibe of the room and the other treats themself rather harshly.
Bossy McBosspants is the person who collaborates on their own terms and must have everything their way.
Pliable Pushovers are those who give in all the time and never really advocate for their way of doing things, even if they have a good idea.
Good collaborators are somewhere in the middle.
Of course, these descriptions are not immutable labels on you. You are never always a good collaborator or only a pushover or McBosspants. You may sometimes be any of those three things...depending on who you’re collaborating with, where, and how.
Where it gets tricky is when you find yourself believing you are a strong collaborator but are actually operating at an unhealthy end of the spectrum.
Why we confuse good collaboration for something else
What does successful collaboration look like?
The work gets done.
The project is awesome.
The deadline gets met.
These measures are all outputs of what the group has produced, and they say nothing about how the work actually gets done. Instead, what if we turn collaboration around? Process proud, outcome agnostic, as we like to say. Because the process matters, especially when you’re grading whether a collaboration went well.
Successful collaboration can sometimes be measured by an ROI actuary, but I believe success in the realm of collaborating is far more closely tied to process, teamwork, and belonging.
If you get your new product launched on time to a lot of fanfare, but everyone on the team hates each other and never wants to do another project again, was the collaboration a success?
(Specifically for marketing teams this can be disastrous because it will have trickle-down effects on team culture that will harm future projects and long-term results.)
What good collaboration actually feels like and looks like
If you aren’t sure whether your current state of collaboration is healthy or unhealthy, take a minute to reflect on how the collaborative work feels to you and your collaborators.
Good collaboration …
Feels like
You feel safe saying what you actually think
Tension is present but productive, not draining
You feel part of something shared, not territorial
There’s momentum and forward progress
You leave conversations with clarity, not confusion
You feel trusted and trusting
You feel both adaptable and grounded
Looks like
People share opinions early and clearly
Disagreement happens, but stays respectful
Ideas build on each other, not compete
Decisions get made without endless looping
Feedback is direct and specific
Ownership is shared, not hoarded
People can flex without losing themselves
If you can recognize the feelings above, then you’re probably in a good spot!
On the contrary, here’s how it feels and looks to be on the extreme ends of the collaboration spectrum.
Bossy McBosspants …
Feels like
You feel certain you’re right (or at least most right)
You feel responsible for the outcome and want to control it
You feel impatient when things slow down or get debated
You feel frustrated when others don’t “see it” yet
You feel like you’re helping by being decisive
You feel energized by momentum and forward motion
You feel uncomfortable relying too much on others’ input
Looks like
You push your ideas through quickly
You steer decisions toward your preferred direction
You interrupt or redirect conversations to stay on track
You offer strong opinions early and often
You move ahead before full alignment is reached
You default to your own judgment over group input
You close loops quickly, sometimes before others are ready
Pliable Pushover …
Feels like
You feel unclear about your own stance
You second-guess yourself mid-sentence
You feel invisible in outcomes
Tension goes underground instead of being addressed
Things feel slower than they should be
You carry private frustration
You feel drained instead of energized
RESENTMENT for everyone and everything
Looks like
Constant agreement, even when there are doubts
Ideas are softened or hedged excessively
Decisions default to others’ preferences
Feedback is indirect or withheld
Extra rounds of revision and rework
Quiet course-correcting after decisions
Harmony is preserved at all costs
How to collaborate better + what you’ll gain
There’s no perfect middle point on the spectrum, nor is the goal to land in one exact spot and stay there. It’s to move more fluidly depending on what the moment calls for.
A few practical ways to do that:
Know what you want and how important it is to you.
Being clear about your contribution and the conviction behind it can help you avoid situations where you’re failing to speak up for yourself (pushover) or being overly demanding (McBosspants). Reflecting beforehand will reveal the aspects of the collab where you can compromise more deeply and where you want to advocate more diplomatically.
Also, in the course of collaboration, you’ll find that different people will care about different things, too, and when you know where you stand and where others stand, it’ll be easier to compromise on what you and others deem less important.
Say what you think, then stay open.
Start with a clear point of view (see above). Then invite response. Stay open to whatever you hear, knowing that the beauty of collaboration is bringing in other people’s perspectives besides your own.
Name disagreement early.
If something feels off, surface it while it’s still small. Early tension is easier, cleaner, and far less costly than late-stage friction.
Decide what actually matters. Together.
This can (should) often happen at the start of the project when you outline the exact scope of the work and what success looks like. You’d be surprised just how much grief you’ll save yourself by getting on the same page early.
(Note: It’s also one of our top tips for giving useful feedback on creative work.)
Stay in the room after you speak
Good collaboration isn’t just saying your piece. It’s staying engaged as the idea evolves, even when it shifts away from your original take. Potential pushovers can stay in the room to avoid going off and resentfully doing the work of others, and McBosspants can stay in order to keep in collaboration rather than leave the work to everyone else.
Following steps like these and being more aware of when you’re sliding into the extreme ends of collaboration will be a huge boon to future collaborative projects. You lose a lot—emotionally, energetically, not to mention outcomes—when collaboration goes sideways. But when it’s working well, look at all you can gain:
Clarity: People know where you stand. You know where you stand.
Speed: Fewer loops, fewer rewrites, fewer “we’ll fix it later” moments.
Trust: Not just likability, but reliability. People can count on your perspective.
Better work, and more creative work. Your ideas actually make it into the outcome, not just into your head. And the group’s shared ideas build to a better product than it would have been alone.
Energy: Collaboration feels generative instead of draining.
At its best, collaboration isn’t about being easy to work with; it’s about being real to work with.
Over to you
When have you experienced awesome collaboration as part of a group? When have you slid onto either end of the collaboration spectrum? We’d love to hear!
But wait! There’s more…
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