team – Saurabh Garg's Blog

So much precious time and resources are wasted on separating your work relationships from your personal relationships. I mean, it is always a good idea to separate your work life and obligations from your personal ones, but there is this ongoing narrative that your team at work has to be different from your team at home.

A few people, mostly entrepreneurs, manage to work together as a team in the office and at home, but it is rare. If you’re starting a business, investors would advise against it; if you’re looking for a job, you’re supposed to not work together.

Imagine if we became good at compartmentalizing our work obligations from our professional ones. We would be able to solve so many problems easily, faster, and probably more efficiently as we wouldn’t have to spend time on making new teams and relationships for every project.

In fact, if you look at some of the top success stories, they were a result of professional/personal collaboration. Successful people have this innate capability to separate concerns, much like we aim for in our software code.

Companies need to investigate coaching employees on this instead of spending resources on creating rulebooks and curbing our natural human tendency to leverage effective teamwork for bigger and better goals. Given the opportunity, this would lead to better execution and possibly even more innovation.

Sure, there are challenges; some people are not good at teamwork, and if they bring their personal challenges into their workplace, it might be a recipe for disaster, which is what led to rulebooks around teamwork. The answer, in my opinion, though is to focus on coaching. Instead of shuffling the human problem here, the goal should be to tackle it head-on, and look at the bigger picture.

I read the other day that what separates great teams and relationships is not avoiding disagreements, but rather the quality of bringing up even the smallest disputes for discussion immediately and with an open mind.

It makes so much sense.

Humans are fundamentally opinionated and driven by past experiences. We have also evolved with the genetic machinery to look out for our own personal well-being. We are also resentful. When things don’t go our way or if we are impacted by something, we will often hold a grudge or be generally distracted. This creates long term, and often, permanent fissures.

Startups epitomize the need for great communication and open-mindedness. Especially when the foundation is being laid, everyone is on edge — people don’t know each other so well, there is uncertainty about the product-market fit, and there is just so much going on that essence is often lost in communications, even if you create a framework for daily meetings and catch-ups.

I was recently involved with a startup working in a very interesting and prospective space. The team was not very experienced in that space, but they seemed to have the grit to move through difficulties and find opportunities in tight spaces, so to say. The only issue was that the communication was terrible. I would send an email or a message and it would most often go unanswered. I would bring up this issue, and it would be minimized. We would all promise to be more responsive, but the elephant still comfortably sat in the room, day in and day out.

This was a wonderful lesson in communication — even if you are very smart and capable, communication is what makes or breaks a team. It is easier to find skilled professionals than it is to find professionals that are great at being accountable and communicative. Things have a propensity to boil over.

Especially in small teams and startups, the assumption should always be that the smallest of ideas have the potential for major impact. If a team deprioritizes internal communications, it sends out a negative signal to external partners and investors, too.

So, what do you do if you find yourself in a situation where the team doesn’t communicate well (or at all)? The best plan of action is to bring it up early and often. Humans are also mostly wonderful with good intentions. Most probably, they have different priorities and were of the belief that they were doing their best for the team. However, if the situation doesn’t improve in a reasonable time-frame, your best bet is to just bail out.

As for me, I sent them an email about a prospective investment opportunity, but received no reply! 🙃