/TEAMWORK
The team you find yourself working with might have been put together by a human resources department who have chosen people for their individual strengths and qualities. On the other hand, it might be made up of a band of brothers and cousins, chosen because someone wanted to keep the money in the family. Or it could have been scrambled together as you were going out the door. There is no guaranteed way of assembling the best team. But there is a lot of groundwork you can do to put your team in the best possible position for working together.
Try to make contact with the rest of your team before you travel. If you get into trouble during your first tentative steps in the country, it is best if they know your name and the sound of your voice rather than just a flight number. And similarly, you need to know their names and who is in charge rather than just an address.
Get to know your team. There will likely be a clash of cultures, not least in the way they work. Some cultures like to work late in the night, leaving time for a three-hour siesta in the afternoon. Others like to have everything wrapped up by 5 p.m. in time for an early dinner and bed. In intense situations there will always be personality clashes, so it is a good idea to have ironed out some of your differences before arriving.
Get the best team to ensure success. This might not always be as simple as choosing the best. You need to choose the most appropriate. One MSF volunteer told me: ‘In Yemen we chose not to bring Americans into the team because there was a high level of anti-American feeling.’ This person also gave me some other interesting information: ‘For the Yemenis their names give away their tribal history, but we outsiders had no clue when we were moving into different territory. You need to know someone locally who can tell you about it. One translator we hired was half-Ethiopian, half-Yemeni. That made him very low-ranking in society. He was our translator in the women’s section, and that was sensitive enough to create problems. It became extremely difficult and we reached a point where we were risking his life, so we had to evacuate him from the area.’
Create systems where everyone is responsible for everyone else in case the real or natural leader is not around to tell you what to do. Nick Toksvig illustrated the importance of this with the following story: ‘At one night-time checkpoint four of us were ordered out of the vehicle at gunpoint while the car was searched. We were then told we could go. I was driving and just before setting off realized only three of us were in the car. The fourth was having a slash nearby. Count them out and count them in.’
Create equality in your team. Even if people are treated differently outside the team, within the team they should be served the same food and sleep in the same beds. Apart from anything else, griping and whining about the hideous situation you are all in will bring a team together. If someone is receiving better treatment than others, it causes problems. Another point Nick Toksvig makes is: ‘Make sure everyone has a flak jacket. The whole team should have the same level of security or insecurity.’
A team that eats together stays together. One MSF volunteer told me: ‘When I first got to Yemen we used to eat our breakfast separately from our national staff – us with bread and chocolate spread, and them with the local food. But I decided it would be better for the team if we ate together. Then we discovered they had some amazing food. Honey and meat and their own type of pancake. It was delicious. Now, wherever I am, I seek out Yemeni restaurants, I love the food so much.’
Be upfront about pay. In my experience, transparency is the best way forward when it comes to money. If everyone knows what everyone else is getting and they choose to stay in the job, they cannot complain. It is a good idea to set aside some cash to use later as tips for the lower-paid workers in the team. It should be a surprise, not expected. Make that prize-giving transparent too and everyone will strive for that one goal.
Nick Toksvig discovered the hard way that paying team members should not be delegated: ‘I was paying our translator in Kabul $150 per day, 50 of which was meant to go to the driver. In the end I found out that the translator was giving the driver only 10 bucks a day, and this was the guy driving us to some dodgy areas. Pay each person separately or they might get pissed off.’
Make sure everyone understands the point of your trip and agrees with the chosen method of getting there. When lives are in danger it is not fair to impose rules on people. Everyone needs to be in agreement. On the other hand, if someone is stubbornly refusing to toe the line, the team needs to make clear that it will not be tolerated.
Clearly define roles within a team so there is no clash of responsibility. When lives are at stake it is sometimes difficult to delegate, but it must happen or people will not be fully invested in the task and will begin to feel sidelined.
Sherine Tadros was one of the only international reporters inside Gaza during the war between Hamas and Israel in 2009. She was there for several months, just her and dozens of boys in a building stuck in the heart of the conflict. In the build-up, then during and after the war, they all witnessed more horror than I can ever imagine. She says one of the hardest things was learning to allow individuals their own response to a situation they were experiencing as a team. She drew a comparison with a family tragedy she’d experienced herself:
‘When I was 15 years old, my baby cousin fell in the swimming pool and started drowning. My aunt froze, my mother screamed, my dad jumped into the pool. At a moment of extreme stress everyone has different ways of reacting and coping. You need to recognize that each of your colleagues is coping in their own way and respect their mechanism for dealing with stress, even if you don’t think it’s healthy or it’s not what you are doing.
‘During the Gaza war I had a lot of men around me; most were incredibly robotic, seeming almost unaffected by what was going on, or in some kind of bubble. I was the opposite. I felt every day of that war and the suffering around me, and I didn’t hide my fear or distress. A lot of the time my colleagues would walk out of the room when I was emotional. I felt they were being unsympathetic and unkind. What I realized later was that I was disturbing their coping mechanism. Just as I needed to cry and feel to stay sane, they needed not to cry or feel at that moment.
‘There is no right way to cope. In the end we are there to do a job, to perform, and you must do whatever you need to do in order to do your job. Respect that and don’t take things personally.’
/EXIT PLAN
Understanding that everyone responds in different ways is important when it comes to planning for the worst.
Make an exit plan. Talk through the exit plan with your team as thoroughly and as early as possible. Everyone needs to know how they are going to exit the hotel or area where you are meeting, and should know each other’s numbers, as well as those for the emergency people. Do you have a reliable driver who will pick up the phone at any time of night? Does everyone have his number? Does everyone know where everyone else is staying so they can go and find them if they are not responding to a phone call?