Collaboration is the Way: Amplify Your Work Through Partnerships

Wanna save the world and have a greater impact? It’s time to embrace working with others so we can succeed together.

How we lost our will to collaborate

Millennials are mocked by other generations for a lot of things, everything from “killing” cable TV to our inability to buy homes because of our insatiable need to spend $10 on avocado toast. Perhaps even worse than our love of over-priced brunch, however, is the fact that many Millennials share the belief that in order to be seen as truly successful you have to do it all on your own.

Encouraged by our parents and teachers from a young age to speak a second language, learn a musical instrument, play a sport (or three), and leverage them all to get into a top university, we were nurtured to be over-achieving Type-A’s. God forbid we were tasked with participating in a group project (certainly the norm in my undergrad and grad school courses) because it meant relying on others to complete a project, or more likely, it meant having to shoulder the burden of doing a group project alone.

For most of us, group projects were the bane of our existence in school, but they were also an unfortunate first introduction to collaboration. It’s no wonder that as adults most of us would prefer to just do it all ourselves rather than deal with the inevitable disappointment that comes when our…