Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol. 23, No. 2 (2026)

From Personal Rejection to Shared Satisfaction: Thriving through Principles of Relationship-Rich Collaboration

Bob Barnett
University of Michigan-Flint
rbarnett@umich.edu

Jacob Blumner
University of Michigan-Flint
blumner@umich.edu

James Schirmer
University of Michigan-Flint
jschirm@umich.edu

Stephanie Roach
University of Michigan-Flint
smroach@umich.edu

Abstract

This article develops a working theory of “relationship-rich” collaborative practice. Given that successful and satisfying scholarly collaboration is not always what results when two or more people work together, this article lays out principles that describe conditions and qualities necessary for collaboration that is qualitatively different and meets the roles, responsibilities, and benefits of relationship-rich engagement. Applying the framework of Peter Felten and Leo M. Lambert’s principles of “relationship-rich” education, the article argues for nine principles of relationship-rich collaborative practice keyed to the four foundations in Felten and Lambert’s work: welcome, inspiration, community, and meaning. In line with this special issue of articles on rejection, the authors start with their own stories of rejection and defeat, describing the common themes and concerns that led to their past and present collaboration. They then share their story of working together, including tactics of their process, to establish the importance of relationships in driving satisfaction and productivity, ultimately offering principles for relationship-rich collaborative practice. The principles offered have both explanatory and generative power, helping to explain what is missing when collaboration is unsuccessful, unsatisfying, or unsafe. The principles benchmark what is desirable in satisfying partnerships, highlighting the importance of choice, intention, and collective wellbeing in scholarly collaboration.

Why “Relationship-Rich”

Our interest in theorizing relationship-rich collaborative practice comes from our experiences of rejection and dissatisfaction. Our individual experiences of feeling undervalued, undermined, and unsupported in the scholarly publication process align with common stories of rejection we hear from our colleagues. We tell our stories in solidarity and to establish the reasons we moved to collaboration and specific kinds of satisfying collaborative practices as scholars. Our stories help provide a context in which we argue for the values and actions of relationship-rich collaborative practice.

We have experienced painful and unsettling frustration and self-doubt in attempts to hurdle the barriers of suspicion and mixed messages within scholarly publication cycles and institutional processes assessing scholarly worth. The four of us count ourselves fortunate that juxtaposed to experiences of being deflated or unmoored, we have, together, found personal and professional satisfaction in collaborations that are productive, supportive, and meaningful. We argue that the source of satisfaction in such collaboration is best understood in a “relationship-rich” framework. We borrow the term “relationship-rich” from Peter Felten and Leo M. Lambert, and we intend this article as a way to understand and honor a “relationship-rich” framework in collaborative work.

To develop our case for a working theory of relationship-rich collaborative practice, we begin with sharing separate stories of rejection and defeat. We analyze the common themes and concerns that encouraged us to seek new ways of working toward—and feeling about—our scholarship. We then turn to our collective story of processes that have supported a shared satisfaction. Our collaborative processes leverage individual strengths in serving a common goal, leading to feelings of individual and collective worth, excitement, connectedness, and momentum. These stories create the context for better understanding the principles of collaborative work capable of generating mutual care, uplift and pride. Ultimately, we argue for a framework for collaborative practice informed by Peter Felten and Leo M. Lambert’s principles of “relationship-rich” education. Relationship-rich education is “rooted in relentless welcome, inspired learning, webs of relationships, and meaningful questions” (40). Such principles create conditions for success such as “mutual emotional support, instrumental assistance, and intellectual engagement” (McCabe qtd. in Felten and Lambert 163).

Inspired by the categories and concepts of relationship-rich education, we offer principles of relationship-rich collaborative practice. We believe a set of such principles has both explanatory and generative power. Since we know that not all collaborative work is personally satisfying or even safe, principles of relationship-rich collaborative practice can help in analyzing why not. By describing uplifting collaborative conditions and establishing a conceptual framework for understanding how collaboration is functioning, the principles help us understand the (anti)relationship-rich roots of (in)effective and (un)productive collaborative practice. This conceptual understanding can inform choice and action in collaborative work. How do we generate more intentionally the kind of processes where creating something that becomes truly “ours” has distinctive markers of meaning-making and felt success? Relationship-rich principles provide an answer. However, before delving into the details of a relationship-rich collaborative practice that has buoyed our scholarly production and sense of worth as scholars, it is important to first describe our own lived experiences with barriers to scholarly worth and associated feelings of rejection.

Our Separate Stories of Personal Rejection

Stephanie’s Story

Despite departmental praise for her scholarship and support from the Dean on her case for promotion and tenure in 2010, Stephanie was met with disciplinary bias and intense institutional suspicion in the form of a letter to the Provost from dissenting members of the Dean’s advisory committee voting on Stephanie’s tenure. The letter’s authors questioned her credibility, insinuating that while “Roach claims she is the second author” they were unsure of “identify[ing] her contribution” and instead of listening to the information provided by Stephanie, her co-authors, external reviewers, and her department, they cynically dismissed her contributions. They did not recognize legitimate, rigorous peer review outside of a double-blind format, and they questioned whether in her scholarly contributions she “meets higher level intellectual standards.” Ultimately, they did not understand or value Stephanie’s contributions within the field. In the face of this rejection, Stephanie felt defeated, confused, and deeply sad. Though the Provost and Chancellor later sided with the department and the Dean in recommending tenure, the pain of this rejection lingered. With doubt cast upon her as a forthright person and worthy intellectual, Stephanie languished in significant shame and fear, unmotivated to produce new scholarship and wary of whether her future efforts would be understood and valued.

