Chief Change Officer
#143 Tricia and Edward: Getting Teams to Work Together Without the Headaches – Part One
Sat, 18 Jan 2025
Part One. Social media has conditioned us to treat connections as fleeting, but real collaboration demands something deeper. How can we build strong teams and achieve lasting success without meaningful relationships? In this episode, I sit down with Tricia Cerrone and Edward J. van Luinen, who transformed their Disney work relationship into a 10-year friendship and a thriving partnership. They’re now co-authoring a book to help others unlock the power of sustainable collaboration. Stay tuned for part two, where we’ll explore their unique framework: five key behaviors and a focus on “noble purpose” that redefines teamwork. Key Highlights of Our Interview: Emotional Banking: The Secret to Long-Lasting Work Relationships “Relationships at work thrive on trust, respect, and mutual goals. By making consistent positive deposits into the ‘emotional bank,’ teams can evolve into high-performing units. Delivering results is key, but so is showing up for each other and building something lasting, as Trish and I found over a three-year project.” Collaboration Isn’t Just Tools—It’s Human Connection “The business world is spending almost $40 billion on collaboration tools, which are a band-aid for our failures to communicate. If you don’t have the human behaviours of generosity, resourcefulness, co-creation, action, and gratitude, no technology is going to help your team be happy or collaborate better.” Be the Change You Seek—Gandhi’s Wisdom for Collaboration “There’s a great quote by Gandhi: ‘Create the change you want to be.’ That’s the foundation of our collaboration model—being the change and the leader your team is asking you to be.” Connect with us: Host: Vince Chan | Guests: Tricia Cerrone and Edward J. Van Luinen ______________________ --Chief Change Officer-- Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself. Open a World of Deep Human Intelligence for Growth Progressives, Visionary Underdogs, Transformation Gurus & Bold Hearts. 6 Million+ All-Time Downloads. Reaching 80+ Countries Daily. Global Top 3% Podcast. Top 10 US Business. Top 1 US Careers. >>>100,000+ subscribers are outgrowing. Act Today.<<< --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.EdTech Leadership Awards 2025 Finalist.18 Million+ All-Time Downloads.80+ Countries Reached Daily.Global Top 1.5% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>170,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: What is the purpose of collaboration in teams?
Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist community for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. Don't burn bridges. Keep up with business connections and personal relationships.
Because you never know when that connection or person could become your collaborator, business partner, or referral to a great opportunity. That's how I landed five job offers within three months after leaving a role that led to mental depression years ago. Today, though, it's so easy to burn and build bridges. You can add a friend in quotation in one second. and just as easily delete them.
This user-friendly, in quotation, UI UX experience has seeped into our modern mindset, making it effortless to kick people out of our own circles or lives. But without sustainable connections, How can we collaborate, build stronger teams, and create outcomes that benefit everyone?
In today's episode, I sit down with two guests, Edward Vanduden and Tricia Strong, to talk about connection and collaboration. This is part one of our two-part series. Today, Edward and Tricia will look back on their own collaborative journey, which started 10 years ago at Disley. They turned a positive work relationship into a sustainable personal friendship
that has now grown into a business partnership and a co-authoring collaboration on a book about collaboration. In tomorrow's episode, part two, we dive into the vision and framework for collaboration. centered on a noble purpose and five key behaviors. What are these behaviors? How can we practice them? And why is collaboration so challenging today?
I assure you, the method isn't just another software solution. is far more human-centered than what we're used to seeing. Let's start collaborating. Good morning, Edward and Tricia. Welcome to my show.
Thank you. Great to be here.
Yes, I'm happy to be here. We always start with a self-introduction. But today's episode is extra special because for the first time ever, I have not one but two guests joining me. A unique moment for the show. Let's kick things off, Edward and Tricia, whichever one of you would like to go first. Share a bit about yourselves and your personal journey.
Then we'll go into how the two of you came together to collaborate. After all, collaboration is the key theme of today's episode. So let's hear your individual stories and then we'll get into how your paths crossed and what makes this collaboration so impactful.
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Chapter 2: How did Tricia and Edward's collaboration begin?
I was able to lead our Blue Sky studio for four years and just come up with ideas with the teams there for retail and brides and restaurants and all sorts of things, and I really loved it. But I also was really good at teaching other people how to develop ideas and design and innovate.
