17 Comments

This reminds me of what I've read about the Lennon-McCartney collaboration.

Expand full comment
author

That seems true, Melanie—and look what they produced!

Expand full comment

The only creative abrasion I ever have is with myself, so... I usually win

Expand full comment
author

Ha! But sometimes I engage in creative abrasion with myself, and lose . . . !

Expand full comment

Haha, true dat!

Expand full comment

I love this. And yes! I attended a 5-day vocal improv workshop and in my group, conflict around our performance project prevailed. The outcome was wonderful except that 2 participants opted out. I wonder how different kinds of criticism, like criticizing to expand an idea or alter it, versus criticizing to win a point plays in the creative process.

Expand full comment
author

Thanks for this input, Diana. It's too bad that those two participants didn't feel that they could tolerate the conflict that your project generated. I do think the nature of the criticism offered is important (i.e., conflict in the service of ideas rather than conflict that is personal).

Expand full comment
Apr 20, 2023Liked by Annie Murphy Paul

Example: When we place a personality such as mine as a big picture thinker, with a personality opposite that focuses on details, we become much more productive without missing the big picture or the details and have a much better outcome...as long as we understand our differences.

Expand full comment
author

I think that's right, Don!

Expand full comment
Apr 19, 2023Liked by Annie Murphy Paul

Creative abrasion within oneself can be a powerful push. Not merely 'asking' myself how else can I do this or that ... but imagining, for example, something violent and unexpected. What if everything I built in that corner of my world sinks into the ground? People, infrastructure, systems. How will my world recover? How will the characters continue their lives? How and what will their 'management' decide what to rebuild? Hundreds of new questions arise to be answered. [I write, collage, paint, and build Lego stories]

Expand full comment
author

That's a really interesting technique, Rita. Thank you for sharing it!

Expand full comment
Apr 16, 2023Liked by Annie Murphy Paul

When I used to work in Amazon, the most abhorred attribute in the organization was social cohesion. As a consequence teams were always set up to feel the abrasion. This, supposedly, set up the right environment for speed, innovation and doing the right thing. Once everyone agrees with everyone else, ideas tend to get stale. The way Amazon handled it from getting personal was 1. Make it amply clear that this is the culture and it has nothing to do with you personally and 2. Have leadership principles that align closely like 'Disagree and commit' or 'Be vocally self critical'.

It is a stressful place to work as a consequence but also provides opportunities for building things rigorously. However as it happens with any org that grows and with leaders who don't get the intent, there's a lot of bad behavior that ensues under the guise of this culture. A very tricky thing to build culturally.

Expand full comment
author

Thank you for this, Tyagarajan. I think you're absolutely right that the practice of creative abrasion is hard to pull off and hard to build into the culture of an organization. Worth trying, though, even if it only works for a time.

Expand full comment

Agree this is awesome and a fresh updating of 'constructive criticism'.

Expand full comment
author

Thank you so much, Lissa! Glad you found it useful!

Expand full comment

so interesting! makes me wish I had more opportunities for collaboration.

Expand full comment

I've found another way to look at this since it is often hard for people to just stop and listen when they truly believe they are right and you are wrong.

In teaching Myers-Briggs personality traits we learn that different personalities may see things from a different perspective due to their different personality traits. We teach them to understand the different personality types and accept them for being different, hence understand that the different perspective don't come from a place of right or wrong.

Depending on upbringing and situational traumas throughout life some will embrace completely different personality traits than their natural preference, thus they stand conflicted themselves. Once we understand ourselves better we begin to understand others better too. We can also learn to flex our natural personality trait preferences, meaning we learn the opposite of our preference and practice it.

Once deeply engrossed in a better understanding of the personality traits we start to understand the personality differences that drive a lot of the personality conflicts.

Expand full comment