031826 ~ The Power of Collaboration - Frank Rubino

On the couch with psychotherapist Frank Rabino, the Lucy M. Lance show, 1290 WLB1.

Today's topic, the power of collaboration, how working together can create health, happiness,

and prosperity.

Ooh, even prosperity.

Do tell, Frank.

Do tell.

Even prosperity, Lucy.

And yeah, and you know, it's the interesting thing about collaborative effort is that we generally

think in our culture about being the rock and an island and doing all things on your own.

And that's great.

And we talk a lot about captains of industry and the people who built the country.

And it's always these lone guys working hard to create things.

And that's all wonderful.

But there is a special kind of creativity that is fed through a collaborative effort.

And people from various backgrounds can get together to work to solve a problem.

And the way that our brain works and the amount of creative energy and joy that can come from together solving a problem is really unlike anything else.

I want to unpack that in a moment.

But let's go back to your lone wolf guy that's at the head of a corporation.

Invariably there's always a great woman behind that guy.

So never say that that's a lone wolf.

He's doing it on his own.

There's a woman running the house, taking care of the kids, taking care of things that allow that person to be able to flourish.

Well, usually there's a couple of women behind that guy, but.

Yes, good.

Talk about it.

But yeah, there's these are these collaborative efforts.

I think are really quite wonderful for us.

And we often think that we have to give two like-minded people or two people who are both interested in the same thing.

And you really don't.

You can have people from wildly diverse backgrounds who come together to solve a problem, each bringing their own experience and knowledge and life views together to solve a new problem or to create a new idea.

And it's incredible what people can come up with and how close they can grow.

Our humans just wired that way that we have to have collaboration.

We have to have partners.

We have to be with people.

We don't have to.

I think it we work best when we do that.

I think we are we are wired, particularly.

Well, I think both taxes are wired for that type of collaborative effort, even going back to millennia when human beings were just barely verbal.

They had to work together to solve sometimes complex problems.

And learning how to do that is kind of how we are wired, I think.

So we live in a world today that's very divisive though, hard to get together, especially disparate minds where we we don't think alike to come together to solve those big issues.

And that's been a big problem.

Well, it is that's kind of that's kind of why I thought this would be an interesting conversation because we can take people who, at least in generations past, disagreed on many things.

Many things may even fundamentally disagree on big issues.

But we're able to put those feelings and beliefs aside those conflicts aside in order to solve a problem or to create something new.

And the energy that is created the creative energy and the connective energy from people coming together to do that is really is really unlike anything else.

You think about people who create music together who don't like each other, but are amazing as they collaborate to create music.

And the industry is a long history of those relationships.

So people who do do that well are there certain characteristics they have that allow them to do that.

And I ask you that thinking about people who are all are all about themselves.

And they want all the accolades they want to be the ones that are first.

They want to be the innovator and the discoverer and then want to give that away to a group of people that might have helped them on it.

Yeah, or another the the second half of the act, if you will.

And invariably what happens is that those that type of energy destroys whatever collaborative relationship that existed.

I think today there's something even more dangerous than the narcissistic partner and that is artificial intelligence.

Oh, all right. So let's get into that.

So I think that what we're discovering now is in that we're in the baby stages of artificial intelligence and what it can do and what we're finding is that people are collaborating with AI instead of reaching out to other human beings to collaborate.

You can do more with a laptop computer and an AI driver than you can in a very short period of time than you can with working with another human.

But Frank isn't that giving the power to the bots to the AI.

Whatever it is that's in that computer that is giving you all the answers you're looking for in your collaboration of a writing or whatever you're doing.

Isn't that giving them more power?

100% I'm not saying it's a good idea.

I know I know are doing it.

And I think what we're also missing if we if we really go down that road, we are missing the absolute joy.

There is really nothing like working with another person and discovering and creating something new together.

What happens in that relationship is just it's a stuff of magic and you just can't recreate that with our official intelligence.

We have a collaboration with psychotherapist Frank Rabino on Ann Arbor's talk station 1290 WLBY.

So Frank the other day was talking with someone and they wrote a letter to a governmental entity and they asked me to read it and I did.

And I said this is excellent.

You hit all the points. It's wonderful.

How did you you know you must have worked long and hard putting this together and she just looked at me and smiled and said,

she had written it.

She knew enough to put into the header what she was looking for and it populated everything on there and it was fabulous.