That's what led me in my career to start doing a lot of the talent development, which my leader then hooked me up with Edward down the road. And that's really how we ended up meeting.
So you both met in Disley, right? I'd love to hear more about that first experience working together. Let's dive into the details. Edward, let's start with you. How did you feel when you first met Tricia? And how did this collaboration unfold from your perspective? And then, Trish here, we would love to hear your side of the story as well.
I think it will be really interesting to explore both viewpoints.
At Disney, working at Imagineering, I would say a talent leader who gets business. And I met Trish initially when I was new at the company and saw her in a meeting, and I thought, this is a business leader who gets talent. So as in a talent development role, you're always looking for business leaders who get talent as much as their technical or functional skills. And that certainly was Trish.
So I was delighted to meet her. So from a professional support and business relationship perspective now, I had a goal to lead talent development at Imagineering, which was to make sure that leaders and teams globally were working and successfully at building their next level up leadership. I could in no way do that by myself. So I was always looking for business partners.
And Tricia was that business partner. And I was just delighted to that early meeting. We had a couple of meetings and I thought this is something that is a beginning of a collaboration that I think could be very promising.
my side of the story. I get invited to a meeting in my leader's office and Edward is sitting on the sofa and I'm asked to sit next to him. And then our leader says, we have this initiative. I want you to collaborate. And he's grinning like it was the best idea he ever came up with. And in my mind, I'm sitting there going, What just happened? There's so many problems with this.
People don't collaborate in leadership, not the way you think. I could see all the barriers to us being successful and succeeding in this project. I thought the project was really important, but I also knew this had been assigned to Edward. And if I jump in, it'll look like I'm taking over the project and all this other stuff. Our leader was just like, he was just happy to have us there.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did they face in their collaboration?
opened up space for me and my mind and heart to then reciprocate and to say, okay, what do you need from me? And then we made a plan to meet next. And that's how we got started from my perspective.
Absolutely. And such great memories and thoughts and feelings of how we got started. Absolutely. Really fun.
That was how long ago? I don't know. Is it 2013 or 14?
Yeah, I would say it was 20, 20, let's see, 14. Yes.
Wow, 10 years ago. That's a long time. So after that first encounter at Disley, how did the working relationship evolve? Was it more day-to-day interaction? Or maybe project-based, on and off? Did you face any moments of confrontation or was it mostly collaborative? I'd like to hear how both of you describe the experience after that initial meeting.
So it was a three year project, which is rare in a way for people that lead equally. And so it gave us a lot of time to learn all the things that we probably didn't know about collaboration. But I think we had good intuition and previous. We've led both led a lot of projects and things at other companies before. So we had some skills going into it. We had pretty close contact regularly.
We had a weekly meeting. We had our teams had task force meetings. We would text each other when we had updates and then talk on the phone if we were available. It was always so positive that I think that contributed to us building a friendship. And also we realized that everything that we were doing,
The way that we were treating each other, we were also treating our team and modeling that for them. So they were emulating us and they were also passing it on to new people who we brought on to the team. So it had this ongoing onboarding effect when you would join our team. We noticed that our team, they weren't just amazing. It's not like we got to pick everyone that we wanted.
And sometimes we only had people for a short amount of time. But everyone who was on the team always just gave us their A game. They were always solving problems. They were always had just positive energy. We're gonna work together to help each other and make everything successful. Every night when we,
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Chapter 4: What key behaviors contribute to successful collaboration?
So not only does collaboration work in person, it also works virtually because we did it the last 10 years, launching a business, writing a book. So it's applicable to everyone, wherever you are. And there's a great quote by Gandhi, which many people know, which is, create the change you want to be. So I feel that that's really at the heart here is be the change you seek.
Be the collaboration leader that you want to be and the organization the team is asking you to be.
So if I understand correctly, after your time at Disney... Both of you went your separate ways, pursuing your own paths, but you stayed in close touch as friends. Then, at some point, you reunited and started working together again, forming a company, and even co-authoring a new book. Is that a fair way to summarize your 10-year journey together?
I think so. We had worked together for those three years, and then we both left not too far, maybe in the same year, I'm not sure. But we would talk and stay in touch, that just kind of friendship. We would always be talking about this project and we finally broke it down. And I would say we broke it down to the behaviors first.
