Since I worked in IT most of my life, from Townley Hardware, to AT&T, Xerox, and BlueKC – I worked with many very task-oriented individuals. I often share that the task-oriented, while typically experts at what they do, have a ‘blind spot’ when it comes to working with people. I encourage the task-oriented to travel over to the people side from time to time – smile and say ‘hello’ and exercise patience even when their client has made that same error or forgotten that same command for the 15th time. For the rest of us – we can relate better to the task-oriented by making every effort to follow the procedures they’ve created, burdensome so they seem! Perhaps we can research how to do something, or look at the instructions they’ve provided, rather than ‘bug’ them immediately.