James’s Story

In James’s pre-tenure life, “revise and resubmit” seemed a hurdle he couldn’t quite get over. Attempts to get published ultimately met with success (and a positive case for promotion and tenure in 2014), but his overall effort was marked by countless other attempts that went nowhere. As a result, he often worried that his arguments and ideas were good enough for conference presentations and social media posts but not for articles in books or journals, which contributed to a sort of research paralysis. James felt adrift in the submission process, too, with so much correspondence through the coldness of email, and he was all the more embarrassed by how consistently a draft article was said to be a “good fit” but also not “good enough.” Wracked by an inability to execute, he withdrew, isolating himself even from those colleagues who most supported him.

Bob and Jacob’s Story

As the only formally trained compositionists within their respective literature-dominated departments, neither Bob nor Jacob worked in environments that understood multi-authored scholarship in 1997. Their department cultures did not include support for collaborative work; the gold standard was still a single-authored book. Despite this, they undertook an ambitious project to collect and document partnerships between writing centers and writing across the curriculum (WAC) programs. Their colleagues did not fully understand the work they were doing. During Bob’s two-year tenure review, the department and college-level executive committee stressed that he needed to ramp up his scholarship. Instead of mentoring or supporting Bob, two senior members of his department scoffed at his collaborative attempts, diminishing this work and discouraging him from continuing it. Jacob, meanwhile, found little room for scholarship at his teaching institution. Some scholarship was necessary to achieve tenure, but no formal support for publishing existed. Jacob felt he had no support or guidance for the scholarly work needed to earn tenure. Bob and Jacob ultimately secured a book contract, but being unsupported in work that felt meaningful left them disappointed and frustrated.

Choosing to Work Together

Our experiences and feelings of rejection and frustration are what led us to choose to work together. What is critical to note in these stories are the common and relatable themes that point to disaffection in the publishing process and institutional assessments of scholarly worth. For all of us, institutional systems provided inadequate infrastructure for individual faculty success. We had guidelines, procedures, and processes for promotion to associate professor, but this constituted a meager roadmap. We also heard a clear mandate to make a national mark on our field, but to do it alone. And so we did.

But while we attempted to produce scholarship understood as valuable, we found ourselves in a variety of different collaborative connections that had satisfying layers to them. Our administrative work as, then, deans, chairs, associate chairs, writing center and writing program directors brought us together on committees, in initiatives, and for necessary advocacy. We worked in pairs, trios, and as a quartet. Our working relationships necessitated close and frequent communications. We faced setbacks and frustrations, but we appreciated what it felt like to work together and were grateful to become closer colleagues, friends, and allies. As changes in appointments, shifts in responsibilities, and the pressures of austerity moved us out of the administrative positions that put us in collaboration, we recognized more clearly the value of working together. Even when results of our administrative efforts were too often swept away, we liked working with one another. Fueled by collective desires for satisfaction in our work and personal desires to correct institutional narratives about our work that were still informing feelings of rejection and imposter syndrome in publishing, we chose to start writing for publication together.

Tactics of Shared Satisfaction

In a very real sense, we are rebuilding ourselves and coming to terms with what happened in our earlier years as scholars. In Lessons from the Pandemic, Carello and Thompson remind us that, “writing and collaborating are methods of collective recovery…[that] help us recover and reimagine ourselves as educators” (4-5). We band together because of those past experiences, but we also look to the future, examining what is at the heart of our success: to rediscover, recover, and reimagine the joy and satisfaction of thinking and writing through acts of creating together.

Inspired through the simple act of exchanging ideas with like-minded and similarly enthusiastic individuals, we find creativity and camaraderie in collective inquiry. Degrees of care and thoughtfulness are foundational in this work, from respecting each other as fellow human beings to seeing the words any of us write as belonging to all of us. This highly iterative process hears and values all voices in the conversation, and we feel less alone in the daunting task of figuring out what to write about. Through this process, we create a sense of community and a clear sense of belonging and purpose. It is from these dual senses that we are able to better break down ideas and tasks into manageable parts, moving adeptly from big-picture ideas to concrete plans.

In doing so, we lean into our strengths. A series of interwoven files in Google Docs, maintained by Stephanie, ensure that we’re all figuratively and literally on the same page. These files allow us to see how an article evolves but also reveal our collective process, an initial proposal leading to article and task outlines, leading to a draft document colored by comments and suggested edits. The writing moves from “mine” and “yours” into “ours,” with a paragraph or an entire section first drafted, say, by Bob, morphing via idea influence, sentence structure, relevant citation, and word choice by Jacob, James, and Stephanie into something we all see ourselves in. We repeat the process, switching roles and what Sommers refers to as the “scales of concern” or different points of focus in iterative revision (Sommers 380, 386). We engage in what Wyatt et al. identify as assemblage, work that is “specifically not the sum of separately existing identities” and instead an immersion of those selves “in the collaborative task of writing in relation” (407). And, in the writing of this and other articles, we map “the movement of affects and desire…through an assemblage as it dissolves, disassembles, and reassembles in new formations” (409). Collective accountability motivates us to contribute to the assemblage, both in the moment and online, while also providing a visible record of effort, allowing us to witness the work we do together.