And I'm not I can't discern AI from not being AI to be honest with you.

I know a lot of people can they kind of see the signs your former professor you you get that too.

I think you did that with your your papers.

But I I'm not there so you know how disappointed I was to find out that it wasn't this fellow humans creation.

Yeah, you know it writes it's the same as if he were to have paid some professional writer to write it for him.

Yeah, you know it's this sort of but we've been doing we've been cheating like that for a long time.

We buy greeting cards and things like that.

True.

We don't even know what to write on it besides the salutation.

We struggle with that, you know.

It's only got everything you need on it.

Yeah, yeah, just put your initial at the bottom.

But yeah, you're right. You're right.

You're right.

I mean, at least that was another person who was creating it through their thoughts.

But I think that if anybody has ever really experienced that kind of connection with another person,

you're working through creating a discovering, you know there's no feeling like it.

And as much of a feeling of accomplishment as you might get from working with an AI,

there really it does not measure up to what you can do emotionally with another human being.

Yeah, a little part of you feel like you cheated.

It always does when you use that.

Sure. Well, it won't for long.

I think there's a whole generation of young people who are going to grow up using it and will not have that feeling.

Oh, that's sad.

Well, it is when you think that they also may not have the experience of creating something with another person,

which I think is a, if you've never done it, I think you're kind of cheating yourself out of that wonderful, wonderful rich experience.

So what's your recommendation, Frank?

I think that what I would recommend that people do this on their own,

reach out to a person who's like-minded or maybe even not like-minded,

and try and come up with a way of solving a problem or coming up with a new idea of some kind or improving on an old one,

and just watch what grows.

Just watch what grows in an afternoon over a cup of coffee, two people who are interested in a thing,

and see what happens.

And I think the endorphins that run through your brain and the feelings of excitement that grow from two people working together on something

won't want to touch an AI.

Isn't that the premise of the root of Steiner School and how it teaches children?

It is. It is.

And this is what I, you know, you think about these people thought about this for a long time.

I'm not the first one to think about this, but I just think it's time to maybe rediscover some of these things we've known for a long time.

Wow. Interesting.

And you learn by doing, obviously.

You learn by doing, you learn by bouncing ideas off and on the person and their own personal experience, whatever that is.

And it may be, it may be vastly different from your own, but that's good because they will bring a whole other school of thought that you would have never come up with.

Frank, along those lines, when I was growing up in the seventies, the phones were it.

We could talk for hours with our friends on the phones, my mother and her best friend, the three-hour conversations they would have,

and they're laughing and talking and, you know, talking about issues in the neighborhood and the community.

And, okay, no one does that anymore. You know what we do? We text.

Real cryptic texts.

You don't have the same kind of connection that way.

At least, you know, back then you communicated, if not in person, at a coffee clatch, whatever.

And even if you go to a coffee shop now, you know what everyone's doing?

They're looking at their phones and their laptops.

Yeah, it was interesting. I was at a coffee shop in Florida near my dad.

And there's a sign in there that said, no internet. Enjoy.

Really? I love it.

Yeah, I thought, oh, that's the coolest thing. No internet. Enjoy.

You were given permission, right?

Yes. Sit and talk. Sit and talk and be together.

Yeah. That's what we need to do. More of it. Collaboration. You'll be better off for it.

But you did start out by saying, not only would you create health, happiness, you mentioned prosperity.

And is that in the discovery, in the innovation, in the partnership?

It's in a number of things. Those things for sure.

But you also never know what can come of it from that. There's prosperity in lots and lots of different ways.

And I always count emotional prosperity number one. I think that's the pager that I'm looking for.

Okay, so maybe you create the next new widget that people make the billion there, whatever.

But I think that working together, that emotional connection, that's pager for me.

So you're assigned it now until next week. I want everyone to go out, find one person to talk with and have a meaningful conversation and collaborate on something.

And whether you're just a like-minded with that individual or it's someone who's just totally different from you, have that conversation today and see what happens, see what can grow.

Frank, great ideas. Thanks so much.

Thanks, Lucien.

Frank Rabino, psychotherapist. He practices in Plymouth, Michigan.

Google Frank Rabino, R-U-B-I-N-O, and psychology today.

And you'll come up with his landing page, bio, and contact information.

I'm Lucien Lance, your listening to Ann Arbor's talk station, 1290-W-L-B-Y.