Breaking the barrier

I once had a sobering experience at work drinks, a few weeks into a comms role in an IT team.

“Hi, which team do you work in?” asked a promising new friend. I said, quite cheerily, “I'm in the IT team.” And he promptly did a 180 and walked off.

In that instant, I realised how misunderstood and disrespected people in IT can be. I later found out that he worked in a technical team that was even more cryptic and complex than IT. But I’m sure if you asked him why he was so rude that day, he’d say, “IT people are boring. They only talk about stuff like servers and infrastructure.”

Why are we so quick to dismiss and disrespect things we don't understand? Communication breaks down between technical teams and people across their organisation because of a lack of understanding and respect for the value of their expertise. If you don't understand what somebody does, or what their role is in your organisation, how can you respect them?

Winning a seat at the table for technical teams starts with everyone having a clear understanding of your purpose as a team.

That includes:

- Knowing what you want to achieve.

- Understanding what your CEO sees as your reason for being.

- Seeing how you fit into the big picture of your organisation.

And out of that, you can start to sow the seeds of understanding and respect. Tell people what you do for them regularly. And translate what your team does into words that other people can understand.

Yes, IT is a technical discipline. But so are many disciplines. Marketing has its own jargon. So does sales. And operations. Everyone needs to find a way to translate what they do into a common language if they want to be understood and respected. And it starts with helping people understand what your team does and why it matters.