How to Build Team Collaboration

At Google, Mike Abrams leads a team of strategists who focus on helping multi-channel and consumer-branded goods companies with their digital marketing strategies.

Mike has been at Google for six+ years but wound up there by coincidence. He visited his best friend who lived in San Francisco; they toured Silicon Valley to see Stanford, Facebook, Twitter, and Google among others. When they got to Google my friend mentioned a friend of a friend working there, who was hiring for a similar role to Mike's previous job. My friend texted one friend who then reached out to another friend who texted yet another friend. Before leaving San Francisco, Mike was introduced to the head of the team and started the official interview process a week later.

Mike's Google career began after a series of events

Having read the book The Catalyst Effect, Mike formed his own perspective on what catalytic behavior looked like. It happened when he was hosting the Talks at Google program. He was really excited to know that Shane Battier was going to be on the panel as he is a classic example of someone who demonstrates catalytic behaviors. Mike grew up playing sports, so he really connected with Battier's experiences. He could easily translate what Battier and he experienced in sports to the business world. He found there to be a lot of crossovers.

It made him think about the people that he wanted on his work team; specific people he would like working on a certain project because of their versatility. Obviously, you’re always going to need experts in certain areas, but there are also the “go-to” people that Mike highly valued. Working with his peers revealed a handful of people who he could bounce ideas off and who added great value. These folks are often the leaders of the team, and they may not be fully aware of the significant impact they have on everyone around them.

When Mike moved to New York, he had this experience with his team

Mike worked with a pretty small group at the time and was being managed by leaders who worked in a different office. There was one person on his team who always helped everybody. He was so open and willing to answer whatever questions Mike had. As an external hire, Mike didn’t know the products as well as others on the team who joined from other parts of Google. He felt like every question he asked was dumb or that he was bothering everyone with things he should have already known. But this team member never made Mike feel like he was lacking in knowledge or being a bother. His colleague was willing to help and was very encouraging. He was the first to make sure that people felt welcomed. You might assume that he is a very outgoing, highly verbal person, but he’s not. He was actually very reserved and quiet. But he was often the person who sparked everyone to do great work.

How would they experience this colleague if he walked in the room right now?

Mike explained that this co-worker was very introverted, while Mike felt like a fake extrovert in the sense that he would host a podcast and moderate a lot of Talks at Google, but in actuality, he's not. Mike is naturally more introverted, and that’s probably part of the reason that he and his co-worker became such good friends so quickly. The teammate is very reserved but he’ll make an incredibly funny joke that’s witty and timed perfectly. But that might be all that you hear from him in a large group setting. But, if you are in a one-on-one setting then you’re going to have a very robust conversation—very thoughtful, focused, and productive.

Mike shares that he learned a lot from moderating Talks at Google panel discussions

There’s the assumption in the Talks at Google program that moderators should host whatever opportunity is brought to them as long as it stays within the confines of the discussions, to go with the flow if you will. Anyone who has worked with Mike on a Talks at Google panel will notice that he rarely accepts the initial idea as the final product. He's very invested in building off a base idea and making it into something really compelling by expanding it in an engaging way.