Working With and Through Others
The Pivotal Transition That Many Miss
You've put in the time. You've developed technical competence. Your individual contributions are valued. But something's shifting—your role is becoming less about what you personally produce and more about what you and a team are able to accomplish. Welcome to the journeyman stage.
In traditional crafts, the journeyman was neither novice nor master, but a skilled practitioner who could work independently while collaborating with others. Today's professional journey follows a similar pattern. After establishing technical foundation as an apprentice, you enter a critical phase where your impact increasingly comes with and through others.
Many professionals struggle with this transition. They've built their identity and security around personal expertise and direct output. The shift toward collaboration, influence, and enabling others can feel threatening rather than empowering. But this transition is not just inevitable—it's where your output capacity begins to multiply.
To successfully navigate the journeyman stage, you need to develop proficiency in three critical areas that amplify your impact beyond individual contribution.
1. Collaboration: Orchestrating Collective Excellence
Collaboration isn't simply working alongside others—it's creating conditions where the collective output exceeds what individuals could produce separately. The effective journeyman develops:
Relationship Navigation Skills
Building trust through reliability and transparency
Identifying and leveraging diverse strengths across team members
Managing healthy conflict that leads to better outcomes
Creating psychological safety that encourages innovation and risk-taking
Facilitation Capabilities
Designing and leading effective meetings with clear outcomes
Orchestrating group processes that maximize collective intelligence
Recognizing and addressing interpersonal dynamics that hinder collaboration
Coordinating complex workflows across individuals and teams
Influence Strategies
Understanding organizational priorities and constraints
Framing proposals in terms of stakeholder interests
Timing and positioning recommendations effectively
Cultivating support networks for important initiatives
These collaboration skills transform groups of talented individuals into cohesive, productive teams capable of tackling complex challenges.
2. Data Fluency: Beyond Basic Tool Operation
As our blog post on this topic state: Data Fluency goes far beyond basic tool operation. It's about developing a comprehensive relationship with your material - in this case, data - and understanding how to shape it into something meaningful and true.
The journeyman develops sophisticated capabilities across the three pillars of data mastery:
Data Organization Mastery
Structuring information for both current needs and future possibilities
Creating systems that others can navigate and build upon
Standardizing and cleaning data before beginning analysis
Documenting processes to create clear paths for others
Insight Extraction
Asking penetrating questions that reveal hidden patterns
Following threads of insight beyond obvious conclusions
Recognizing what the data isn't showing
Testing assumptions and validating conclusions
Communication Integrity
Presenting findings with both clarity and honesty
Building trust through transparent methodology
Adapting technical concepts for different audiences
Creating visualizations that reveal rather than obscure truth
This data fluency separates the casual user from the craftsperson, and understands that real data fluency is not just building a chart, but is a suite of skills that valuably manifest themselves in subtle ways to create action for the audience.
3. Communication: Translating Between Worlds
As projects become more complex, they inevitably involve multiple specialties, perspectives, and priorities. The effective journeyman becomes the crucial translator between these different worlds:
Audience Adaptation
Adjusting communication style and content for different stakeholders
Recognizing and addressing varying information needs
Balancing detail and summary appropriately
Creating different versions of messages for different contexts
Meaning Clarification
Defining ambiguous terms that cause confusion
Making implicit assumptions explicit
Creating shared language for complex concepts
Establishing common ground among diverse perspectives
Bridge Building
Identifying potential conflicts between different professional approaches
Creating connections between specialized domains
Translating technical concepts for non-technical stakeholders
Helping specialists appreciate other viewpoints
These communication skills don't just transfer information—they create the shared understanding necessary for collaborative success.
The Journeyman in Action: Applying the Skills
To illustrate how these three skills work together in practice, consider this hypothetical scenario:
A marketing team has collected customer feedback data but struggles to extract meaningful insights or take coordinated action. A journeyman professional on the team would leverage all three core skills:
Collaboration in Action:
Bringing together team members from different functions (sales, product, customer service) to contribute their perspectives
Facilitating a structured discussion that surfaces diverse interpretations
Creating shared ownership of the insights and resulting actions
Data Fluency in Action:
Cleaning and standardizing the raw feedback data before analysis
Looking beyond obvious patterns to identify underlying themes
Questioning assumptions about what the data represents
Developing visualizations that make complex patterns accessible
Communication in Action:
Translating technical findings for non-technical stakeholders
Using a storytelling framework to present insights compellingly
Creating different communication assets for different audiences
Building bridges between customer perspectives and internal priorities
Through this integrated approach, the journeyman works with others to transform disconnected data into coordinated action. Those diverse perspectives and hands create far more value than would be possible through individual effort alone.
Developing Your Journeyman Skills
Each of these three core skills can be systematically developed through deliberate practice:
Collaboration Development
Observe skilled facilitators and note their techniques
Study group dynamics in meetings and identify patterns
Experiment with different collaboration methods in low-stakes settings
Seek feedback specifically on how you enable others' contributions
Volunteer to lead cross-functional projects
Facilitate team discussions or problem-solving sessions
Create opportunities for diverse perspectives to be heard
Establish shared documentation or knowledge systems
Data Fluency Development
Move beyond tool operation to understand underlying principles
Study how data experts structure and clean information
Practice extracting multiple insights from the same dataset
Develop comfort with statistical concepts and limitations
Clean and structure a messy dataset from your organization
Create a pivot table and develop three key insights from it
Present data findings in multiple formats for different audiences
Document your analytical process so others can follow and build upon it
Communication Development
Study how effective communicators structure their messages
Collect examples of compelling data presentations and analyze their structure
Practice translating complex concepts into simpler language
Seek feedback on clarity and impact from diverse listeners
Create documentation that makes complex processes accessible
Present technical information to non-technical audiences
Translate between specialized teams with different vocabularies
Develop visualizations that communicate key insights at a glance
Remember, every master craftsperson started as an apprentice. The key is to approach each project, no matter how small, as an opportunity to deepen your craft.
Are you ready to embrace the journeyman transition and amplify your impact through collaboration, data fluency, and communication? Have you begun developing these essential skills that will define this next phase of your professional journey?
Our comprehensive guide, Career-Craft provides detailed frameworks for developing these critical capabilities. With practical tools, exercises, and strategies, it helps you multiply your impact through effective work with and through others.