Collaboration is half listening. If you’re only waiting for your turn to pitch, you’re not collaborating.

Working with someone else is often just two people presenting in turn, which produces the better of two ideas rather than a third one neither had. Real collaboration asks you to take in what the other person said well enough that it changes what you were going to say. That change is the point of being in the room together.

Try building on the last thing said instead of returning to your own list. If what you say next could have been said before they spoke, you were not listening.