Creative Alignment - What is it? by Nancy Dorrier

One of Dorrier Underwood’s tools for building relationships is to use creative writing as a path to discovery and authentic communication. We’ve long used the practice internally, and are happy to expand it to include blogging, as a way for us to share our exploration – and process of exploration - with you. 

Nancy Dorrier, thought leader, co-founder, and president of Dorrier Underwood, starts us off with a reflection on creative alignment. What is it? 

I listen to ourselves. Our intern used to say we interrupt a lot. She isn’t saying or not saying, Wow you guys listen a lot. She isn’t even being critical. “I am just saying.”

Then I listen to a friend and his wife talk on top of each other and I don’t know which one to respond to. Trucking along in the conversation and here comes another voice.

What is the value of 2 brains or 3 brains?
Someone is thinking beyond, or at least other than the way I think, and the way you think.

You and I can only think what we are thinking at any one moment.

Not what someone else is thinking.

What displaces collaboration?
Where do we go besides the conversation?
Instead of listening to the conversation, we have a conversation with ourselves, an internal dialogue that is senior to the out-loud conversation. This is so natural and automatic and invisible. It is hard to even see it.

The internal dialogue is a running commentary about what other people are saying. It is also an urge to remember and get in your point, to drive to make your point. It’s a dialogue that’s senior to the commitment to the mystery of 3 brains. The mystery of listening. The mystery of time standing still.

We had a retreat in which we created writing proposals together, and researching and preparing for sales meetings together. TOGETHER. It was amazing. Normally we do both all alone. We work really hard all alone, then complain about it. The hard work. The loneliness.

Then I am listening to a call about a new proposal and hear lots of talking on top of each other, confusion about who is typing the notes up on Google docs, confusion about where we are in the document, just to follow along, and a seeking to serve the senior consultant who’ll be the one presenting the proposal.

Hang on a minute here. Hang on. Hang on. Wait, wait, listen, Carol kept saying throughout the call.

Before that call, a new player on our team had made an offer to post some ideas on our intranet about our culture, I said let me think about it. I wanted his ideas in a conversation, vs writing because he writes in an obtuse - I called it highfalutin - way that is hard for me to get through and find out what he is talking about.

What if I just need to listen to that brain other than mine and see what happens. Listen to that brain that wants to present in writing vs in an out loud conversation.

I said let me think. He said hmmmm. And I said, seems like when you said, What do you say about my offer, you really meant, I am going to do this whether you like it or not.

Then I wonder, am I missing something? I am trying so hard to get him in our company, in our game and keep working to have us and him win in our collaboration. And yet.

Maybe his need to belong and speak his piece is higher than his desire to collaborate and contribute and have his speaking make a difference. “I am just saying.”

I don’t want to have him contribute his way at the sacrifice of our authentic, blessed at times relationship.

I want to sing out of the same hymnbook with him. But what if we can’t read music? Well, I guess, get a choir director.