Our loose, free-flowing, 90-minute meetings every other week happen in physical spaces near, but not on, campus. Whether at a downtown coffee shop, the rooftop bar at the local farmers market, or on a backyard deck, we reference past notes, read aloud new contributions, brainstorm and record ideas, and address concerns and questions as they arise. Typically, the first of us to raise the question of meeting leadership is the one to lead a given meeting. Leading typically means driving us into specific parts of a draft to take turns reading aloud new contributions or comments. Reading aloud helps us hear each other and identify twisty turns of phrase as well as open up conversations about purpose. All questions are good questions–and we can trust Jacob to ask a lot of them. Addressing concerns in the moment allows the work to always move forward. In these ways, then, we are similarly engaged in what Ede and Lunsford observe to be dialectic, acknowledging that “this talking, in fact, seemed to be a necessary part of co-authoring, one that made our writing more productive and efficient” (153).

We motivate each other to write by assigning each person specific tasks to complete before our next meeting. Concluding notes from prior meetings inform the effort still ahead. By creating a highly structured shared notes document, we are able to see the piece of writing evolve, but our notes also reveal our collective process. Through it all, we believe and trust in each other and the work, finding ourselves eager to return to both again and again. Before, during, and after these meetings, we also have the opportunity to simply hang out together and enjoy each other’s company. It is in these moments that we communicate about our other obligations, personal, professional, and otherwise, and look to support each other.

We trust each other and support each other every step of the way, and know that unequal effort is still equal contribution. Everyone lifts, but we look for who has capacity for more: “who doesn’t have a giant batch of papers this week? Who is especially overwhelmed? Who has an idea they want to run with?” and we hold each other accountable between meetings, asking, “how much do you have written?” or “have you done your assignment yet?” in curiosity and without pressure. Oftentimes we do our writing together in the same space, another way to hold each other accountable, but in a shared, caring way. And so what if somebody was unable to finish their writing task between meetings? No problem. We communicate and try to support each other, trusting we will get the work done. And we do.

The joy and satisfaction of working together makes us feel like we belong and reaffirms our understanding of each other and our field. When nurtured and supported through Stephanie’s push for purposeful organization and careful record-keeping; Bob’s inspiring, high-level perspective and can-do attitude; Jacob’s spot-on questions and focused, reinforcing practice; and James’s careful curation of resources and eye for the so what, our collective capacity is great. Our collaborative approach provides strong encouragement, even when other incentives are lacking, to produce more and seek scholarly opportunities for our collective voice.

Our writing together stands in stark contrast to our pre-tenure years when we felt the weight of isolation, the mixed messages of the peer review process, and disappointments that threatened how we defined ourselves as writers. This particular article marks our third time electing to work together on scholarly publications in the last 18 months. Through each collaborative instance, we see an ongoing effort to discover the pieces missing from separate experiences of dissatisfaction: a welcoming culture, an inspiring environment, webs of support, and a depth of meaning. All of this is what we cultivate and pursue through what we understand to be “relationship-rich” collaborative practice.

Theorizing “Relationship-Rich”: New Applications for the Work of Felten and Lambert

Our individual stories of defeat and our collective story of felt success signal the importance of certain kinds of intentional collaborative practices where relationships are at the core. In Relationship-Rich Education: How Human Connections Drive Success in College, Peter Felten and Leo M. Lambert argue that relationships are “the foundation of learning, belonging, and achieving in college” (5). Their argument establishes specific factors that they claim contribute to student success, noting parenthetically, “(and, we suspect, faculty and staff success, too)” (163). Our argument takes up the promise of that parenthetical: “relationship-rich” frameworks for student retention and success are equally powerful for understanding faculty persistence, productivity, and satisfaction.

Felten and Lambert argue that there are four principles of relationship-rich education: 1) the need for “genuine welcome and deep care,” 2) the importance of relationships as “a powerful means to inspire,” 3) the value of “webs of significant relationships,” and 4) the role of relationships in creating meaning as trusted relationships “help” and “challenge” us in examining “big questions” (17-18). Their call, then, is for institutions to build student experiences “rooted in relentless welcome, inspired learning, webs of relationships, and meaningful questions” (40), because relationships are “a primary factor in learning, belonging, and persistence” resulting in deeper engagement and sense of accomplishment (2). With relationships at the core of success in the aforementioned four ways—shaping belonging, generating persistence through a real excitement about ideas, shaping one’s place among and value for multiple perspectives, and encouraging a wider and personally meaningful field of vision for what matters—Felten and Lambert are arguing for the conditions of support and engagement that have been proven to bolster student success, and that, in their view and ours, could equally be understood to underpin faculty and scholarly success.

We see the lessons of relationship-rich education for creating welcome, inspiration, community, and meaning as applicable, and critical, to understanding collaborative practices that instill confidence and are richly positive and productive. In times of austerity thinking, waning agency, increased isolation, overwhelming workloads, and the undervaluing of service and expertise—what Lee Gardner calls the “existential threats” stemming from “more competition for students, tighter budgets, shifting student needs and wants, and a polarized citizenry that may agree only on its skepticism about the worth of college”—there can be painful and deep-reaching rejection. We need levers for faculty and scholarly satisfaction, and relationship-rich practices are capable of generating “mutual emotional support, instrumental assistance, and intellectual engagement” that lead to satisfaction (McCabe qtd. in Felten and Lambert 163). Thus, we see “relationship-rich” concepts at the core of why some faculty collaborations thrive.

