A while ago, if you would have asked us, we would have never thought we’d end up working together. We wouldn’t have even considered a teamwork at all.
Yet, we now celebrate a year of running a business together! We posted a little bit about our story on the blog, so if you’re curious about it, go ahead and check it out.
Today, I thought it would be useful to share our tips around how we make our teamwork WORK. It’s not always easy, I can tell you that. We have so much more to learn, but this last year already gave us some clues. So if you’re thinking of teaming up with somebody or trying to figure out how to make the best of an existing team, these are definitely some things to consider.
DELEGATE & SET CLEAR DEADLINES
When you work as a team, you gotta know how to spread the work well. Whoever is faster and more effective to do a task should be the one to do it. So it’s important to take a look at your weekly to do list, and see how you divide all of it. We like to create a to do list for me, and one for David every week, and we also like to set deadlines for each task. This tends to work well.
FIND YOUR COLLABORATIVE TOOLS
To do all of that and to make sure that everything is well communicated, you might need to find tools that work for you as a team. We tried plenty, such as Trello, which is a pretty great tool. But we quickly returned to the basics. We use dropbox to share & store our files, a common calendar with reminders in our phones, Pinterest for inspiration boards. Then for the rest, we personally found that we’re more “paper” people, so we use a classic calendar and post-its. We sometimes even make reminder post-its for each other! It’s kind of old school but if it works, it works. So feel free to explore and find what works best for you!
SMOOTH OUT THE AMBIANCE
David and I tend to be quite laid back at work. We get things done in music, sometimes we crack jokes all day long, we take breaks to watch silly videos. We make each other coffee. It’s important to keep up a nice, fun ambiance, whichever field you work in. I highly recommend having a shared playlist when working side by side.
HAVE A CODE
Of course, being chatty and communicative with each other doesn’t always work. Sometimes you need to be in your bubble. It’s a little bit hard when the person who you’re working with is your friend, and has something to tell you, but there are moments in which you wish to not be interrupted. I sure know that I can get very very snappy at David if he interrupts me in the middle of a creative job, when calculating bills or writing a blogpost (ahem). In order not to get each other in a fight, I recommend that you let the other person politely know when you wish NOT to be disturbed.
CUT SOME SLACK & BE NICE
Something is not turning out the way you wanted, with the other person? I find it hard to deal with, as I tend to be a bit of a control freak, but I recommend trying to keep a cool head about it. What went wrong and why? Was there a way to make it better? You can talk about it while still being nice with each other. Some days work less better than others and you have to accept it, while still be able to talk about it. If you see improvements, it’s also always nice to be supportive and show the appreciation.
I sure hope you find those tips helpful.
I’ll tell you what: working together as a team can be a rocky path to step on. Especially in our case, as we are, in fact, a couple (many people would consider that an absolute no-go). Some moments are completely NUTS. But this is only natural, as it comes with spending so much time together and having responsibilities. Believe me, it is worth it. You only need to make sure it feels right most of the time, and you will learn so much from the process!
A tip to those who want to team up as a “duo”: Just like in love, there is NO “one and only”. There’s no “perfect fit”. It’s up to you to make it work , mutually learn the best ways to communicate and cultivate good vibes with your team mate. Remember: the aim is to not have an absolutely perfect, spotless working relationship. It’s about extracting something interesting out of mutual ambition and get more things done than if you would be out there doing it by yourself. If this is something that you consider exciting and worth working for, go for it!
