A Matter of Style
When I was a student, the scariest thing a teacher could say were the words, “group project.” I immediately jumped to the conclusion that I was going to get paired up with someone who wouldn’t put any effort into the project, and I’d get stuck doing more than my fair share. Based on years of talking about this in workshops, I’ve come to discover plenty of other people who thought the same thing.
Over time, I’ve started better understanding my feelings about this. While my beliefs may have been that my teammates wouldn’t be as hardworking or smart as I was, the truth is probably closer to something like, “they won’t do things the way I like them to be done.”
For many of us, these feelings carried over into our work lives. We continually find ourselves paired up with people with whom we don’t like working. We make judgments about their work ethic and character, when the real problem is that they aren’t like us.
My guess is that most people have heard the idea that diversity in teams makes the group stronger. Plenty probably even believe it; at least in their heads. Their emotions don’t share the same opinion. If people in your group aren’t getting along, it may very well be that they don’t have a gut-level appreciation for the differences that exist within the team. It’s your job to help them see it.
Use one of the many assessments on the market. There are tests that will help people see what color they are or what their work style is. The Myers-Briggs Thematic Inventory is still very popular. While these assessments all promise to deliver lots of detailed insights, I’ve found they almost always put people in one of four boxes that can be summed up as follows:
- Hard-charging, goal-driven people
- Detail-oriented, process people
- Quiet, relationship-oriented people
- Expressive, creative people
I’ve also found that people really do enjoy learning more about themselves and their teammates using these kinds of tools. In the end my advice is always the same. First I suggest that we each do what we can to tone down any extreme behaviors associated with our style. Second, I ask that people pay attention to the types of the people they are working with and do what they can to treat others the way they want to be treated.
Differences can and do create a lot of problems when working together as a team. They also offer tremendous opportunities for teams that learn more about them and figure out how to take advantage of them.
