I recognized another facet of the trials and tribulation of working with other people recently, and how it can effect my (and our) productivity and even our relationship. That's because one of us was a sprinter and one was a marathoner.
I was working as a co-chair of a large group of people, along with another person. We were working on an organizational plan and some other documents. It fell to the two co-chairs to put the final documents together. That's when the trouble started.
I like to work in bursts. I work relatively hard for an hour or two, then I like to get some air, grab a drink or just walk around and talk to some other people. I've found this is a very effective way to work for me. I've also found that if I can't work in this manner, I can become a bit distracted. Unfortunately, as you may have guessed, my co-chair is what I call a marathoner. Once we sat down to iron out the differences in our documents, we were going to stay there till the bitter end.
This experience got me thinking about how we interact with people and our expectations when we work together. I wrote in my last post about communication tools and styles, and trying to adjust our styles and tools to those styles and tools that are favored by the people we work with. Just the same, we cannot assume that our work habits and patterns reflect the way other people work, and we have to be cognizant of the fact that many of us work in different styles.
Anyway, I like to work in short, fast blocks and frankly don't like to recover the same ground too much. I think a document should be drafted, edited once or twice, passed around for comments and wrapped up. I've never been one to wordsmith every word and phrase in the document. I think too often this is counterproductive - it takes a lot of time and does not add much value. My co-chair, however, spent an hour editing a 100 word email. I know because I had to sit there while she did it and it nearly drove me out of my mind. But - that's her shtick. She does not publish a document with completely breaking it down and reworking it to her satisfaction.
As you can imagine, these two styles don't work well unless there are compromises. What we've decided is that I'll manage the "big picture" stuff and the external message and she'll manage the details. It's probably the best arrangement we could come to and still work together productively.
I used to laugh at the firms that made people wear their Myers-Briggs test results (you know, Hi, my name is John and I'm an INTP) on their nametag, but I'm beginning to understand why that might have some value. When we work with people in teams or groups that typically don't interact with, it probably makes sense to take the time and understand not only how they prefer to communicate, but what their working style is - are they a sprinter or a marathoner? Do they follow Pareto's rule (80/20) or must everthing be reworked and rewritten to meet their satisfaction? Can they delegate and turn over control to someone else, or must they be involved in the entire process? Once you know these things, working out your processes and communication strategies might get a whole lot easier.
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