Think about what makes a great trivia team. It's not five or six people who all know the same things.
Maybe one person is great at history, another knows every obscure pop culture reference, and someone else knows every MLB player’s batting average (while the others couldn’t even tell you what an RBI is). Different ages, interests, and experiences gave the team a better shot at winning.
A study involving more than 5,000 people found that how well group members collaborate plays a bigger role in collective intelligence than individual skills alone.
A global team works in much the same way.
Colleagues bring different skills, professional backgrounds, and ways of thinking to the table. But bringing together all that knowledge and experience isn't enough. What matters is how well people combine their strengths.
And that takes more than just being good at your job. From making tough decisions to resolving disagreements and getting people behind an idea, some of the most valuable skills are the ones that help the entire team succeed.
Making Decisions With Confidence
Sometimes a project hits an unexpected problem, priorities change, or something needs attention before a manager can weigh in. And there isn't always a clear roadmap for what to do next.
Good judgment means knowing when to make a decision yourself, when to seek input from others, and when to get approval before moving forward.
For example, imagine a project is running behind schedule. Rather than simply reporting the delay, take a moment to consider what can be done. Could the scope be reduced? Is there a task that can wait? Would moving the deadline affect another team's work?
You might not have the authority to make the final call, but you can still help move things forward by presenting a few realistic solutions.
Building confidence in your judgment takes practice. Start by asking yourself three questions:
- What information do I have, and what's still missing?
- Who or what could be affected by this decision?
- Is this something I can resolve, or do I need someone else's input?
The goal isn't to make every decision independently. It's to become someone colleagues can count on to think through a problem rather than simply passing it along.
Managing Competing Priorities
It's one thing to manage your own workload. It's another when several people suddenly need something from you, and they all seem to think their request should come first.
It's Tuesday, and you're working on a project that's due Friday. Then someone from another department asks for help with something they also need by the end of the week. Both are important, but there's not enough time to get everything done.
The temptation might be to say yes to both and hope you can figure it out. But that can mean one deadline or the other isn’t met, or you’re unable to give either project your full attention, so neither one meets expectations. That leaves everyone disappointed, including you.
A better approach is to determine what's actually urgent and where there's room to negotiate. Could some of the work wait until next week? Would pushing back one deadline delay other people's work? Has the company already promised a customer something by a certain date?
Some deadlines are fixed, like getting brochures printed in time for a conference. Other times the deadline is arbitrary and can be shifted without throwing a project off balance.
When priorities conflict, a few habits can help:
- Ask what's driving the deadline. Understanding why something is needed by a particular date can help you determine whether there's room to negotiate.
- Explain the tradeoffs. Rather than saying you're too busy, explain what would need to move to accommodate a new request.
- Involve the right people. If two managers or departments have competing expectations, don't assume it's entirely your responsibility to decide whose work matters more.
Being good at managing priorities doesn't mean finding a way to squeeze everything into your day. It means helping everyone understand what's realistic and making thoughtful decisions about what comes first.
Collaborating Across Departments
It's easy to get caught up in your own team's priorities without realizing how much your work affects other departments.
Imagine a product team releases a useful new feature. The feature is live, and everyone considers the project a success.
There's just one problem: Nobody told marketing.
As a result, the company misses an opportunity to promote the new feature to customers and prospects, simply because the people responsible for marketing it weren't involved in the planning.
Good cross-department collaboration means thinking beyond your own team's responsibilities from the start. Once a project is added to the queue, consider which other departments might need to be involved. Giving colleagues advance notice allows them to contribute ideas, prepare for what's coming, and help ensure the work has the impact it deserves.
When planning a project or making a significant change, ask yourself:
- Who else could benefit from knowing about this? A product update might give marketing something to promote, sales a new selling point, and customer support information customers need.
- Does another team need time to prepare? Sharing information after a launch might be too late for colleagues to plan how to support it.
