Since I entered the world of development, I never had a consultant role, but rather one of accompaniment, where I connected with the collaborator’s team and always worked as another member of the team: building features, attending meetings, giving my point of view, reminding everyone that tests exist and won’t write themselves, etc.
But in recent years, I’ve been working more with collaborators where I did have a consultant role, which—unlike the accompaniment role—has the main goal of helping people grow rather than writing code or delivering features. Your mindset shifts from "this might be a good solution" to "if I say it this way, maybe my teammate can find the right solution".
Based on my experience, I’ve drawn some conclusions that might be helpful:
-
Self-confidence: It might be impostor syndrome or the fear of facing a new challenge that doesn’t seem easy at first. Whatever the reason, the important thing is that you were brought into this project because they know you can handle it and have the knowledge. When you see that the people you work with thank you, start relying on you to solve problems, and apply what you’ve explained, that’s when you realize you have the ability to face it, and that initial difficulty begins to fade away.
-
Hierarchical communication: This happens when the collaborator is someone or a group of people who aren’t coding with the team but are the ones who called us in because they want to instill our way of working in the company. When this happens, it’s common that the people we work with daily either don’t understand why we’re there or simply don’t agree with the change, which creates difficulty. The solution could be as simple as, at the beginning, asking all teammates what they expect from the collaboration or even from you personally, and then explaining the purpose of our involvement. This way, we align from the start and can avoid potential short-term problems.
-
Those who don’t want to, won’t: Continuing from the previous point, when one of the teammates doesn’t want to go the same way as we do, don’t take it personally. We’re not here to change the entire company or preach a superior truth; we’re here to contribute our grain of sand and try to make things a little better when we leave than when we arrived. Something that can help a lot is identifying people who are more aligned with us or our ideas and focusing on supporting them more. That doesn’t mean ignoring the rest, but those aligned individuals will more easily absorb what we teach and, as a result, can help others who are less aligned. Thus, we go from a grain of sand to a snowball that expands exponentially.
-
"Listen with your eyes": Not everyone can express themselves the way they’d like, so pay attention to small details. This is a bit harder, but when you’re in meetings or explaining things, pay attention to the person who rarely speaks, to the one who talks too much, or to the one who exudes confidence—you can learn a lot indirectly that will help you later. Of course, you can’t pay attention to everyone, but there’s always a solution: try recording the session and later, with more calm, analyze situations and behaviors.
For example, if one day you’re with someone who’s usually quiet in group meetings, you could mention something they said before to show you remember their words. Or if you’re with someone who can’t quite grasp what you’re explaining, maybe instead of repeating everything, you could ask questions that lead them to reflect and find the answer themselves.
I could mention more points, but I think these have helped me the most. My first consulting collaboration, for me, was a failure. We were two consultants, and thanks to my colleague, things went quite well. I say that with no remorse, because the challenges I faced are what helped me grow and learn from my mistakes. We’re not perfect; we can’t get everything right the first time—after all, we’re human.
Rely on your colleagues, express the situations you couldn’t handle, celebrate your successes, ask questions without fear... Thanks to that, in my next collaboration, I achieved great results, avoiding or solving many of the difficulties I had faced before.
Code doesn’t change on its own, but the people who write it do.
This article was first published in Spanish on the Lean Mind blog: El código no lo es todo. This version has been translated using AI, so please keep in mind that coherence may be lost or there may be some unusual phrasing. Thank you very much for your understanding.