Proposed Principles of Relationship-Rich Collaborative Practice

Given the significant impact of “relationship-rich” practices for productive and satisfying collaboration, we offer a set of nine relationship-rich principles categorized under Felten and Lambert’s relationship-rich conditions of welcome, inspiration, community, and meaning. These principles establish a working theory of relationship-rich collaborative practice. The numbering of the principles for ease of reading does not indicate a hierarchical order.

Principles of WELCOME:

1. Relationship-rich collaborative practice relies on and enacts trust

2. Relationship-rich collaborative practice requires caring for the humans involved

Principles of INSPIRATION:

3. Relationship-rich collaborative practice values intellectual engagement

4. Relationship-rich collaborative practice is attuned to the affective

5. Relationship-rich collaborative practice is sensitive to time

Principles of COMMUNITY:

6. Relationship-rich collaborative practice values multiple perspectives

7. Relationship-rich collaborative practice encourages members to lean into their strengths

Principles of MEANING:

8. Relationship-rich collaborative practice values multiple perspectives

9. Relationship-rich collaborative practice encourages members to lean into their strengths

A guiding assumption in developing these principles is that relationship-rich collaboration does not simply mean two or more people work together. There can be collaboration that is not relationship-rich. These nine principles we’ve developed lay out the conditions and qualities necessary for collaboration that is qualitatively different and can be understood as meeting the roles, responsibilities, and benefits of relationship-rich engagement.

Principles of WELCOME

1. Relationship-rich collaborative practice relies on and enacts trust

2. Relationship-rich collaborative practice requires caring for the humans involved

The foundational condition of relationship-rich collaborative practices is what Felten and Lambert call “genuine welcome and deep care,” or what David Scobey calls “relentless welcome” (14). To experience welcome, each person must feel valued and cared for. Genuine welcome begins with trust and care and is developed with intentionality over time. Felten and Lambert describe how tutors in the Brown University Writing Center greet writers: it begins with a fundamental question of how things are going (21). For relationship-rich work, this question is not about the day or the current project, but it is asked of an individual with the opportunity to open up into a discussion of the person behind the project. As the writing tutors at Brown and Felten and Lambert know, it is difficult, if not impossible, for people to do meaningful, collaborative work unless they feel valued and cared for by their collaborators and institution. Genuine welcome and deep care are foundational conditions of relationship-rich collaboration.

We propose two principles of welcome. The first is RELATIONSHIP-RICH COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE RELIES ON AND ENACTS TRUST. This principle begins with a fundamental trust that all of the collaborators come to the intellectual project with value and have something valuable to contribute. Trust is not something that must be earned through a job title, years of service, rites of passage, or the number of publications on a CV. Collaborators are welcomed with trust that everyone will do their best, has valuable contributions, but most importantly is a valuable person. This trust opens collaborative possibilities because collaborators don’t feel external pressure to perform, and can instead work in the ways they are already capable. Ronald Hallet et al, in “Facilitating a Sense of Belonging for Students with Multiple Identities,” describes the qualities that give students a sense of belonging, and a foundational one is trust-building. Students, and we extrapolate to faculty, need to feel trusted to feel they belong. This trust should be built through communication and acceptance because, as Annemarie Vaccaro and Barbara Newman write, “Belonging as a developmental process is rooted in basic human needs to be safe and respected and to comfortably fit in as our authentic selves” (4). Faculty need to be comfortable with their collaborators and trust that they, as humans, scholars, and teachers, are accepted. They need to believe their work will be valued and that the collaborators will understand they have lives beyond the academic work that can and will impact their professional work. They also need to trust that if they fall short in part of the process, they will still be accepted and uplifted to continue the work.

Connected closely to trust is the second principle central to welcome: RELATIONSHIP-RICH COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE REQUIRES CARING FOR THE HUMANS INVOLVED. Kami Day and Michele Eodice write in (First Person)2, “Successful co-authoring…involves relationships based on trust, respect, and care” (Day and Eodice 5). Without those qualities, co-authoring and collaborating can be challenging and less productive. Lack of care can also have negative consequences for work and personal relationships. Care as a key to genuine welcome ensures all involved feel and believe they belong as part of the work. Just as the writing center tutors at Brown understand that care is the best way to begin tutoring, care is also the best way to begin work with fellow scholars. Care is important when welcoming collaborators into a project because it helps set an appropriate tone and serves as a central component of team building. Each time collaborators meet and welcome each other, it is important to reaffirm the care they have for each other.

