Conscious Collaboration: Co-founder Conversations

The Conversation Factory

In this conversation, I sat down with Beth Bayouth and Mario Fedelin, the COO and CEO (respectively) of Changeist, a non-profit organization dedicated to youth empowerment. They are building a community of young people that utilize their personal agency to create a more just society.

Changeist’s programs help 11-26 year olds learn a common civic language, engage in dialogue, and build community to investigate local and global social justice issues. Participants also work with other local community-based organizations to implement local solutions to local problems.

Together, Mario and Beth explore how they met, built a relationship and decided to work on this project together…and how they continue to manage themselves and each other in the entrepreneurship journey.

A few insights we’ll unpack about conscious co-founder relationships:

• The key to a great co-founder relationship is that both of you do not fall apart at the same time!
• Fighting Well and how Cofounder Intimacy can help: With cofounder intimacy, there is an understanding that often there’s something else behind a conflict or a mood. Because when you're close, you tend to know about what’s going on or that it’s safe to ask.
• Knowing yourself and your skills
• The Power of working with someone with a Different Skill Set but Similar Values

On Knowing yourself and your skills, and finding compliments on your core team:

A great leadership team requires Comfort with yourself and your skills and Respect for the skills of others... and it takes Balance - but Balance of what?!

On a leadership team you need:

+ Architects and Visionaries

+ Multipliers - someone who brings something you do not have to the table, who is also committed to the vision and the journey

Another way to think about this is that you need:

+ A Balance of Openers and Closers on the team.

This is the essence of conscious collaboration - knowing if you are more comfortable in a generative or divergent mode, ie, opening, or are more natural in the “Synthesizer” role - organizing, closing, or planning towards action. Mario owns his limitations as a “closer” and intentionally chose Beth as a COO for her natural “shark” skills - her ability to move things forward with clarity.

Mario and Beth also talked about their balanced styles in “Speeding up” and “Slowing Down” creative conversations - Beth will pump the brakes and ground ideas in reality when the time is right. Feeling that balance between creativity and clarity, speed and thoughtfully slowing things down, is the essence of conscious creativity and conscious collaboration…being comfortable with both opening and closing modes is critical, but collaborating with others who complement your natural approaches is powerful.

Be sure to check out my other co-founder conversations. I discussed building an Integrity Culture with the co-founders of Huddle, Michale Saloio and Stephanie Golik, and investigated prototyping partnerships with Jane Portman and Benedikt Deicke, co-founders of Userlist. (Which Mario and Beth absolutely did, as well!)

I also sat down with Jennifer Dennard and Dan Pupius, the co-founders of Range to unpack Healthy Conflict in Cofounder relationships. Conflict and collisions will inevitably happen in relationships, so you might as well learn to lean into it!

You may also enjoy my interview with Carolyn Gregoire and Scott Barry Kaufman, the co-authors of the 2015 bestseller, Wired to Create, where we unpack how they managed their working relationship and discuss Paired creativity, which is totally a thing!

And if you really want to dive deep into the idea of being a conscious co-founder, make sure to check out my conversation with my friend Doug Erwin, the Senior Vice President of Entrepreneurial Development at EDAWN, the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Changeist

On Healthy Conflict: https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/managing-healthy-conflict-co-founder-conversations