Sleeping with the Enemy - Achieving Collaborative Success : This i‌ and position people affects perceptions, responses and behaviour
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Sleeping with the Enemy Achieving Collaborative Success Sharing collaborative and partnership working best practice.
Tuesday, 20 June 2017
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This is how a collaborative person works: 21. remember that where you place and position people affects perceptions, responses and behaviour
Sleeping with the Enemy - Achieving Collaborative Success: 5th Edition Now Available at Amazon
(This post draws heavily upon the experiences of Paul Macalindin as described in his book Upbeat, which chronicles his inspiring work with the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq.)
'An excellent book that outlines the value and benefit of collaborative working...' This book is about collaborative and partner...
'On Sunday 12th August, the Edinburgh Youth Orchestra players and oud player Khyam Allami arrived at the course. As with Beethovenfest the year before, the new players sat on the inside of each string desk and the Iraqis on the outside, not just to support, but also to make sure that the orchestra actually looked Iraqi in public.' Where people are placed within a collaborative intuitive (of which the NYOI is an obvious example) affects how those on the inside and those looking in from outside perceive and respond to it. This is nicely summed up by the above quotation from Paul's book. The simple act of placing the more experienced (relative to the Iraqis) Scottish players on the inside desks of the violins not only consolidated and encouraged their supporting and helping role but also put the Iraqi players in full view of the audience, emphasising that the purpose of the orchestra was to promote and develop Iraqi musicians and encourage them to be high profile ambassadors for Iraq and its culture. Often, placing and positioning that are influential both symbolically and practically need only be slight: 'So, the Kurdish violinists, who I'd put mostly in violin two, were musically weaker than their Arab counterparts in violin one. I seated one Kurd in violin one and one Arab in violin two as a yin-yang solution, to see what would happen musically and diplomatically.'
Charles M Lines
Given the historical and political tensions and cultural differences between the Iraqi Arabs and Kurds, not acknowledging and symbolically addressing the unavoidably unequal representation of Kurd musicians within the first violin section would likely have caused serious tensions within the orchestra sooner or later. These tensions would have not only grown within the string section but also spread to other sections of the orchestra. Any unacknowledged difference in status between the Arab and Kurd violinists would have gradually become a proxy battle for other members of the orchestra: Arab and Kurd non-violinist musicians associating their own status with that of the largest and most visible (if not the loudest) section of the orchestra. By placing one Arab violinist in the second violin section and one Kurdish violinist in the first violin section, Paul is achieving at least three important things: 1. he is acknowledging the difference in status between Arab and Kurd violinists; 2. he is making it plain that the difference in status is unavoidable but not necessarily permanent (because, the precedent having been set, the Kurdish violinists can reasonably assume that they will be able to join their colleague within the first violins when they gain the necessary expertise and experience); 3. he is ever so slightly but also significantly (the two things are not mutually exclusive) loosening and challenging the social and cultural boundaries between the Arab and Kurd musicians. This could not only increase understanding between the two races but also encourage the mixing of approaches and perceptions that could lead to interesting and surprising musical and artistic outcomes. In the fullness of time, and with suitable development and encouragement, these could evolve into a unique sound and approach for the NYOI.
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It is important to recognise that making changes to the placing and positioning of people within a
http://cuttingedgepartnerships.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/this-is-how-collaborative-person-works_20.html
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