Writing about the negative impacts of isolation and imposter syndrome, Felton and Lambert draw from what Claude Steele termed stereotype threat, or how a person’s performance is affected by “identity contingencies” (43). So, how does one’s demographics, political affiliations, and possibly most poignant to this discussion, one’s placement within the academic institution affect performance? Stereotype threat amplifies isolation and imposter syndrome, but relentless welcome can mitigate or alleviate the challenge of overcoming such feelings. Relentless welcome focuses on bringing together and caring for real people with real and complex emotions and ideas. Phyllis Thompson and Janice Carello write in their introductory chapter to Lessons from the Pandemic on the importance of this peopled view: “Experience is often relegated to a marginalized and secondary space in current institutional models, but those models undervalue a person-first, embodied, albeit messy, human and humanizing approach” (4). In the same book, Bosca et al. define what it means to be a compassion-centric educator as “being inclusive, sensitive and mindful about the experiences of others you are working with” (134). These same qualities contribute to a relationship-rich collaboration. Beyond individual benefits, Bosca et. al. argue, “care, understanding, and compassion can elicit a cultural shift within complex educational organizations” (134). Thus, care is a key starting point for relationship-rich collaborative activities and can be an integral piece in creating positive work environments that counter narratives that devalue human experience. Given how academic institutions often devalue and demoralize marginalized groups, the imperative to start from relentless welcome and principles of trust and care is especially profound.

Principles of INSPIRATION

3. Relationship-rich collaborative practice relies on and enacts trust

4. Relationship-rich collaborative practice requires caring for the humans involved

5. Relationship-rich collaborative practice values intellectual engagement

Felten and Lambert argue that relationship-rich environments steeped in welcome further promote intellectual engagement and inspiration. They argue that for satisfaction and thriving, a person “must be inspired to learn,” and that relationships are critical to “transform learning and motivation” (17). In Felten and Lambert’s argument and in scholarship on a sense of belonging (see Bentrim and Henning) positive affiliation with others is understood to work as a motivator. Relationship-rich practices of inspiration work in combination with relationship-rich practices of welcome. When one feels they are an authentic self who matters and can be heard among others who want to hear what they have to say, there is encouragement not just to express ideas in a welcoming space but to dig into those ideas, especially among others invested in the very pursuit of generating and finding meaning in ideas. In a relationship-rich approach to inspiring learning, collaborators “show genuine interest,” “share” in the passions of others, “spark” learning through dialogue, and “create communities” that are expressly about developing expertise through challenge and support (Felten and Lambert 17, 88).

We offer three principles of relationship-rich collaborative practice based in ideas of inspiration. The first principle of inspiration is RELATIONSHIP-RICH COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE VALUES INTELLECTUAL ENGAGEMENT. In How Friendship Networks Matter for Academic and Social Success, Janice M. McCabe cites intellectual engagement as the number one factor underpinning relationships that lead to satisfying and productive cognitive outputs (in Felten and Lambert 163). In this and other scholarship, she reminds readers that there is a long tradition of emphasizing often only in social terms the important role of one’s peers (see “Friends with Academic Benefits”). For McCabe, however, the function of relationships on “academic motivation” is paramount as one’s relationship “network structure” directly helps or hinders intellectual pursuits (23, 24). In fact, she argues that for students, peer behavior becomes “quite contagious within tight-knit networks” (26). In her study applying social science network analysis, peer influence on intellectual engagement is shown to have direct impacts on graduation rates (26).

While her study focuses on students, the lessons of relationships on motivation and support are generalizable. Those who feel their networks directly motivate and support intellectual work, thrive in that work because they are inspired to return to it, and the relationship-network feeds the work in breadth and depth, leading to a mutually reinforcing cycle. A relationship-rich valuing of intellectual engagement, then, supports collaborative processes wherein the purpose of intellectual engagement itself is more important than the products it might produce. Specific products in output may still be a goal or a result, but the prime focus of relationship-rich collaborative practice that values intellectual engagement is not what to produce but how to create the intellectual conditions that make products possible. The point of relationship-rich collaborative practice is to be involved in intellectual engagement that matters and that stimulates. Such engagement is achieved by being people in the relationship network who feel they themselves matter, who help others feel they matter equally, and who demonstrate their investment in ideas and intellectual work as interesting and fulfilling, in and of themselves worthy of dedicated time and sustained attention. And just as McCabe found that peer influence on intellectual engagement is shown to have direct impacts on student persistence, arguably the same can hold true for tenure and promotion cases and faculty persistence.

In short, how collaborators engage and support each other as people matters as much as how they engage and support ideas. Thus, the second principle of inspiration is RELATIONSHIP-RICH COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE IS ATTUNED TO THE AFFECTIVE. Felten and Lambert as well as McCabe argue for the critical role of “mutual emotional support” (163). For collaborative practice to be relationship-rich and to inspire, it must take emotion head on. How are we feeling today? How are we feeling in the work? How are we feeling about a task ahead? These questions are real and substantive. Relationship-rich collaborators will check in on emotions related to the work but will also be attuned to emotions outside of the work. Relationship-rich collaborators are not afraid to acknowledge the ways that the affective impacts intellectual work. Most importantly, relationship-rich collaborators must find ways to make it safe to share emotion and be vulnerable. Attending to the affective involves direct invitation to be people who feel things, opening specific space for the affective, and choosing always to negotiate the work with and through emotions collaborators have about the work and in their lives. Being attuned does not mean always “getting it,” but it does mean attempting to stay aware and alert, using knowledge about a person’s concerns and situation to anticipate, to listen well, and to respond with empathy and in solidarity. Relationship-rich collaborators attuned to the affective are willing to forgive beforehand if something doesn’t get done, because a true value in relationship-rich collaboration is in the engagement itself. Relationship-rich collaborators do not need to apologize for or to hide emotions. Humans who care and who feel don’t care any less or feel any less when working on an “important” project. In fact, the true engagement of ideas in a mutually supportive network of inspiration may mean collaborators feel more.

