A team is a complicated process. As any one that has their own family, whether as a parent or child, there are several relationship dynamics that ebb and flow. Your relationship with your mother is important and ultimately will affect your relationship with a sibling or your father. Same thing with a tech team.
One of the best articles written on how to improve these system relationships is The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman that noes how to improve communications, intimacy, and support within relationships. While the correlation may not be perfect, I feel like there is great piece to explore here.
Note: This article has a lot of satire in it, but with any good satire, there is some truth in every statement. Have fun reading this, but also look into how you can speak the love language of each teammate that goes beyond leading them, into developing relationships with each team member.
Leveling Up?
Every good techies has at least some knowledge of gaming, but some techies are so deep into the gaming community, you associate their favorite drink with Mountain Dew Code Red and favorite meal with Dominos Pizza. 8-bit nostalgia and references like warp tubes, the Triforce, or four block Tetris clearing will sooth our soul.
We love late nights or four-hour stints to conquer a level. Whether we grind at setting up lights and audio before a service to fix any bugs or get enough gold for that last bit of armor in-game, you know we will get the job finished and done right.
Inspector Gadget
Let?s be honest. You have that techie on your team that knows every rumor for the next iPhone or Android device. They are hardcore Apple users that will fight to the death for their cause or Android supporters that preach about open source and breaking out of the model.
Being an inspector gadget does not mean you buy all the gadgets, we do work and volunteer for the church after all. But we have RSS feeds for every blog so we know the latest and greatest. And when it is our time to upgrade a PC, you need to expect to talk technology for at least 15 minutes at every meeting if you care about us.
First In Line
Some techies want to be first in line. The latest and great is the best, and this is different than our inspector gadget as it is about trying new things out. Whether they were on SnapChat before it was cool or Google+ before it became a joke to be on it, this person was on board. Facebook just added Ads? Our first in line-r needs to know the ins and outs of the program.
They are willing to gamble, take chances, and expect losses. It?s not about building an audience as much as it is about understanding the best and worst parts about what is new. And after weeks, which is really years in technology, it is time to move on to the next great thing.
To-Do Lists For To-Do Lists
Some of our techies are all about having lists. If you need to accomplish something, a list must be done. And a list to accomplish this specific list is also needed. Do not forget the to-do list to find the best to-do list apps, obviously.
These are out task managers, the people that will make sure projects get done. They are our neurotic people and I mean that positively. If you need a project done right, get your to-do lister on that team and you can count it as done.
The IT Crowd
This group of people is more in line with the Channel 4 British sitcom than what the name may reference with information technology. The stereotypical person may be seen as ?eccentric,? ?introverted,? or ?down right nerdy.? We love random trivia, get hostile when you talk about Spock when he was on the Death Star, and get excited about setting up webservers.
Sure, we might have been picked on in high school, but the world is our oyster now and somehow we have helped your church setup so many online and tech projects that cost about 1/100 the cost it does for megachurches. It definitely requires an understanding of open source software and cobbled together machines that require weekly maintanence, but its our passion and burden to bare.
Where do you stand with The 5 Love Languages and can you put any of your team members into one or two of these categories that may help you speak what they love?
