Stephen at HDBizBlog has suggested working together to help achieve something great in 2008. In fact, its not just Stephen, Phil Gerbyshak and Aaron Potts are at it as well, and that is only the people whose blogs I subscribe too.
Of course working together is a great idea because you can achieve a lot more with supportive, motivating and helpful people around you. However, I don’t find it easy to work with other people. Not because I’m a poor team player (although in a recent Belbin analysis it was my joint lowest score), but because of two failings.
The first one is I rarely know what skills I can offer other people. If someone is having problems at work I will offer IT support, suggest websites, books, lend CDs and DVDs, listen to them and provide my thoughts. But, that is all in response to what I hear around me; when I think of my skills to offer with no prompt I can’t think of single one that is useful.
Secondly, I’m not good at asking for things from people (unless its my managers for approval)! At work I have a reputation for knowing things, and it has come because I don’t want to rely on other people to know how to do something so I read all the company or project messages. Plus, I have this love of learning; I like learning just about anything new and often think I won’t ask someone who can do it easily, so I can have the pleasure of leaning to do it myself. Oh yes, I don’t like the idea of disturbing other people as well.
So because of these two reasons it could be very good for me to join this year of collaboration and learn what I can offer and to ask for help.
Working with other people is never easy.
I have worked together with a fair amount of people (because I was the project manager) and sometimes great minds just clashes.
I am not good at asking for things from people too. I am also known to be as the “know it all”. but sometimes I have to bite and ask people for help.
My advice, if you do decide to work with other people, my mantra is “always agree to disagree”
I dont know if this makes any sense.
Hey, Kate!
Thanks for the link, and I would just like to encourage you to at least start small in your efforts to work with other people. I used to be very much the “individualist” myself, and was often the “go-to guy” in various situations, yet I was never the guy who went to other people.
In the last few years I have really come to believe in the power of masterminding, joint ventures, social networking, and similar methods of working with other people on and off the ‘net. I encourage you to do the same! 🙂
Feli,
Yes it makes sense. I am also a project manager so have experienced working with different personalities. I have realised recently that I am becoming a “bad” perfectionist so I am finding delegating hard – it is one down side of improving my organisation, I don’t trust other people’s systems!!
Hello Aaron,
I realised two things recently thatI think will help me. 1) I’m becoming a “bad” perfectionist which means I’m not trusting people to do work and 2) I have too much work. Obviously they are not a good combination.
I have already taking action, or not… Recently when people have asked me about projects I’ve given them my thoughts on what needs doing, but not offered to do it. I have actually found this liberating. Of course the next step is to actually ask for input from others on some of my tasks.
Kate,
I understand completely! I used to run a personal training business and I didn’t want anyone to have anything to do with the things that would affect the health of any of my clients. I drove myself nuts trying to do it all.
You are already on the right track by not offering to do certain things. The first step towards getting caught up is to not take on any new projects!
I’m sure you’ll have it all handled before long, Kate! 🙂
Hi Kate, thanks for the link. In response, I want to say that I think you are selling yourself a little short! You and I have already worked together on a couple of small things, and I would like to have the relationship grow (along with our traffic and subscribers!). When I was in the Hospitality biz I had a hard time letting people go and do things when I “knew” that they could not possibly do the task as well as I could. Then I learned to treat it as a training tool, and became a mentor as well… Read more »
Hello Stephen, Thank you for your confidence boosting comment. I know I’m selling myself short, but I just can’t think of what I can offer people without a prompt (or should I say I can’t think of it YET). Perhaps I need to create a list of all the help I offer other people and see if there any trends. I need to improve my delegation skills and seeing it as a training opportunity is a great idea. Unfortunately at the moment I do not have the time to do something like that; but come April things should be less… Read more »
I think a lot of it comes down to who you’re working with and how you agree the roles to be – whether in work or outside, people do fall into their best working positions where able to.