Last year I was tasked with training a new colleague.

I did a terrible job.

Which confused me.

For a decade I was a teacher. I have worked with people of all ages.

While I opted for a gradual release way of teaching my new colleague following the training manual provided by the company, upon reflection I realise the staff member would give me the feedback that they understood, without actually understanding.

They would perform the action, but lack their own base of knowledge, instead relying on mine.

This meant while I let them take on more responsibility, they constantly sought my assistance without trying to fix it themselves, likely because they didn’t really get the task when we had practised – additionally they were probably overloaded with information too.

If I had more time, I would have focused on small interconnected individual tasks/processes to build up their foundation, then check their understanding by giving them scenarios, or asking questions. (Theoretically this is what the training manual is meant to do.)

Unfortunately the training program where I previously worked didn’t allow for the time required.

In hindsight, while we followed the training manual, if I could redo it, I would have focused only on the key tasks, the ones that staff have to be proficient in to have the store run smooth-ish.

Then on shift, support the new colleague to take on incrementally increasing responsibilities.

While the training program and my own skill in implementing said training is questionable, simultaneously, the workplace has the best team I have worked with to this date… and I have been on a number of teams.

I find it funny I found the best team working in a service station that serves coffee. I spent so long searching for a reason to believe in teamwork (after all there is a lot of hype about being a team player I didn’t understand) to discover it in an unexpected place.

I am of the belief one thing that makes a team work so well is – trust.

In my workplace I trust my colleagues to do get the job done.

This requires everybody involved knowing what needs to be done. Because we also do all roles – to varying degrees of skill – we are able to jump in where ever we are needed.

For a majority of the time, I am working with colleagues who are at this level. Who I trust.

Noting the immense contrast with the new colleagues, I asked myself – what does it take to trust in my team members?

Why do I trust certain colleagues to get the job done, and at what level do I feel I can hand over control?

How could I develop this level of trust in new team members?

I worked with a different new colleague the next day and found a new challenge.

While they were proficient in key tasks, they stuck only to those key tasks. This meant the other staff members were picking up the unacknowledged slack.

As they put it.

“I’ve been lucky, other people have just done those tasks for me.”

That day I was a) in pain and b) annoyed they were expecting me to do all their work.

So, I took it upon myself to introduced them to the jobs they were meant to be performing.

Which, is actually a version of the approach I mentioned earlier – support the new colleague to take on incrementally increasing responsibilities.

Even in this, I knew it was partly my fault they didn’t think to do the tasks. After all, how could I expect them to gain my trust if I didn’t give them the chance?

I didn’t trust my new colleagues to perform their tasks and because I found it time intensive to correct their actions I usually ended up doing the tasks myself.

Because at least I trusted myself to get it done.

Additionally, I didn’t feel comfortable instructing them.

Throughout the exchange that day, I apologised for asking my colleague to do tasks, then thanked them for doing their job.

Their response was, “You don’t need to thank me for doing my job.”

If I knew what I knew now, upon this reflection, I would have purposefully begun to introduce them to tasks.

Without the unnecessary resentment.

After a new direction in thinking about teams, I have considered why it is that I don’t share the conversations I’ve had with ChatGPT. The articles have been created, the lesson plans, the much much awesomeness I have been playing with in the space.

I think one reason I haven’t, in context of teams, is that I don’t trust AI to do a good enough job.

To perform their role to the standard I expect.

And in writing this, I’m reflecting on how long it has taken to trust myself to do so.

I’m writing this to play with this concept. Based on teamwork I’ve observed in the workplace and what I believe makes a good team, how I model a relationship with AI.

P.S. One thing I loved about the people of my former workplace was how they recognised glitches in the training program and changed it to more shorter shifts to reflect the need for time to process. They really are The Best People.