Since both intellectual engagement and attention to the affective are not just labors of love but labors of time, the third principle under inspiration is that RELATIONSHIP-RICH COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE IS SENSITIVE TO TIME. At a logistical level, relationship-rich collaborators need to be sensitive to realistic views of time. Is it reasonable to accomplish this task before next week? Is it reasonable for you (given another commitment, given an upcoming family event) to accomplish this task? Demands on time need to be sensitive to what time is available and what use of time entails. Relationship-rich collaborators need to be realistic about time as a limited resource, but also sensitive to time as a powerful and necessary expression of identity and values. Use of time is not a neutral expression.

Moreover, relationship-rich collaborative practice needs to recognize the elemental truth that to be relationship-rich, the work will take more time. Relationship-rich collaborative practice requires intentional time to grapple with process, to lay out assignments, tasks, and individual directions for work, as well as setting aside consistent time in regular intervals to work together. But more fundamentally, collaboration in general requires more time because collaboration, especially that which is relationship-rich, requires more labor. Period. Any notion that because one is sharing the load, someone else therefore has “less” to do is fundamentally false. A load may feel significantly “lighter” because one is more satisfied in the collective work, but the effort to produce “our” words, not just “my” words, is unequivocally more. Collaboration done well as a relationship-rich practice requires negotiation, output of effort, substantial regrouping, compromise for common cause, and effort on everyone’s part to deliver a singular product. All of this work requires time.

Sensitivity to time is related to the other relationship-rich principles associated with inspiration. In line with inspiration through relationship-rich intellectual engagement, there is a need for intentional time to let ideas wander wherever they go before dialing them back. As one of the subjects in McCabe’s study noted, “sometimes you can afford to get distracted” (27). Time needs to be afforded to seemingly unproductive efforts in order to maximize effort in time on task. Also, in line with inspiration through mutual emotional support, relationship-rich collaboration needs intentional time to value and experience the affective elements that influence and shape work together. Relationship-rich collaboration requires a significant and undeniable investment of time, but the results make the investment worth it.

Principles of COMMUNITY

6. Relationship-rich collaborative practice values multiple perspectives

7. Relationship-rich collaborative practice encourages members to lean into their strengths

A sense of welcome through relationships built on trust and care, and inspiration through relationship-driven intellectual engagement that trusts the affective and invests itself in time, is supported through the challenges and rewards of community that put a premium on multiple perspectives and are informed by assets-based thinking. According to Felten and Lambert, developing a web of significant relationships brings a sense of belonging, a feeling of value, and an understanding that work does not happen in isolation or disconnect from broader contexts.

Establishing institutional pathways for faculty to build personal and professional relationships is important as Felten and Lambert argue (17-18), but even in the absence of clear pathways, “individual faculty can still be powerful forces” in developing partnerships with other like-minded colleagues across the institution (Felten and Lambert 16). To better understand how one builds a web of meaningful relationships, we offer two relationship-rich principles of community. The first principle of community is that RELATIONSHIP-RICH COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE VALUES MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES.

Kathleen Fitzpatrick relies on a concept called “generous thinking” to help explain the transformative results of bringing multiple perspectives to bear on solving problems. She articulates “generous thinking” as ”the ability not only to articulate and value your own perspectives but also to ‘care for the quite different concerns of others’” (qtd. in Felten and Lambert 97). In this sense, relationship-rich collaborations value all voices and challenge individuals to bring their views to bear on the larger conversation, while welcoming and respecting the other voices in that conversation. As Timothy Eatman reminds us, those who “develop healthy and inspiring relationships” with their colleagues “will thrive” (qtd. in Felten and Lambert 70).

The health of those relationships and their ability to inspire can be measured by the extent to which multiple perspectives are sought, valued, and negotiated into the processes and products of collaboration. In this way, radical welcome is reinforced but there is also more opportunity for the kind of mutual instrumental assistance that McCabe and Felten and Lambert see as supporting success. Building friendships into a web of meaningful relationships supports this instrumental assistance wherein collaborators help each other ‘figure out how to get things done’ (qtd. in Felten and Lambert 163). Getting things done assumes that everyone brings their perspectives to the conversation while also understanding that one might know and see things that others do not and that all contributions are valuable. Collaborative practice that takes in multiple perspectives, even as a singular voice in text is crafted, has the opportunity to be more open, aware, and responsible, which are key hallmarks of the habits of mind understood to orient and signal success in all writing beyond high school (see Council of Writing Program Administrators “Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing”).

The second relationship-rich principle that respects and encourages community is that RELATIONSHIP-RICH COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE ENCOURAGES MEMBERS TO LEAN INTO THEIR STRENGTHS. A critical foundation of mutual instrumental assistance is that no one has to feel less-than because of gaps in knowledge. Rather, faculty can lean into their strengths to help foster collaborative relationships, affording the others the space to do the same. Acknowledging that collaborators are not all good at something while appreciating the things others bring strengthens the entire project. Collaborators should be encouraged to embrace what they do well without fear or embarrassment or suggesting lack of knowledge or skill. Starting from a strength-based perspective allows partners to operationalize McCabe’s advice to “help each other figure it out.”

