You Hired Them. Here’s How to Get the Most Out of Them.

Hiring an external team can be one of the most effective ways to move your project forward. It can give you access to expertise you don’t have in-house, can help you move faster, and can bring a fresh perspective to your toughest challenges. 

But too often, these collaborations fall short, not because of a lack of talent or effort, but because the relationship itself wasn’t set up for success. Misaligned expectations. Communication breakdowns. Erosion of trust. 

It’s a pattern many teams struggle with, but one that’s completely avoidable. 

From our experience, the most successful partnerships all share one thing in common: both sides invest in how they work together, not just what they’re working on. Because ultimately, the success of your external project won’t be defined by the contract. It’ll be defined by the collaboration and trust built along the way. 

Here’s what makes the difference. 

Replace transactional thinking with relational thinking. 

When you bring in an external team, it’s tempting to think in terms of transactions: We hired them to deliver X by Y date. That mindset might work for simple, task-based projects, but problem-solving isn’t a transaction. It’s a relationship between real humans navigating complexity together. 

The best outcomes happen when both sides see each other not as vendor and client, but as partners pursuing the same goal. When that trust appears, the work moves beyond meeting requirements—it becomes about creating impact together. Conversations open up. Assumptions get challenged. Ideas evolve in ways they never would in a purely transactional exchange. 

We’ve seen this shift firsthand. One of our clients put it perfectly when they told their team at the beginning of the project, “We’re all one team.” That simple statement reshaped the entire dynamic. It encouraged transparency, sped up decision-making, and built the trust needed to solve problems quickly and creatively. 

Because when you think relationally, success isn’t just about what gets delivered. It’s about how you get there, together. 

Build mutual trust and maintain it. 

Trust is built in both the big and small moments. It grows in the daily check-ins, the candid conversations, and the willingness to share what’s really happening behind the scenes, whether that’s shifting priorities, new internal pressures, or unexpected challenges. And it’s reinforced in the pivotal moments: when tough feedback is delivered with respect, when deadlines tighten, or when plans need to change midstream. 

In our experience, the strongest partnerships are those where both sides feel safe enough to tell the truth. The best external teams don’t just execute, they think critically, challenge assumptions, and propose better ways forward. That only works when there’s mutual trust to say, “Here’s what we’re seeing,” and confidence it’ll be received in the right spirit. 

Trust, of course, is a two-way street. As a client, you build it by being transparent, responsive, and clear about what success looks like. As a collaborator, you build it by following through on commitments, asking thoughtful questions, and showing that you understand the realities the client faces. 

When both sides consistently invest in trust, collaboration stops feeling like risk management and starts feeling like momentum. 

Create communication that feels effortless. 

If your default collaboration plan is “just email me,” you’re putting speed and clarity at risk. Email has its place, but in fast-moving projects, it’s often too slow, too siloed, and too easy to ignore. A message buried in an inbox for two days can stall momentum, delay decisions, and create avoidable frustration on both sides. 

Successful teams don’t rely on lagging communication. They build real-time connection. Whether that’s with Slack, Teams, or even texting, the goal is the same: make communication fast, transparent, and accessible to everyone who needs it. When ideas, updates, and issues can flow freely, problems get solved faster and decisions happen at the speed of progress. 

Effortless communication doesn’t mean constant chatter, it means clarity without friction. The right tools, rhythms, and habits create a shared space where everyone stays aligned and no one’s left waiting for a reply. 

Because the more touchpoints you have, the faster trust builds. 

Embrace that things will go wrong. 

Let’s be honest: projects can be complex. No matter how well you plan, there will be surprises—technical setbacks, shifting priorities, market changes, or ideas that simply don’t pan out as expected. The goal isn’t to eliminate these challenges; it’s to build a partnership resilient enough to handle them. 

The healthiest collaborations don’t pretend everything will go perfectly. They anticipate bumps in the road and talk openly about how they’ll navigate them together. That proactive mindset turns potential tension into teamwork. Instead of finger-pointing, there’s problem-solving. Instead of defensiveness, there’s curiosity. 

Acknowledging that challenges are part of the process creates psychological safety—the freedom to raise concerns early, admit uncertainty, and pivot quickly without fear of blame. It’s what allows teams to stay focused on solutions, not setbacks. 

Because in the end, the best partnerships aren’t defined by the absence of problems, but by how they respond when those problems inevitably arise. 

Mindset is the real differentiator. 

When you hire an external team, you’re not outsourcing—you’re expanding. You’re bringing in new minds, energy, and expertise to strengthen your own. The difference between a strained engagement and a successful collaboration often comes down to mindset: seeing your external team as an extension of your own, not a separate entity. 

The best outcomes happen when both sides invest equally in the relationship and the work—when trust is built, communication flows freely, and everyone is aligned around a shared purpose. Because in the end, it’s those connections, not contracts, that truly accelerate your projects.