Plays Nice With Others

Dec 08, 2006

I’ve worked in quite a few different corporate environments over the past few years. This is has given me a bit of insight into the type of people I enjoy working with. This is especially apparent when there is a problem. It’s easy to work with people when everything is going well, but you really find out who you want to work with when there is a problem.

So take any example that works for you: a sensitive internal memo was leaked, the production server blew up, sales numbers are down, etc, etc.

The people I enjoy working with do the following in these situations:

  1. They stay calm and rationally assess the situation. The sky is falling types just need to be locked in a broom closet until things get back to normal.
  2. If somebody caused the problem, blame is not heaped upon them. The problem is explained clearly, and an offer of assistance is given. I’ve been on both ends of this before. I’ve been the one to break things, and I’ve been the one to help the person everybody is glaring at (who usually just wants to find a hole to crawl into and needs some reassurance).
  3. They look for a real solution, not just a band-aid patch. A band-aid patch may get the irate customers to back off for a little bit (which is sometimes necessary), but if just left at that it will usually come back worse the second time around.

No matter where you work you’ll be able to find these types of people. Make friends with them. Make sure you don’t piss them off. This will do wonders for your career and sanity in general.

The real trick is learn to mitigate the people who don’t fall into this category. But that’s a topic for another post.