Relationship-rich collaborators come together as partners because “we share ideologies and interests, friendships, complementary areas of expertise, and a common vision” (Day and Eodice 65). A foundation of trust seen in the principles of welcome helps encourage one another to bring the strengths of individual knowledge and expertise and unique talents to the collaborative process, leading to high quality work and meaningful relationships that grow stronger with time. Everyone is well positioned to teach and to learn, to leverage individual strengths for a common goal. Finding ways to nurture and complement one another allows reinforcement, as Day and Eodice argue, of “feelings of trust and respect, and friendship” and significantly, “focus on the appreciation of cognitive gains” (Day and Eodice 65).

Principles of MEANING

8. Relationship-rich collaborative practice produces products with collaborative ownership

9. Relationship-rich collaborative practice understands and attends to collective history

Felten and Lambert argue that integral to relationship-rich environments are opportunities to address worthwhile questions of meaning and purpose. They suggest that within a demanding yet supportive learning environment, one which necessitates “positive interdependence” (92) alongside individual accountability, collaborators are better able to take on well-defined, rotating roles, find time to cohere as a group, and tackle open-ended challenges that require collaboration (93). Two meaning-centered principles, then, are that RELATIONSHIP-RICH COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE PRODUCES PRODUCTS WITH COLLABORATIVE OWNERSHIP and RELATIONSHIP-RICH COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE UNDERSTANDS AND ATTENDS TO COLLECTIVE HISTORY. Relationship-rich practices of co-ownership work in combination with relationship-rich practices of history to promote and reinforce meaning and purpose. Each principle builds upon the other. Having a sense of shared ownership, and therefore purpose, encourages an understanding of mutual history and therefore meaning.

Shared ownership allows letting go of persistent questions about individual efforts and solo contributions, leaving collaborators better able to dismiss first-author concerns and instead be more strategic about representing effort. Compositionists may have a uniquely special interest here, too, given the complexity of written processes essentially flattening what is recognizably “mine,” to become something more fully voiced as “ours.” Though it remains possible to track individual contributions on digital platforms for writing, the accountability becomes communal on the visible page. The words appearing there belong to everyone. And because of mutually reinforcing relationships, there is little concern about any one partner “getting it wrong.” The text is collective and cumulative. An issue raised by one quickly becomes something for all to address and work through. Partners share in the ultimate success of collective solutions.

According to Felten and Lambert, “isolation begets isolation” (48), as doubts about belonging and feelings of imposter syndrome discourage us from seeking help and building relationships. But relationship-rich principles of co-ownership and mutual history work against feelings of isolation by providing shared space and agreed-upon truths. Each meeting is an opportunity to reinforce and reiterate the meaning of the work. Co-ownership counters isolation because it necessitates being together and it lessens the sense of imposter syndrome through making the work that of all, dissolving individual self-doubt through the shouldering of collective responsibility.

Relationship-rich collaborative practice further understands and attends to history, of one another and corresponding relationships, of interests and objects, of the places and spaces of effort. Despite potentially competing narratives, there is instead a focus on what all share, what all have a stake in, what can be similarly recalled. The shared history, the acknowledgement and awareness of it, stands among the motivating factors for persisting in the work. In this way, a cultivated and sustained narrative is a form of subversion, persisting when administrators and institutions dismiss or devalue the work. There is the institutional narrative, one informed by austerity or fetishes of single authorship and rigor, etc., and then there is the narrative informed by intentional relationship-rich collaboration. Artifact visibility ensures that second narrative endures amid administrative shifts and institutional changes that disregard, threaten, or sweep away faculty effort. There is a privileged freedom in this form of subtle subversion, and it is worth seizing the power and satisfaction, meaning and purpose, in doing the work anyway. In joyful defiance of individual expectations, of institutional overreach, of governmental dissolution, meaning can be found on the communal page/screen.

Relationship-rich collaborative practice is productive with identifiable endpoints, drawing on established iterative ways of working while also cultivating new ones dependent on the work at hand. Relationship-rich collaborative practice produces artifacts through collective ownership, resulting in not just an outcome in the form of a scholarly article but, prior to that, a schedule, an outline, multiple drafts and the comments and suggestions on them, indicators and reminders throughout the process of what works and what’s to be retained or let go. Similarly, in describing a “collaboratories” model of working with others in online workspaces, which involves shared inquiry, intentionality, active participation, and boundary-crossing, Karen J. Lunsford and Bertram C. Bruce observe that such work “reflects the history of a community (e.g., the shared resources, completed projects, older documents)” (55). Through the active and sustained demonstration of how collaborators pursue, plan, and complete projects, including how ideas derive or grow from initial seeds, writerly groups end up with many documents, ultimately modeling “how different genres of writing…work together to support and literally compose a research project” (55). And past models function as examples for future collaborative efforts. In this way, shared history contains multiple overlapping narratives that are mutually reinforcing, not only about self and institution but also fields of interest and inquiry alongside physical and virtual spaces of comfort and productivity.

