Harold and Sheryl’s Blog on Writing a Blog, Collaboratively. Post 2: The Importance of Negotiating

From Ideas to Actions to Products: Negotiating our Way

Successful negotiation is at the heart of collaboration, generally, and has remained central to our continued collaborative writing. Originally, way back when…when we thought we wanted to write an academic article to share our thoughts and reflections on our CURE course experiences, we didn’t get anywhere! Sheryl carried around the file folder. The team met once in a while to “keep the dream alive” but, really, the project got no purchase, no traction, nobody bought it, and nobody did it. So the first try? Very dry!

We lacked the energy to even begin the article (think ‘soul-sucking vacuum of NO!!!!’).

In a last-ditch attempt to resuscitate our dying project, we reached out to our colleagues at the teaching and learning centre for journal suggestions for where our aspirational article could go—that article that we really didn’t want to do and had no energy for. Our GMCTL colleagues suggested the idea of a blog post. They thought this might get us started.

We shrugged (virtually, metaphorically, and collectively) and said, “500 words? How hard can it be? How wrong can we go? Let’s give it a try. Let’s share what we know!”

This felt manageable! We could do this! 😁

We closed the academic article file folder, put it in a drawer, and started in on the blog post. Within two sentences[1] we had found our stride and accepted, that for this project, the confines of academic writing did NOT align with our natural communication styles…or Sheryl’s attention span–- SQUIRREL![2]

Unconsciously, we had inadvertently shifted to a manageable SMART Goal of a single 500-word blog post (with no references required). We felt that the blog post was specific, measurable, ‘achievaBull’, realistic and relevant, and time bound. SMART! This was our first real negotiation—making the decision to shift from writing an academic article to writing a single blog post. We could tell our story, our way, have some fun, write and play.[3]

In summary, we had started negotiating within and through the following elements:

1. We had something in common that we felt was valuable to share.
2. We then defined more specifically what we wanted to explore further within that common sphere.
3. We negotiated meeting times, meeting platforms, length of meetings, and targets.
4. We built in check points to ensure we were still on the same page, that things were going well, and whether we wanted to update our negotiated roles and goals. (Although the goals remained the same, Sheryl still didn’t type.)
5. We realized and accepted that our goals may evolve into something related, but different, as we drilled down into our root key interests.

Micro-negotiating through the Day-to-Day Work

Micro-negotiations that may seem to be trivial or unimportant are actually opportunities to strengthen the team, increase common ground, and reduce those annoying[4] little niggling irritants. As we worked together, we found that we made a series of micro-negotiations quite naturally, which include, but are not limited to, this, our baker’s dozen list:

1. Quotation marks: ‘single’ versus “double”? Where, and when, and for what purpose? We found we were breaking some new ground (and grammar conventions[5]) along the way.
2. Commas: Can there be, such a thing, as too many? Even though commas are free and don’t count as words … even if you are counting words (kind of like calories)… they are still a point to negotiate. And what do we call them: Oxford, Harvard, or serial?[6] 🤔
3. Word count: We decided this was more of a guideline than a rule, although in the first couple of posts we were very conscious of the suggested number of words and we resorted to things like-hyphens, extensive footnotes, and, liberal use of, commas, because, heck none of those count anyway—i.e. like calories eaten while standing up!
4. Emoticons: Are they appropriate for ‘correspondence in an academic environment’? 😟 We evidently landed on “Yes”! 😉
5. Footnotes? [7],[8],[9]
6. Technological support: Online open shared document (no! 😳) vs saved to hard drive and shared via Teams ‘shared screen’ 😊 (heck yes!!...especially if it was Harold’s shared screen). Who is going to do the typing? It only took two attempts to find a workable configuration…i.e. ‘not Sheryl’!
7. The time of day for meetings: We found that the time of day did affect our creativity and productivity and that earlier in the day worked best for us.[10]
8. Writing session length (yes, duration does seem to matter): We find that 1 hour is a bit too short, 2 hours often works well…more can be a waste of time, but not always (see ‘pursuing squirrels’ in Post 3 of this series).
9. Post focus[11]: What did we wish to share in each post? We often wanted to provide the ‘why’ behind each ‘how’. One of us is also VERY keen on exploring theoretical underpinnings, and she admits some of them are more tangential than others.
10. What to do with other ‘good ideas’: Early on, one of our micro-negotiations was about what to do with good ideas that were not relevant to the day’s work. Was it a spare parts pile? Was it a junk drawer(s)? Was it the ubiquitous parking lot? Or the more climate friendly, bicycle rack? Not for us! We eventually settled on the idea of a ‘sanctuary for wayward squirrelly ideas.’ We were confident that we could revisit this sanctuary whenever we were looking for inspirations or pulling in theoretical underpinnings.
11. Project scope: How many posts would we write in total? How many topics would we write about? How long would the series be? (We did overshoot the number that the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning would publish in Educatus…🙄) If you are thinking of writing collaboratively you might want to pitch the idea to colleagues by starting with an achievable, manageable, tiny
12. Focused goals: Ummm…🤔…after the first blog post in the CURE series we don’t believe we have ever had a focused goal! One thing followed another thing, which followed another thing. Trial experiments led to ‘aha’, insights that led to questions being asked and explored in new ways, from new perspectives, so that our focus evolved and grew and continues to grow—just no specific ‘goals’. The joy for this team is always in the discovery and the process. Additionally, we have been highly prolific. We also enjoy and appreciate the products we’ve produced. (We have even heard from others that they too have enjoyed our shared posts.)
13. Witticisms, chestnuts, and mascots: We have negotiated an ever-expanding repertoire of in-jokes, shortcuts, and talismans. We have even added a team mascot that helped to spark quirky fun and novel insights for the day.

