working in a team

There were many years that I was involved with a Team of IT Professionals. What is most imperative in any team oriented environment is being able to form a trusted relationship with each of your Team Members. You want to build a positive atmosphere so that it makes a fun and professional environment. Over the years, I have seen teams on both sides of the spectrum , there may have always been one or two extremely negative people trying to influence things in a different way. What I have learned is that those individuals often have some insecurity going on with them and decide to project that onto others so it's best to let those negative remarks slide but do something to try to make it a positive approach.

First off, in order to be trusted as a Team Member it's imperative to be a positive influence over others meaning you want to ensure that all team members are going to learn what they need to learn and grow within the atmosphere. This is not to say that everyone is not going to have their good days and bad days. Several things to stay away from if you want to be a respected team member:

1. Never gossip or complain about a person behind their back. This always leaves room for people not trusting you and even if you have very valuable information to offer, it might turn on deaf ears because of anything said that might be viewed as putting down another person. Keep in mind that everyone is at different levels of knowledge and unless that person does not express any interest in what they are currently doing, it's imperative to find out some things first before jumping to conclusions.

2. Never assume anything about Team Members. Having an open line of communication is important with them. For example, if I happened to know something valuable about a certain process or fix, I would share that information for anyone who is interested. If I was not sure of the information's validity, then I would take the time to research into it. That's what I love to do.

3. Everyone's learning curve is a little different. Some may take a little longer than others and it's imperative to be patient with them when in a technical support role.

4. If faced with a situation where a customer is calling into complain about something and one specific person is mentioned, take the time to quickly apologize about the situation without putting down that other team member. After the call, then it would be appropriate to approach the other team member to inform them of the situation but it's best to do it in a way where they understand that you are really helping them.

One prime example is of a person who approaches another team member who may be venting about management or someone else. You're better off refraining from those complaints so this person feels comfortable approaching you instead of feeling that you are not approachable. It's often better to take your concerns to management directly so that everyone feels like there really is a team and not this big division. While nothing is perfect and everyone has their good and bad days, you want to make sure that everyone is on the same page.

5. Helping others out in a team is very important instead of leaving some hanging. If I'm helping out in a team, then I also expect to be helped out as well during peak times. Make it a two way street and not a one way street where only certain members of it can call the shots. I think that it's imperative for everyone to have a role on the team and maybe a specialty that they can bring to the team.

6. Don't pretend to know something that you may not really know. I prefer it when someone is eager to learn something new and can honestly admit when they are stumped about something. It's often best to find someone on the team to ask questions about a certain process instead of wasting time trying to figure something out or trying to bluff it.

I'll never forget a time where I was very interested in helping the team out with this new automated fix. There was something going out in the field where the clients would call in because their paint mixing system reached a halt as soon as they started pouring the mix. Another former team member had researched into the situation with a 3rd party vendor and it had been discovered that there was what is known as a serial mouse issue. Most of the devices that connected to the CPU unit were using serial ports to connect. Paint Mixing is a very precise procedure so it must be done with great care. What was happening is that the Microsoft Serial mouse was detecting the serial ports at the same time that the mix was taking place and it would disconnect the paint scale. There was a registry fix for this and the other team member provided that information. I decided to go a step further to consider the following:

1. Save money for the company
2. Save time on the phones for other team members
3. Save clients peace of mind that the fix would be conducted properly

Now there were several choices we had: Since there was no remote assistance at the time: walk clients through registry fix which I felt would make them feel uncomfortable, have them ship the CPU unit into the local branch office of this company (expensive shipping costs), and not to mention, waiting for that CPU to take up to 3 days to ship in.

So based on the advice that I had heard at several different Team Lead meetings to "think outside the box", I decided to brainstorm, research, and test out the solution. I had thought about a previous company and how they had handled their deployment issues with upgrading their software. Since most clients with the exception of a few with a large network infrastructure, I decided to automate the process. In most cases, Microsoft would have a Windows patch but I had to think that most of these clients did not have internet access and we did not support it at this company.

I spent time going over it with a few managers and this other team member and was given advice to take the time to test it on some systems there that were setup for a testing environment. So I went ahead with it and after getting the approval, as soon as more calls starting coming in, I went ahead and started sharing with team members the fix. The best way to get this out there was to have this file copied to a CD and then send out to the client. The walk through went much more smoothly because it only required a double click on the file instead of this 6 step process which in my opinion could produce negative results. Clients felt relieved that it did not take nearly as long to fix and that the fix was permanent. This fix was already added to the current images that resided on the servers, however, this fix needed to be addressed to images no longer stored on the servers.

After several months when they carefully observed things, they decided to give me another opportunity to learn how to put together these images on the next rollout and it was a very exciting process.

There are several other examples, but I'm saving those for other blogs, I just thought that I would share what I feel is important in a team environment. Keeping things positive and an open line of communication as well as respecting each other's strengths is very important to team growth.