Another way of considering the principles of co-ownership and history is through Felten and Lambert’s highlighting of ePortfolios as a way for students to engage in worthwhile questions of meaning and purpose. The thinking engendered by ePortfolios also prompts productive reflection on questions of becoming and identity, of who and how writers understand themselves to be. Through acts of relationship-rich collaboration, practitioners engage in similar questions, reflecting who they are in relation to each other amid the active work and, perhaps more importantly, who they are becoming together through that work. Evidence of such self-reflective and self-reflexive practice appears in the record of the work as well as in the product that is the culmination of that shared history, again providing in some instances a narrative that runs counter to administrative and/or institutional portrayals of faculty effort. Through the purposeful production of scholarship with others, it is possible to shrug off the problems of previous unsatisfying projects. The persistent and reiterative practice of relationship-rich collaboration holds the promise of setting the record straight.

The Nine Principles

In total, relationship-rich collaborative practice uses the power of relationships to drive satisfaction and productivity. Through relationships, collaborators create welcome, foster inspiration, invest in community, and seek meaning:

Relationship-rich collaborative practice relies on and enacts trust
Relationship-rich collaborative practice requires caring for the humans involved
Relationship-rich collaborative practice values intellectual engagement
Relationship-rich collaborative practice is attuned to the affective
Relationship-rich collaborative practice is sensitive to time
Relationship-rich collaborative practice values multiple perspectives
Relationship-rich collaborative practice encourages members to lean into their strengths
Relationship-rich collaborative practice produces products with collaborative ownership
Relationship-rich collaborative practice understands and attends to collective history

Hallmarks of relationship-rich work enacted through these principles can be seen in the products and processes of collaboration.

Conclusions about Intentional Relationship-Rich Collaboration

Having described our lived experiences with feelings of rejection and barriers to scholarship, shared process elements and effects of our collaborative practice, and argued for core principles of relationship-rich collaborative practice, this article is a product of and a testament to relationship-rich practices. We chose to uplift each other, welcoming, inspiring, and caring for one another while seeking deeper meaning in the work we can do together. This collective choice originated out of negative individual and isolating experiences but, more importantly, opened up the occasion to choose, articulate, and theorize better conditions for scholarly collaboration.

We argue the central tenet of better conditions for collaboration is relationship-rich engagement. This article, therefore, theorizes the roles, responsibilities, and benefits of such relationship-rich engagements. We share our stories of rejection to show their affective impacts and to signal what we value in relationship-rich collaboration. The stories establish common ground as a springboard into theoretical considerations keyed to Felten and Lambert’s ideas of the relationship-rich. Relationship-rich principles of collaborative practice can help other scholars understand features of satisfying and disaffecting collaboration and inform choices in local conditions. In short, the relationship-rich principles we developed in line with Felten and Lambert establish markers of satisfaction that can be analyzed and made intentional goals.

While concepts of scholarly wellbeing may seem suggestive, Martin P. Seligman reminds us that relationships, and concepts like welcome, inspiration, and meaning, can have tangible markers of success:

Positive relationships, meaning, and accomplishment have both objective and subjective components: not just how you feel about your relationships, but how these people feel about you; not just your sense of meaning (you could be deluded), but the degree to which you actually belong to and actually serve something larger than you are; not just your pride in what you have done, but whether you have actually met your goals, and where these goals stand in their impact on the people you care about and the world. (239)

Fostering positive relationships, positive feelings, and positive progress are the goals of relationship-rich collaboration. The principles of this practice function as a balm to devaluation, undermining, and rejection. The principles established here set benchmarks for satisfying collaboration, and can help highlight what is missing when collaboration is unsuccessful, unsatisfying, or unsafe.

Recent scholarship on faculty motivation finds that faculty are most “motivated by a desire to make meaningful contributions in the world” (Dewey et al.), and that a significant contributor to a sense of meaning is “intellectual stimulation/engagement,” which itself is found in data to be the “most motivating factor for pursuing academia” (528) in the first place. The twinned desire for intellectual engagement and to be a meaningful contributor is proven to be why faculty do what they do as scholars and love what they do as teachers. It is important to acknowledge that while the desire to be a meaningful contributor is a great motivator, there are forces at work within higher education and publishing that can test, flatten, and erase that desire. Dewey et al. stress: “recognizing that motivations and passion can only go so far if the larger, systemic issues causing faculty burnout and resignation are not addressed is essential” (534). We fully concur. Institutions and systems need to change, especially those that oppress, discriminate, and exclude. Unfortunately, positive change is slow. It is small but not insignificant that intentional partners can turn to and choose the kinds of scholarly interactions that uplift us, even knowing that there will still be frustration and failure. We can lean into frameworks of welcome, inspiration, community, and meaning. There is pain in rejection, but there is promise in relationship-rich collaborative practice.

Core motivations to inspire/be inspired and to make meaning/be meaningful can be fed by using the power of relationships to support inspiration and productivity in the context of welcome and care for one another. It is possible to shape action through the lens of the relationship-rich. Felten and Lambert provide a list of questions mentors might ask themselves as guides to and reminders for relationship-rich student advising (146). With almost no modifications, their questions thoughtfully guide relationship-rich collaboration:

Am I using formal and informal moments to meaningfully engage with others?
Am I really listening to what I am hearing, listening to understand rather than respond?
Am I taking the time to offer practical knowledge and guidance, or encouragement and support, to those who need it? . . . .
Am I helping to create structures . . . that will ensure more [engagement]?
What am I learning about myself from these relationships? (146)

As collaborators, the four of us hope to live up to the promise of such inquiries; we continue to experience the saving graces of trying.

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