Know Thy Team
It is exciting and challenging at the same time to be a part of a diverse international team. The differences in backgrounds and in personal experiences make each of us unique in some special way, and this uniqueness demands that we get to know our colleagues better, if we want to be a part of a happy team. I’d like to share some observations — and a story — which might encourage us to get serious about knowing our teammates for who they are.
In truth, getting to know people who we work with is a never-ending journey. We mingle personally or remotely, and the beauty of being a human lies in the fact that we are never static (here goes a “booya!” to AI algorithms). Neither are we supposed to be an exact fit to someone’s snap judgments about us. And, as far as I’ve observed, a snap judgement is most likely to occur in cross-functional teams.
Why is that so? In a team of developers, a developer knows a developer as a developer. The same is true for a team of graphic designers and other homogeneous teams. However, if a team includes a graphic artist, a UX designer, a developer, a product manager, or <insert a role here>, and if the teammates haven’t had time or opportunity to get to know each other, they might label a task or an initiative as “simple”, or “difficult”, or more preferable for their cross-expert colleagues.
Case #1. Taking Them For Less Than Who They Are
A well-meaning graphic designer teammate assumes that a senior-level engineer will take on a a menial coding task, for the lack of knowledge about the specifics of the task. Or, a developer assumes that a graphic designer is supposed to surely be excited about replicating a mascot, while what this designer wants is to create an original creative concept.
Case #2. Taking Them For More Than Who They Are
I want to make this one powerful, so here’s a story:
Once upon a time there lived an actor who was making big box office returns for producers of a movie franchise where he performed as a lead. However, this guy was quite a mediocre an actor who, nonetheless, had an idea as to how to win an Oscar. Besides, he owed huge amounts in taxes, and he came up with what he considered to be a perfect way to get both the Oscar and the money: to play a lead role in a biopic of a brutal drug lord. The drug lord challenged the actor to this: if he gets cast as Hamlet into a Broadway production, and if the previews are rave, the money and the role are his. So, with no further ado, our actor guy has talked a play director into casting him as Hamlet, with a promise that she would then direct the biopic. The director — who knew all too well how hard it is for a female to get her way into Hollywood — acquiesced despite the fact that she was aware how totally unfit the actor was to play Hamlet. Then, as the rehearsals were on the way, the not-to-be Hamlet has announced to the director that he changed his mind, and that he wanted to direct the biopic himself now. The end of the story? One night, the director couldn’t stand watching anymore how the actor tortured the lines of Shakespeare, and stabbed him with a giant quill pen, for all he was worth.
This is an extreme example of how things might go wrong on many levels because of careless snappy judgments. The drug lord didn’t care to objectively discern if our actor was actually a good fit for this job, and a string of mistaken judgments as well as unethical and disrespectful actions have ended in tragedy.
Thankfully, we are far from the magnitude of Shakespearean passions. For both case #1 and case #2 the answer is simple: know your team better. If you’ve just on-boarded a team mate to your cross-functional team, here are a few simple steps that can help:
1. Check their public profile in a social or in a professional network.
2. If they run a blog of their own, read their posts. See if they are on Twitter.
3. Go have a lunch or dinner together, or find another way to have a personal conversation.
4. Be open and friendly. Opt for personal talks whenever possible.
Knowing each other takes time. But only things that take time to be built are meant to last.
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