Early in my career, I assumed everyone worked the same way I did. I thought “professional” meant universal and that technical rigor transcended culture. I was not just incorrect, I was naively wrong.

I’ve spent about twenty-five years working in infrastructure engineering, almost always in multinational distributed teams. I’ve been the formal manager of an infrastructure team twice in my career, but mostly I’ve been on the other side, a team member trying to figure out how to work with people who think, communicate, and collaborate completely differently than I do. Right now, I’m in a team of seven people where every single person has a different nationality, trying to help, enable and influence while “my way” might not be “their way.” I misjudge people’s preferences regularly and have to repair trust after the fact. It’s uncomfortable every time, but it’s part of the process.