I went into my first week at i.c.stars thinking about technology, code, and systems. The week turned out to be about the human layer instead, and the most useful thing I learned was about myself: when a project gets hard and progress feels slow, I take on more work instead of asking for help.
While Team Week was very involved and we spent a lot of time learning about our team dynamic and reflecting on it, I feel like I genuinely got to know my teammates and their approaches to teamwork and collaboration. I realized going into the program that I am a very collaborative person and tend to value my interpersonal relationships more than the task at hand.
Still, some of the self-assessment tools we used really highlighted that blind spot. In many situations taking on more work is a positive attribute. In a team setup it is a major weakness.
Rethinking True Collaboration
We ran through a few workshops during the week that really spoke to me on this topic. One of them was a consulting agency case study. My partner drew a scenario where he was the more experienced colleague doing all the work, because his coworker was resistant to change. The natural impulse there is to take over and do the work for the person who is not prepared.
