![[supportive-coworkers-lifting-up-an-individual.png]] One of the key ingredients of a happy work life is having supportive colleagues. That is easy to say, but what does it actually mean? What does it look like? How do you experience it? Intect is an ambitious company providing payroll management software as a service Which I have had the pleasure of working at as Head of Development. Payroll is a complex area with many unique situations, a lot of interconnected parts and a need for high precision. With work challenges like that, it is no surprise that you find a high ratio of passion-driven individuals (ildsjæle) working hard (at times extremely hard) to make this vision of creating an efficient payroll system come alive at Intect. It would be easy to assume that a workforce made up of many passion-driven individuals would lean towards an individual-centric work culture, characterized by competition among colleagues, overvaluing of certain roles, and coworkers undermining one another for the sake of their personal beliefs. But working as Head of Development doing my very best to foster a psychological safe culture of cross-functional cooperation and sustainable pace, my experience is that given the chance people at Intect are superb at supporting each other. ## Shifting Tasks to Support Peers The easiest way to feel productive is to focus on your own projects and tasks; this helps you get things you set out to do done and gives you a sense of achievement. But time and again I experienced my colleagues rearrange the order they were doing their own work in or lay their own work aside to help with others' projects. This came from an understanding that each individual work was important, but there may be other things that were more important for the team, department or company. They proactively shared the load, meaning if one specialist was under pressure by their workload, others would notice and suggest tasks they could take over. The colleagues showing this behavior might not have noticed the importance of their actions, but it speaks of a heightened sense of awareness and a genuine interest in other's work and well-being. To support this agility I worked on making our overall goals as clear as possible, staying in constant communication about current short term objectives and most importantly gave my team members a strong mandate to decide what was work was important and what could wait. ## Raising Concerns on a Teammate's Behalf As a manager helping your team members succeed requires you to understand and help the whole person not just the part that does the work: the familie member, the person struggling a big issue outside of work or have a hard time with things at work not directly related to their tasks. This means that as a manager, I've been approached by team member requesting a private conversation many times about many different personal topics. The one type of conversation that stod out the most was when team members wanted to raise a concern on behalf of a teammate. Their concerns ranged from noticing stress indicators in a colleague, seeing patterns where cooperation created friction, to the unintended negative effects a company policy or action had on an team member. Even in the most psychologically safe work environment, it is a significant step out of people's comfort zones to discreetly bring a personal issue about a teammate to the leader, allowing them to use their mandate to take action where the team member could not. I always felt very honored by the level of trust given to me and took the concerns raised very seriously because of how much courage it takes to step forward in such situations. ## Sharing Knowledge Generously To create great software, companies need to be learning organizations, engaged in acquiring, sharing, and applying knowledge in all areas around their product. On top of needing to be a learning organization Intect delivers a system that models payroll a field with lots of different rules and workflows to model. Knowledge sharing was even more important to Intect, but how was that done? Software developers and other specialists are sometimes stereotyped as being introverted, a little bit of a loner, or even protective of their expertise. While there are many individual-driven personalities in the software development field, I found that there is a strong desire to empower others by sharing knowledge. This was made especially clear in: - More senior developers coaching other developers on the ins and outs of the code - Payroll specialists helping developers understand what process they were to model in code, what was important to have and what was nice to have - Support staff, product managers and developers exchanging domain and system knowledge to resolve problems quickly for customers Seeing this and understanding the significance of knowledge sharing in assisting each other and accelerating task completion, I introduced the principle of "Walk, Call, Write." This principle promotes proactive assistance-seeking. Initially, one should walk over to someone's desk to inquire or seek guidance. If they're out of the office, a phone call becomes the next best alternative. Only when the person is unreachable should an email or our work tracking system be used to pose the question. This principle broke down a barrier of not wanting to disturb people that were working and quickly made us more efficient but also happier, because we were less often stuck at impasses where we needed help. ## Get Colleagues to go home Being a passion-driven individual surrounded by similar highly motivated colleagues, it can be incredibly easy to overextend yourself. The intense personal responsibility one feels can often lead us to work beyond regular hours (sometimes at unconventional times) in order to finish up the last task, unblock a coworker, or clear items off a to-do list that would otherwise linger in our thoughts. As leaders, we have a responsibility to frame the work and expectations of our employees in a way where they can both excel at what they are doing and keep a sustainable pace. This is no easy feat, but it can be made easier by comments like, "We've already covered the crucial points, let's wrap up," or "I reminded him to shut down his computer and end the day," and even, "Isn't this your day off? Are you certain you should be working that now?". Reminders like these from coworkers/managers go a long in helping the individual have a better work-life balance and reassures them that their peers think no less of them for taking their foot off the throttle, in fact they encourage it! There are many other ways I have observed my colleagues at Intect being supportive, some but not all of them are: Helping colleagues prioritize their work, going beyond roles to help each other, Challenging colleagues' assumptions constructively, forgiving mistakes made and working to move forward. ## Fostering a supportive culture Creating a productive environment in software development that can scale requires many ingredients: a clear sense of purpose, strong mandates for teams and team members, a psychologically safe work environment, clear and fast ways to communicate, and more time than you might think. Above all, a supportive culture is vital, which is why it's important to emphasize this when team members support one another and to consistently encourage more of the same, again and again. Working at Intect has, of course, not only been a dance on roses. There have been many challenges and tough situations, just as there would be at any other scale-up. However, I will always cherish being a leader at Intect, if for no other reason than the awesome team members who have impressed me time and again with their spirit, ingenuity, and support for each other.