The Craft Series – Part II: The Human Architecture of Collaboration

At the relational level, the Craft reveals the subtle architecture of how people work together—how strengths complement weaknesses, how frictions become information, and how feedback loops shape collective effort. In this episode, the Craft becomes a lens for understanding the interplay of personalities, preferences, and values within shared labor. Working together is not just coordination; it is the ongoing, reflective practice of becoming better collaborators.

🔑 Key Takeaways

• Collaboration requires understanding how others work, not just how you work
• Friction, preference, and feedback are core parts of relational Craft work
• Healthy Craft relationships balance self-awareness with awareness of others’ strengths and limitations

💬 Featured Quotes

0:00:00–0:00:09 — “The Craft as a relational and reflective lens means that we look at the interplay of how the workmen work with one another and how they interact with the lodge.”

0:00:24–0:00:33 — “This is about understanding that everybody has different capabilities, strengths, weaknesses, preferences, values, and that all of these interact to create a dynamic working environment.”

0:00:56–0:01:06 — “When you look at the Craft relationally, you’re looking at how friction arises. You’re looking at how you create synergy, and you’re looking at how you avoid unnecessary conflict.”

0:01:32–0:01:46 — “Feedback becomes one of the most important relational tools. Not for correction alone, but for understanding how your behavior lands on others and how theirs lands on you.”

0:02:10–0:02:18 — “A lodge is not just a group of people; it is a living system of relationships. Every action affects the whole.”

0:03:05–0:03:15 — “When you embrace the Craft relationally, you begin to notice the architecture of collaboration—how people fit together, how they misfit, and how those patterns can be improved.”

🔗 Explore Related Episodes

Cognitive Dissonance and the Work of the Craft

Explores the internal relational friction between expectations and outcomes, mirroring how Craft members navigate interpersonal misalignments.

Beyond Titles: What the Craft Teaches About Leading Well

Focuses on relational leadership—how understanding people’s strengths, limitations, and working styles matters more than positional authority.

Building your Craftsmen’s Council

Discusses assembling a group of trusted collaborators, directly paralleling the relational Craft emphasis on synergy, trust, and feedback.

Dynamic Inserts

Creators and Guests

Host

Brian Mattocks

Host and Founder of A Mason's Work - a podcast designed to help you use symbolism to grow. He's been working in the craft for over a decade and served as WM, trustee, and sat in every appointed chair in a lodge - at least once :D

What is A Mason's Work?

In this show we discuss the practical applications of masonic symbolism and how the working tools can be used to better yourself, your family, your lodge, and your community. We help good freemasons become better men through honest self development. We talk quite a bit about mental health and men's issues related to emotional and intellectual growth as well.

The craft at a relational level, that sort of, I guess we'll call it level two.

They're not really meaningfully leveled, but you get the idea.

The relational level of the craft is, speaks to a lot of the feedback loops that we engage

in to understand how the work is going, how the workmen that you're working with feel

about the work, what sort of norms and normative behaviors we have that are spoken or unspoken.

What's the culture like?

When we talk about the craft in this way, we're really talking about complex interrelationships.

We're talking about the kinds of things that are studied in organizational psychology or

in group dynamics.

But for our purposes, when it comes to how we can apply those, perhaps without all of that

sort of expertise in the background, we can really just start to analyze the interactions

that we've had.

Think about the way that the project or an effort that you would undertake as a group, where

it went sideways, where it was successful.

What were the things that you could have done to help better leverage the organization,

the craft itself, to help you achieve the overall objective?

This relational understanding moves us to that leadership space, where we have to be able

to both have a high emotional intelligence to understand the nature of the way we're interacting.

A very high sort of organizational intelligence, we've got that understanding of what each person

in the room is going to need to walk away feeling like they have been a part of the team

or part of the success.

We want to include and incorporate everyone in the process when it comes to understanding

how to best leverage the craft.

Learning everyone in the process does not necessarily mean making sure that everyone

participates in the same way.

When we allow our brethren to get involved in our work or when we allow our sort of

large officers to participate in planning or things of that nature, again, everyone's

got a different seat on the bus.

It's really important when it comes to that to be able to set the relationship up in

a way where everyone can feel valued as if they're contributing in a meaningful way

to the overall organization.

That includes yourself.

It's not always the case that you need to have or be the answer to all things.

You'll see that a lot in leadership training, management training, that kind of thing where

they talk about correctly leveraging the organization, giving out work in a meaningful

way, not over-taxing certain people that are super effective.

All of those kinds of things will come up as you start working and surfacing the craft

as a concept.

This is harder for some of our brethren that don't actively participate in a lodge.

As a solo practice, what you want to consider here is how we work with the fraternity as

a concept, with the sort of workmen as a concept.

Is there are there people that you can get involved with or reach out to that can help

you achieve your objectives?

Maybe they're not immediately in your lodge.

Maybe you don't see them on a regular basis.

But how can you offer them something of value so that they can, again, participate with

you in exchange or in a related context?

When we start talking about these things at a relational level, again, we're really moving

to this much, much broader scope and incorporating the ways of working required to not just kind

of self-manage, but manage in a group or in a relationship that includes also collecting

data and feedback along the way.

So when you have asked someone for help or you're offering to participate in some way, it's

important in this context to set the grounds of those relationships in such a way that

say, hey, listen, I offered you help.

What would it look like if I was successful in doing so?

If you at the end of the work said, hey, this person did a good job.

What would that good job look like?

This is all part of that sort of relational setup for effectively using the craft as

a concept to help you grow and evolve in advance.

As you pursue this, you'll find there are folks you will naturally gravitate to and managing

your preferences there so that you include everyone, not just your favorite people, is

also an important part of the conversation.

So with that, go forth and reflect on the craft as concept and I think you'll find there's

a lot of opportunity to develop and grow there.