How to become a good collaborator

What makes someone a great collaborator? In this episode of Small Talk with Myself, I share some practical—and occasionally painful—lessons about collaboration from academia and professional life. Inspired by a recent small talk I gave at the Australasian Transport Research Forum ECP/R forum, this episode explores the habits that make people genuinely enjoyable to work with… and the behaviours that quietly destroy collaborations. Along the way, there’s also a lesson from The Godfather, a Nobel Prize breakup between Chen-Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee, and a reminder that academia is much smaller than it looks. If you’re an early-career academic, researcher, or professional trying to build strong collaborations without losing your sanity, this episode is for you.