Do you know who the geeks are in your business? If you don’t maybe they are flying under the radar. Did you know it’s in your best interest to flush them out and learn how to maximise the innovation they can apply to your unique business challenges?
Who is a Geek & How Do You Identify Them?
Geeks are generally talented members of your staff who do not fit easily into your work culture. They are obsessed with their work, not interested in (or good at) rule following, yet they are the ones that are leading the company’s innovative thinking.
Not interested in being popular, they can be difficult to manage because they perceive the world differently and that governs how they approach their work. The challenge is to tap into their brilliance and determine how to channel it into the areas that you desperately need to address.
5 Tips for Successfully Working with IT Geeks
Geeks are like anyone else, the trick to working with them is to first get to know them, understand their needs, and compromise to develop best business practices that you all can work with.
Check out our tips:
Get a handle on geek psychology
Social niceties are a geeks Achilles heel. They will never fit in socially and will miss lots of social cues that float into their workspace. Instead of judging them, make allowances for the different ways that they think. Emotional conversations are rare but practical ones are very forthcoming.
Don’t force team building on them or expect they will join after work socialization because they just don’t feel comfortable. It’s time to allow for diversity of thinking and not expect them to participate. Always ask but accept no as a valid response.
Geeks don’t follow the usual rules, but to ensure that they are productive it’s helpful to understand when to rein in their unconventionality and when to give in to it.
Make sure they know their worth
Don’t be shy letting them know that their contributions are extraordinary, they love to hear positive feedback, remember their work is everything. This keeps them motivated to achieve even greater accomplishments.
Give them the workspace they need
Geeks don’t necessarily play well with others, so use your project management tools (if you have them) to create dedicated online workspaces that allow you to compartmentalize access according to roles.
With the physical space, talk to your geeks and understand what their unique requirements are to be able to focus fully on the work. It may be that they have sensitivities to light or sound. Find ways to make their space more comfortable for optimal productivity.
Be sensitive to all interactions
Geeks can be prone to truth telling. Blunt, honest conversations are their norm and may bruise the egos of other team members with their perceived insensitivity. This is where you need to have a contingency plan that swings into place to put out any fires.
Dispel negative stereotypes
You also need to manage the perceptions of the other members of your team. Negative stereotypes hurt everyone, and it is productive to help them see geeks as people who are wired differently with unique operating systems. Geeks are neurodiverse and not intentionally difficult it is just the way they are.
They are extremely talented and not difficult to manage once you develop an understanding of how their brains work, and the best ways to approach them. Celebrate their individuality and talent and embrace them as unique, and essential, contributors to your business.
