Inspired by the likes of Dan, Cassie and Richard.
In a team, collaborating with thoughtful, supportive, talented people. I like working remotely, but also get a buzz from the office environment and in-person coffees a few days every month. I like to be positive I’ve been told I’m always smiling at work – although I’m sure that’s not true, and it’s helpful to me to be honest if I’m feeling down.
Regularly, openly and honestly please! The more we can normalise this the better. I find the COIN framework helpful.
I work from 9am to 6pm when I have dinner with my family. All work devices etc are off beyond these times. I encourage others to do the same and I think leadership has an example to set, to help people achieve a good work-life balance and not burn out.
Please be yourself – I appreciate that we all have different communication styles. But I’m also a sucker for a polite ‘how are you?’, please, thank you and light-hearted emojis. Slack’s fine for simple, short messages, but for anything deeper or complicated I much prefer to hop on Zoom. I may prefer to have a night’s sleep before responding to something tricky.
My imposter syndrome, which often makes me think that everyone else knows better. I can get defensive during disagreements (did you know that’s hard-wired into our human brains?), but much less so than I used to.
Awkward silences (my colleague Helena calls me the king of awkward silences) – I think they’re such a helpful way to get other people to speak, particularly quieter members of a group. I also love other teammates contributing to the design process, whatever their role. And dad jokes.
I’m ENFJ - a protagonist, although I reckon I’m on the border of extrovert and introvert (and Myers-Briggs is unreliable at best…)