Antagonistic Cooperation: Advancing Through Challenge
In Greg’s last post, he asked the question: what choices, as leaders, will you make in this New Year? Our choices are vital to shaping our life journey, particularly when it comes to inevitable challenges and conflicts. We usually struggle against said challenges and conflicts, willing them to disappear so we can move forward as we see fit.
What if those challenges and conflicts are here to help us advance?
Antagonistic Cooperation is an aspect of the hero/heroine’s journey in which challenges and obstacles are viewed from the perspective of cooperating with you so you can grow, develop, and mature. A novel approach to gain new realizations and insights, you are the protagonist of your own story, the hero of your life journey. The antagonists, on the surface, seem to go against you.
We’ve mentioned antagonistic cooperation in past posts, as a principle in our jazz model demonstrated by the friendly competition, challenge, and support of musicians as they strive for excellence in the creation of beautiful musical experiences.
Author Albert Murray says that antagonistic cooperation is the necessary tension between trial and triumph. The world at large antagonizes the heroine with adversity, which galvanizes the heroine’s character and cultivates the inner strength necessary to overcome the trial.
Growth and learning are impossible without challenge, so, through an Antagonistic Cooperation lens:
Challenge and conflicts are opportunities for learning and growth, which, in turn strengthen our capacity to handle and hold the tensions of more complexity and discern with more nuance—to develop into our maturity. We navigate through a mindset of curiosity, inquiry, and discovery.
Antagonistic Cooperation requires us to shift from the notion that something is being taken away from us to something is being added to further our advancement.
In his soon to be released book, Antagonistic Cooperation: Jazz, Collage, Fiction and the Shaping of African American Culture, Robert O’Meally describes antagonistic cooperation as a form of community building, of competition and coordination with a jazz player’s spirit of love. As in the music, the energy goes into: “the will to move together, even with strangers, even with trouble in the air.”
As we lead, our dragons will surface, giving us pause and strife. The objective is to reframe obstacles and challenges as opportunities for positive change, to better build trust and establish rapport. The situations, persons, and things that seemingly go against our way, our goals and desires, can and should be viewed as cooperating with our evolutionary development.
So, when the fiery breath singes intensely, consider the following questions to help you steer through the lair:
What can I appreciate about the opportunity this challenge gives me?
What knowledge, skills, and resources do I have to draw upon?
Could the conflict serve to deepen the relationship?
What does the situation mean to me?
What does my reaction/response say about me?
What skill or ability does it highlight as missing?
May you meet each challenge in the coming year with grace, intention, and the wisdom of a positive outlook of a dragon slayer.