And then we were like, we need to write this because this needs to be captured. Because it's not just about the behaviors, but it's also about how you express them and that you understand why they work. Because lots of times people do the right thing, but then they don't realize why it worked. And so they don't repeat it. And so we felt really strong about, we need to write this down.
And so we ended up doing the book first, and then we started looking at how to teach it to people. So it was in that order.
Exactly.
As both of you were sharing your memories, it made me reflect on my own experiences working in corporations. I've had some great memories, and some not so great ones. I remember working with amazing colleagues, some more senior, some junior, or maybe at the same level, often in different offices and locations. These were people I had such a strong connection with. even hanging out after work.
But as time passed, I moved on to other things, became an entrepreneur, and while I kept in touch with some of them, others drifted away. Our conversations became fewer, and the connection faded over time.
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Chapter 5: How can teams build sustainable relationships?
With a co-leader like Trish and I did, it took three years. And that's why we have this method and process because we built it. But also it has to be expanded to our team, to champions, to peers in the company, and then expand it even in our lives if we so choose in how we approach people, in how we assess talent, how we hire people.
What are the qualities of collaboration that are really important? So it's truly evolutionary and it's relationship focused. And it takes awareness, but also discipline. We want to live these behaviors more and more in the areas of our lives that are really important. Because we're all trying to change and companies are trying to change and leaders and teams are trying to change.
And we found, we believe, is a really strong formula to do that.
There's something that kept us together, to your point, Vince, and that was we recognize a noble purpose bigger than ourselves. And that's what's been driving us to keep working together and keep pursuing things and is in some ways the foundation of our friendship. And I suppose every great relationship has a noble purpose. Even if you're building a family, you have a vision for your family.
But for us, this noble purpose is that we recognize that a lot of people are not happy in the workplace and they struggle on their teams and it could be easier and it could be better and they could really love their jobs. And that was like a metric that Edward had come up with. We need the I love my job metric. And so we recognize that this was a problem.
And we also saw that the behaviors of collaboration are not just great leadership behaviors, but they're these human behaviors that everyone can learn. And when they're in action, They make work better and happier. So for that noble purpose that we both shared, we want everyone in the workplace and the world to like, yeah, you can enjoy your work.
You can be a better human and you can help others be a better human. And I think that's the emotion driving thing. our work in a way for each of us, we express it differently, but that's a little bit of a foundation. And I think for young people listening and for building relationships, Edward said earlier that we collaborated online.
The industry that work, the business world is spending almost like $40 billion on collaboration tools and technologies, which are in a way a band-aid for our failures as a human to collaborate, to talk and to communicate. But even these now they're saying are almost dehumanizing us. And obviously there's nothing wrong with technology. It's just we have lost a little bit of our humanity.
And so these five behaviors of generosity and resourcefulness, co-creation, action, and gratitude are five easy ones to remember and practice that anyone can get better at. And that will help all of your relationships at work and in life. That's another reason why we're passionate about it because if you have those, then the technology will work for you.
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Chapter 6: What insights can we learn from their collaborative journey?
We have seen that people say, oh, go collaborate, but they don't understand what that means. And so what we have discovered in our work or what we believe from the work that we've done is that people just simply don't understand what collaboration is. And they're spending billions of dollars on a problem they don't understand.
And two issues with that is that people think that the core unit of collaboration is teams or tools or technologies. But we're saying, no, the core unit of collaboration is the individual. And so we all have to work on our individual skills first or we won't be able to collaborate with anyone later. There's this other piece of collaboration is not one action.
It's a collection of actions or behaviors. That's why we say these five behaviors.
In the last 30 minutes, Edward and Frasier went down the memory lane and reflected on their own collaborative journey. It began 10 years ago at Disley. They turned a positive work relationship into a sustainable personal friendship that has now grown into a business partnership and co-authoring collaboration on a book about collaboration.
in tomorrow's episode, part two, will dive into the vision and framework for collaboration centered on a noble purpose and five key behaviors. What are these behaviors? How can we practice them? And why is collaboration so challenging today? I assure you, the methodology isn't just an other software solution. It's far more human-centric than what we're used to seeing.
Thank you so much for joining us today. If you like what you heard, Don't forget, subscribe to our show, leave us top-rated reviews, check out our website, and follow me on social media. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Until next time, take care.
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