Meeting the Team

As a professional I often work as part of a large team. My clients (who are usually other professionals) also work as part of a large team. Very often – we have never have met. I may not even have met everyone in my own team face to face.

Is this a familiar scenario? I find it happens very regularly with modern working.

I like meeting the people I work with on a regular basis. I like meeting someone face to face (and not just corresponding by email). Even a phone call helps me get to know them better as a person.

It is sometimes a shame that you can work on a deal that last months (even years) and never meet the team while you are working with them, yet quite often a ‘get together’ is arranged at the end of the deal. At which stage it is often too late.

Today was about meeting the team (at the outset).

The theory that my client had put forward when suggesting the meet-up was that if we all met the rest of the team (and put a face to a name) we would all instantly become more approachable and should hopefully work better together after the social interaction we experienced. They also argued that you are also more likely to pick up the phone instead of email.

I have no scientific evidence to back this up – but the theory sounds good (and if you believe it, it will happen).

After some talking shop about our upcoming deal, meeting a few fellow contacts and a nice lunch – we were all well on our way to working better together. The deal will last a further six months so it will be nice to see how this develops and whether meeting the team really made a difference.