Blog #2
Last week was the second group project of my time at Flatiron School's Immersive Software Development Program. The partners I had for each project were very different, and I am very thankful for that experience. My partner for the first project was very direct with communication and feedback, and appreciated the same from me. My second pairing was with someone almost the opposite of that. While they were very skilled in code, their communication style was very different from mine. This difference certainly proved to be a challenge through out the 5 day sprint of the project, but on the other side of it I am very grateful for the opportunity to practice and improve my communication and teamwork skills, and not just code during the project.
After the first day of work, my partner expressed that they felt like they didn't do anything all day. So I suggested we start day two with chatting about setting some daily goals, workflow division, and writing out a wire frame of what we wanted from the product by the end of the week. The goal of this conversation was to provide a reference point for each of us to be able to refer to when we felt lost through out the project, or didn't know what to be working on.
While facilitating this conversation I approached an idea my partner offered with a direct question that they felt was an accusation against their technical skill and understanding. This miscommunication upset my partner so much that they had to remove themselves from the conversation, they left the room without telling me where they were going or what they were going to work on. That was the first time I've experienced that type of situation in a semi-professional setting, and I wasn't sure how to handle it. We were still talking about daily goals and hadn't even built the framework yet, so I was worried my partner would go another day feeling they hadn't contributed. But I could also tell they needed some space from me at the moment. After 15-20 minutes, I sent a slack message to try and reach out. I didn't hear anything back, and wasn't sure if it had been long enough to go find my partner and try to talk with them again. Feeling uncertain, I reached out to a coach and explained the situation, they sent another coach to go talk with my partner and get a plan for approaching the rest of the day.
My partner and I continued to work separately for the first half of the day. During lunch I approached them to ask if they'd had enough space and could handle checking in about what had happened that morning. We discussed the misunderstanding and each of us explained our intentions and meaning behind words and actions. I then offered for my partner to brainstorm a symbol or signal they could use when I was communicating in a way that felt harsh or like an attack to them, so that I could attempt to reword my statement without having another blow out and losing half a day of teamwork. I was initially frustrated because my partner couldn't come up with anything and I didn't know how to better communicate with them if they couldn't tell me how to talk to them, or even if I was being too direct and needed to dial it back a bit. When I reached out for advice from a coach about this, I received a great reminder that people can't always answer something like that right away and to give my partner some time to process it alone and check back in later. Later in the afternoon we were able to come together and finish the framework and set a plan for the rest of the week.
The third day of the project provided the next speed bump. My partner had to stay home because they were feeling ill. We had very limited slack communication throughout the day, and again I wasn't sure what they were working on, or if they even felt well enough to be working from home. At that point I started to get very stressed and fearful that we wouldn't have a product to deliver at the end of the week, so I decided to reframe and approach the project as if it were a solo project and start expecting to do most of it alone. While changing my perspective did help me get through the day without imploding, thankfully it wasn't necessary because at the end of the day my partner checked in and pushed what they had been working on and expressed needing help with some bugs they had been experiencing through the day. We made a plan to go over it together in the morning as they expected to be back at school the following day.
Day four started with a coach sitting down with my partner and I and leading a conversation and creation of a Trello board for division of tasks and expectations so that there would be something dynamic to reference and see what the other person was working on and had coming up to tackle. Taking the almost two hour time cut that this required was stressful, but it proved to be a great tool for my partner and I to keep on track and for us to have something concrete to reference when we checked in through out the day. My partner expressed at the end of the day how much she appreciated having the Trello board as a reference and that really opened my eyes to how important it is to find and celebrate the different ways people prosper, and not expect that they should act or work in the same way as you.
By the morning of day five we were communicating much more efficiently and had a few small fixes to finish so that we had a product that we were both proud to share during presentations that afternoon. We fixed those final bugs, made a short demo video, and laughed a lot through out the morning.
When it was all said and done Friday evening, we had both learned a lot about each other, working on a team, and how to alter a game plan when it's not serving the whole team. The misunderstandings and sick day we worked through are very real world issues that are likely to happen at any job, and I'm thankful to have practice dealing with them in a lower stress environment. The biggest lesson I took away from the experience was learning to approach each partnership or group with the energy they need to prosper and not expecting everyone to communicate as directly as I prefer. Along with this, learning to ask a question or offer a suggestion and then allow the other person space and time to process it and respond instead of hoping or expecting to have an answer right in the moment. Also impactful was finding other ways to communicate when those pitfalls do happen, such as creating a Trello board for non-verbal accountability. These are skills that I intend to continue improving in both my personal and professional life.