- Am I assuming someone else will communicate this? When nobody takes responsibility for sharing an update, important information can fall through the cracks.
You don't need to understand every department's responsibilities in detail. But developing a sense of how your work connects to theirs can help the entire company get more out of what it accomplishes.
Handling Disagreements Constructively
Sometimes workplace disagreements aren't about one person being right and the other being wrong. They're about different opinions, experiences, or ideas about the best way to achieve a goal.
Imagine your team is planning a new initiative. One colleague wants to launch a small pilot to see how customers respond before investing more resources. Another believes the company should commit to a full launch to make a bigger impact.
Both have reasonable arguments, but they disagree about the best approach.
Rather than immediately defending one position, try to understand what's driving each recommendation. Is the first colleague concerned about wasting resources on an unproven idea? Does the second believe a limited launch won't generate enough interest to provide meaningful results?
Once those concerns are clear, the team can have a more productive discussion. Perhaps there's a way to test the idea with a meaningful audience without committing the entire budget. Or maybe the available evidence supports one approach more strongly than the other.
The important thing is to evaluate the reasoning behind each proposal, rather than treating the discussion as something one person needs to win.
Handling disagreements well doesn't mean always finding a compromise or keeping everyone happy. Sometimes one approach really is better, and someone needs to make the final call.
Research on diverse teams has also highlighted the importance of psychological safety, or feeling comfortable speaking up, asking questions, and challenging ideas without fear of negative consequences.
The goal isn't to avoid disagreements. It's to work through them respectfully and make better decisions as a team.
Influencing Without Authority
You don't have to be someone's manager to influence a project's direction or help shape company decisions. Sometimes, all it takes is recognizing an opportunity others have overlooked and making a strong case for it.
Imagine you work in customer support and notice that customers keep asking for a feature your product doesn't offer. You think it could make a real difference, but you're not part of the product team, and you don't have any authority over what gets developed.
You could simply pass along the feedback and hope someone acts on it. Or you could take a more active approach.
Start by gathering examples of customer requests and looking for patterns:
- How frequently does the issue come up?
- What problems would the feature solve?
- Are customers finding workarounds or considering competing products?
With that information, you can approach the product team with more than a suggestion. You're bringing evidence of a potential opportunity.
And rather than insisting that the feature should be developed, you can invite colleagues to explore whether it's feasible, how it fits with existing priorities, and what impact it might have.
The same principle applies to proposing new initiatives, challenging an outdated approach, or suggesting a change in strategy.
Influence comes from giving people a compelling reason to consider an idea, not from having the authority to tell them what to do.
Learning From Different Perspectives
Think about a problem you've struggled to solve, only to have a colleague suggest an approach that never occurred to you. Sometimes a fresh perspective is all it takes to see something you've been missing.
On a global team, colleagues bring different professional backgrounds, experiences, interests, and ways of thinking to their work. Those differences can be just as valuable as their technical expertise.
Imagine a team trying to figure out why customers aren't responding to a new campaign. The data analyst notices that people are clicking through but leaving the page almost immediately. A designer thinks the page is too cluttered, while a copywriter suspects the message doesn't match what the campaign promised.
Each person sees a different piece of the problem. And by combining their observations, the team has a much better chance of finding a solution than someone working alone.
Research published in Harvard Business Review has found that teams with different ways of thinking and solving problems can reach solutions faster.
But benefiting from different perspectives requires more than simply having a diverse group of colleagues. It also means recognizing that your preferred way of approaching a problem isn't necessarily the best one.
Pay attention to how other people think through challenges. Ask colleagues what they're noticing that you might have missed. And when someone approaches a task differently, resist the temptation to dismiss their method simply because it's not how you'd do it.
Over time, you'll develop a wider range of ways to approach problems, even when those colleagues aren't around to help.
The strongest teams aren't made up of people who all think alike. They're made up of people who know how to put their different strengths to work together.
