And that includes the leaders! From the student worker who learns from the managers or vice versa to the managers who can also learn from the higher-ups as well as their team members below them. 

Teamwork is very important to me and that’s why I try that everyone has worked with everyone (at least in my team). Especially because everyone has their own way of approaching challenges, a different way of working or even character or skills, I think that can only be a benefit. Of course, sometimes two worlds collide, but what could be a better way to learn how to work with people who have a completely different way of working or thinking? Sometimes it only takes one person to teach someone something they didn’t understand before through someone else.

I admire young people who are fresh out of university and approach tasks with a certain naivety. They have a sense of curiosity to discover the job and bring a breath of fresh air with them. On condition that they are given the freedom to do so. How often does it happen that under time pressure or stress you dismiss the idea and the suggestion (perhaps not always well thought through due to the lack of experience) in a lecturing manner. Everyone remembers this situation where you had an idea, but was belittled and labeled as naive. A mistake in my opinion! 

For example, one person on my team had difficulty prioritizing her tasks and always seemed slightly disorganized. I gave her the opportunity to work with two new people. One person was very structured and the other loved her organized chaos. All of them together benefited from each other. One understood how to prioritize and organize her tasks in different ways and the other two learned how to deal with someone who questions a lot as well as how to teach. And I’m sure there was more… It’s nice to see how they come out of a team effort stronger and have taught each other without even noticing. 

I love taking the time to work with my team members. As I’ve mentioned in a few articles before, I love managing campaigns. Many of my team members had little or no experience running a campaign when they started in my team, so what better way to teach them than to teach them themselves. Of course, you have to be careful to keep a balance between teaching them and letting them do it. For me, when there were important milestones, meetings, etc., I would discuss them with the team members and go over their tasks and what we were trying to achieve. Afterwards, however, I pulled back and let the team member carry out the discussed tasks. 

An example – we were hired for a large 360 degree campaign and were asked to present the concept in two days. I went with my team members through how to lead and open the meeting, what questions might come up, what to look for, how to react to certain things, how to steer a discussion back on track, and what the goal of the meeting should be. On the day of the meeting, my two team members took over and were well prepared for everything. During the project there were some challenges and again we discussed everything together and I stepped in when necessary, but they were the ones who executed it. Of course this requires a lot of time that we don’t have most of the time, but it’s worth it… because now the second time they hardly need any support. And to be honest, it was not always easy for me to switch off my instinct and not to intervene immediately when I saw that they acted too fast and not necessarily always with foresight. But how would they know some things if you haven’t had the experience themselves. There is knowledge that is difficult to teach and is best learned from your own experience. Like, for example, working with creatives – anyone who works in advertising or marketing I see now probably grin. 

But if you work with creatives you know that you can confuse and especially block them with too much information. The art of knowing what information to share and what information to keep to yourself or share at what time can only be learned through experience.  Well do I see you now smiling because you remember those situations from your early days? I knew it. There are probably tasks in every profession that you have to do once „wrong“ yourself before you understand why you’d rather do it differently. Let’s give them the chance to do their own experiences.

Whether it is sometimes to have a little more patience or that you can look at things from a completely different perspective. Or even professional things like learning more about the new social media platforms or new trends. Especially in the quieter phases (okay, those who know me know that they are very rare) I encourage my team members to teach me something or refresh my knowledge. It is clear that as a lead we are hardly operationally active and sometimes some knowledge get lost, which we need, for example, to improve processes or similar. Between the years (german saying & meaning the time between Christmas and New Years Eve) my team explained and shown to me some tools or some operational tasks. As far as I can tell, they enjoyed it a lot and it helped me to see where we could improve things. 

Not for nothing is it said that a group is only as good as its weakest team member… and who says those are your team members. Sounds provocative – but hopefully it clarifies my view „Everyone can learn from everyone!“

My advice:

• Take the time to work with your team members on different projects. But make sure to work with them on an eye-to-eye level and not just delegate everything. Discuss the next steps of the project or meeting in advance, analyse what might happen and how we want to react. Prepare them and then let your team members take over. You will see they will surprise you and teach you a lot.
• Try to let all team members work with each other. Even if some pairings may not seem so effective at first, they will learn and grow a lot from it.
• Practice being open to others‘ ways of working and thinking. You can do this by being open about it in your team meeting. Admit when you have just learned something. We are lifelong learners and that is the exciting part.
• Listen when someone wants to share an idea or suggestion with you. It may not be well thought out in some areas, but it will allow you to get a new perspective and it might be the basis for a completely new approach. And if that’s not the case, ask if certain points have been considered or included and try to get the team member to tweak or rethink their idea a little more. Please foster that someone had the courage to present an idea to you or dare to rethink something!