How to Work with Other People

You can’t do much alone.

With limited time and resources, sooner or later you need to work with other people if you want to achieve anything worthy.

But working in a team has many benefits beyond just getting something done.

By working as a team people can focus on the areas they are most competent and passionate about.

People can bring their complementary skills together to work on something bigger than themselves. They can increase their productivity and even learn from each other.

But working with other people is easier said than done.

It takes a lot of effort and patience to collaborate with others. Everyone has a different way of working and you have to learn what to do when things don’t go your way.

In theory, everything sounds fine but when it comes to execution, people tend to have a hard time working with other people.

There are a few usual suspects when it comes to why people can’t work together.

Most of the time, lack of clarity is the main reason working with other people becomes difficult.

When people are not super clear about their roles and responsibilities they can’t perform their best. And this turns into a domino effect that will impact the entire team.

So how can you overcome this?

Create a simple document, you can list all the components of a given project or task and then assign different roles to each.

People can then choose the roles they’d like to take as long as everyone agrees.

By bringing something from your mind onto a paper, you create the clarity needed to take action.

Formalizing the roles and responsibilities will help avoid potential disappointments. It could be a little awkward at first but you’ll be happy you did it as soon as you start working.

The other cause that makes working with other people hard is the decision-making process.

People could get paralyzed when there’s no process for deciding on the next steps. The project stalls and everyone suffers.

By introducing a process around making decisions you can overcome this issue. This is another reason why clarifying roles and responsibilities can help.

People need to know who to talk to when they hit an obstacle. Otherwise, you end up with a team of headless chickens running around for no reason.

But above all, you need to learn that to work with people you should try to adapt to their way of working. You can’t maintain the same behavior with everyone and expect it to work.

People see the world through the lens of their knowledge and experiences in life. It’s your job to take an interest in their lives and learn about their stories.

The more you know about the people you work with, the easier time you’ll have when communicating and collaborating.

Remember, what goes around always comes back around. So you should treat people the way you want to be treated.

Working with other people may not be easy but if you figure it out, the sky’s the limit. You’ll gain the power to achieve anything you want in life.

I wrote this piece as part of a 90-day challenge I took on to get better at this type of writing. To learn more about me you can visit my website here.