When people start to work with one another, it takes time to assess how this will work out.
One of the challenges in this is to find a way to arrive at a result that is satisfactory for both, especially when both are skilled in different fields. That’s always the case when one of both is an expert in his field and the other isn’t.
Both will have to engage in a difficult dance, in which the partner having the lead is constantly changing. And a dance in which the amount of guidance needed still has to be figured out.
Imagine the architect who delivers a plan for a house and the buyer who is looking for his dream house.
The plan as designed by the architect has been established to the best of his effort. And yet, the buyer might find that it doesn’t represent his dream. How will he react? Simply accepting the plan because the architect is the expert? Complain that the plan isn’t well done? And how will the architect evaluate his customer’s satisfaction? Will he presume that his work is flawless? Will he do everything his customer is asking for?
Both can assume that the other just wants his will to happen. But they can also assume that the other is just as interested as himself in creating a result that satisfies both.
Taking the first option is assuming that one knows better than the other. And it is assuming that not knowing as well as the other makes it impossible to contribute to shaping the result. Or can only happen by describing all the details with minutiae.
The second option is the more complicated one. It requires more work and more investment into a common result. That’s because they both have to find a way to describe what it is that the desired result should look like as well as how it can look like. It is finding an image or language capable to describe the desired result, which means doing the work to see that picture and share it. And it is also doing the work to recognize that image in one’s craft.
It will have worked, once both have been able to do the emotional work of sensing the desired result. The more they engage in this creation process, the more skilled they will become at exchanging with one another and sensing the shared image.
They will both be satisfied, once they will have let go of doing what the other wants and invested themselves in discovering what the other wants.
