Co-creative couples: Creating what cannot be created alone

HEADNOTE

Creating a partnership is hard enough--but what if you are also married to that business partner? Read how successful couples keep the bottom line and their sanity in check.

Futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard

believes the current evolution of humankind requires a new model for marital relationships: "co-creative couples." Given that we now hold the power to directly influence the future of the planet by the choices we make, we need partners with whom we can make a positive difference. Each of us, Hubbard writes, "needs at least one other to see who we really are, to hold that higher self image before us as we gradually and humbly mature" (The Revelation, Nataraj Publishing, 1995).

Challenges faced by co-creative couples may well be the same challenges that organizations face when they choose to create partnerships and strategic alliances. In both cases, the choice to unite represents a belief in the potential for creating something together that could not be created alone. These partners enter a union believing that each has the other's best interests at heart, that each is bringing his or her own best self forward, and that each is committed to supporting the other in being the best they can be. Both types of partnerships require a deep respect and appreciation for each partner's gifts and talents, and a shared vision of what it is that they wish to bring forth in the world. Both require intense communication, a commitment to truth, even when it's difficult, and a promise to resolve differences in the best interests of the partners and the common good.

Recently we asked our co-- creative couple friends to tell us about the challenges and rewards of their personal and professional partnerships. Rita and Bill Cleary are co-owners of The Learning Circle in Sudbury, Massachusetts. The Learning Circle provides coordination services and resources for the design and implementation of innovative leadership development programs. Emily and Dick Axelrod are coowners of The Axelrod Group in Chicago. The Axelrod Group specializes in engaging organizations to address critical business issues. And Kenneth and Deana Henry are co-directors of The Sleight Leadership Program at Albion College in Albion, Michigan. The program provides for the comprehensive leadership development of Albion College students.

According to Dick Axelrod, "When you are working together and your spouse has a bad day, you know exactly how and why that happened." For Axelrod, deeper appreciation and understanding are two of the great rewards of living and working together.

Finding a balance between work and other parts of our lives is a common challenge for everyone. When the work is compelling and represents what we believe we are called to do in the world, it is easy for the work to become allconsuming. For co-creative couples, this balance represents a certain challenge. "It is extremely important to make time for communication that is not business-related," cites Dick Axelrod. "When pillow talk becomes business talk, you're in trouble."

"If you are a real workaholic," the Henrys warn, "having a working and personal partnership might be really harmful to your health and sanity."

Co-creative couples are no different than the rest of us; they don't pretend to have the other one all figured out. Both the Clearys and the Axelrods have learned how to turn their differences in management and thinking styles into assets. Rita and Bill Clearly each take the lead on different projects, often working independently with others, and use each other as thinking partners when projects become particularly challenging. Emily Axelrod says that the rewards of working in this way include "really understanding the partner in a multifaceted way. I never knew what the other side was like until I was the one traveling and calling home to see how the kids were. It creates empathy and increased respect for the other as a professional and partner." Dick adds, "It is knowing your partner as a whole person, not just as a husband and wife with a career about which you have limited knowledge."

Dick also points out another common challenge for co-creative couples: helping people deal with them as a married couple. How can they disagree in front of a client and not have that client experience it as a marital spat? "The issue of being a couple sometimes intimidates others," asserts Dick. "We hear, `I could never do that with my spouse' all the time." But it can be done. The Henrys will be married for 30 years this month, and have been students or working partners for all but four of those years.

People often comment on our luck in having found each other, and express their own wishes to find partners for both life and work. We wish that same luck for others, and we believe that cocreative unions can exist in all of our lives if we are open to the possibility. In The Revelation, Hubbard calls for co-creative groups in the workplace and in our communities, or "support groups to nurture ourselves through the birth process of finding and manifesting our life purposes in the world" Her description of the process of creating these groups matches our own experience as a co-creative couple.

Hubbard writes, "We find one or more others who share our passion to create. We communicate our excitement. We experience resonance, connecting at the heart, being on the same wavelength.

Then we practice love, forgiveness, non judgment, acceptance, and trust in one another. This process helps maintain the resonance and starts drawing forth the untapped creativity of each person. We commit to action. We seek our cocreative work partners. We practice win-win decision making. We learn cooperative entrepreneurship. We apply the best principles of the free enterprise system to free us to fulfill our life purposes through chosen work."

In these groups and communities, as in co-creative coupling, we can build relationships of trust and mutual respect in which our inner lives and our deepest hopes and desires can connect with others and find creative expressions that make real differences in the world. In the same way that couples come together, finding and creating these groups and communities require courage. Being open enough to tell another about who you think you really are, what you yearn for, and what you believe you are meant to do in the world opens the space for others to act with courage, as well.

"Do not rush it," writes Hubbard in The Revelation. "Savor each step along the way."

AUTHOR_AFFILIATION

Carole Schwinn is the learning systems advisor at Jackson Community College in Jackson, Michigan. David

AUTHOR_AFFILIATION

Schwinn is a private consultant and executive director of the Webworks Alliance and Jackson's new Citizen Center for the Common Good. The Schwinns, who have been co-- creators for nearly 20 years and serve on the faculty of AQP's School for Managing and Leading Change, can be reached at cdschwinn@dmci.net or 517-547-6767.