Unfortunately, one morning, I read a message from our lead developer and my good friend, Pietro, saying that he most-likely would not be able to attend weekly team meetings with us anymore, because he was starting new full-time job in a different timezone within his already crazy schedule.
My heart sank.
But Pietro said he intended to continue managing the code base and other aspects, as well as supporting the team during times he has available, and to continue our sporadic communication via Slack.
He said “I want to keep contributing and [helping] Ugeddit grow”
“Writing this to you is also a manifestation of what I’ve been learning with Ugeddit and especially with you so far: to get better organized and effective with my life so that I can bring my most valuable contributions to any context I happen to be in”.
That’s when I smiled, but underneath that smile was tension and resistance, and I wanted to find any possible time we could shift around on our end or on his end that would make regular meetings work, because the team seeing someone’s face and hearing someone’s voice on a regular basis keeps them present, alive, and relatable in their life, and they share meaning beyond words.
During this conversation, I may have slipped into an old habit I used to have of “interrogating” people with a barrage of questions, and using sarcasm to lighten the mood, but that can actually make things worse when it’s not at an appropriate time, especially if they use sarcasm differently than I do or interpret it as passive-aggressive.
Pietro was open and pointed this out to me, and because of that, he helped me notice. I remembered Kerry Patterson’s Crucial Conversations technique, and I stepped back to remember my intention for the conversation, which I told him authentically and right away.
I said “Okay, so stepping back, my intention is to find out any spaces that you might be pre-disqualifying which actually can work for you.”
This helped us reset and when he explained his schedule, all I could say was “Phew, that’s a crazy schedule”.
He said “It is intense [Haha]”.
Then, I explained the purpose of my intention was that team meetings are important for us to feel connected with each other and “alive” in a sense to the whole team. He said “I was impressed we were able to [maintain our regular meetings] this far to be honest 
“.
I said “…I’d pretty much fail at the whole point of Ugeddit if we couldn’t. But we did [it]…”
And we made it through that conversation as well, showing the progress not only I’ve made as a communicating person, but also Ugeddit as a team, because this is what we’re all about: communication, understanding, and teamwork!