Every time a team—our team, or your team—negotiates a decision, it strengthens the sense of “team”—our team, your team. Our list of negotiations and micro-negotiations are offered as insight into the importance and impact of negotiating these decisions together. The scope, seriousness, or frivolity of the decision doesn’t matter! Each shared decision is an additional bond[12] holding our team together.

In Post 3 of this series, we share our perspectives on the understated and often misunderstood value of ‘squirrels’[13] in the creative process and the importance of maintaining a well-kept squirrel sanctuary—or pile of spare parts[14].

[1] Early on we discovered our approach to writing together. We were able to do this with our team of two, but found even with inclusion of a like-minded 3^rd colleague the dynamics and the rhythm changed. Writing stalled. We realized that not all team members need to do every task, but rather that each team member has a defined job/task list/ contribution.

[2] See Post 3 in this series for more insight and information on ‘Squirrels’.

[3] The informal writing style used in a blog, for us, was like recording a conversation between two colleagues who think they are clever, with rapier-like wit! Cha-Ching!

[4] Taking care of the micro-negotiating of the day-to-day work can mitigate the three characteristics that universally make something “Annoying”: (1) unpredictability, (2) unpleasant, and (3) you don’t know when it is going to end … much like Harold’s sentences! If we hadn’t negotiated our way around footnote use, emoticons, and the exuberant use of exclamation marks!, we may have stopped at that single 500 word blog post and the project simply would have dwindled…faded…atrophied…and then disappeared into oblivion without so much as a whimper or a follow-up email…

[5] This is NOT your Gramma’s Grammar Convention!!

[6] Yes, we did check this out. Harold called them “Harvard”. Sheryl called them “Oxford”. Dawn only knew them as “serial”… Google told us they were ALL the same entity!

[7] What are they, and how many can we cram into each post?

[8] We found footnotes to be very useful for dealing with those tangential ‘squirrel’ ideas.

[9] We buried those treasured chestnuts and theoretical musings in the wonderfully endless digital space available to footnotes! For example, the word count on this post in total is 1584; however, approximately 353 words are in the footnotes. 😉 So ‘technically’, this is a reasonably sized post!

[10] The number of squirrel ideas precipitously dropped in the afternoons. We have not fully determined at this point whether it is a causal relationship or a correlation relationship. However, that said, we are not sure anymore. Afternoons can also be equally productive and fun. Perhaps we will share our findings in another blog post after doing a more scientific and rigorous analysis. Watch for this in approximately five years—sufficient repeats need to be included to lower standard error, highlight trend lines, determine co-variants, etc.

[11] Often the focus of a post emerged during a post-focus in which the underlying theme only emerged AFTER we had worked on it for awhile.

[12] A nod to ‘valence’ and a shared-shell for bonding, for those chemists in the crowd.

[13] Excellent illustration of our squirrel concept in action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSUXXzN26zg (just 10 seconds of your time at regular speed!).

[14] For those mechanical engineers and tinkerers amongst us.