I'm interested in skills from dealing with your own emotions, through communication with close co-workers to high-stakes negotiating.
I'm curious: what are some people skills that you wish you had learned earlier in your career or that you wish your co-workers had easier access to?
Also: what are your favorite books and/or other resources that helped you?
Some important ideas
- Just, get along with people. A bit reductionist but if you don’t place a high priority on getting along with people you certainly won’t learn how. It really is a habit, and it’s incredibly effective to remember the Cognitive Behavior insight that when you don’t get along with someone, you are almost always choosing not to get along with them ... you know exactly what to do to get along with them and just don’t want to do it.
- Conversly, not everyone will like you and that’s ok. You aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. Being ok with that is an important mental tool.
- To crib from 12 steps or The Four Agreements, nothing is personal. DON’T TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY. Even if someone hates you, it’s not YOU per se. It’s their experience of you. It’s not personal.
- It may be fair to say that it’s impossible to win an argument. Getting your way by “winning” an argument seems to come with an unacceptable cost attached most of the time. Try getting good at “yes and” style conversations where you run with the other persons point and build upon it creatively, it tends to make conversations more interesting than debating people. Truly, I find compulsive disagreement to be a boring conversational style.
- Take personal appearance seriously, and view it as an ongoing project too. So many people fall in to the trap of thinking they can avoid dealing with signaling, which is silly, you always are signaling so best take a look at what you are sending out there. I think it is very psychologically healthy to care for yourself, the act is good for you, and you can change how you present yourself gracefully as you age, which people screw up all the time and it makes them look older, somehow, instead of younger.
Small talk, feigning interest in kids, in sports, in wine, in whatever useless dull, pedestrian thing a coworker is into.
I find that anyone who isn't a PhD (or could easily have been if they hadn't gone into industry) might as well be a paper shell. I can put on a mask of civility and charm when needed, but all I really want is to talk to deeply self-aware people struggling with the boundaries of human knowledge.
It's like you try to peel back a single layer of why people believe what they believe and there's nothing there. No reflection, no relevant context, no mirror provided by an intimate knowledge of history or literature ... just nothing.
Nearly every time I work up the motivation to try to really get to know someone who I think I may have judged too quickly I find religiosity, passive consumerism, an unexamined life, something so distasteful that it takes ages before I can do it again.
How do people put up with it?
If you talk to a person, and the conversation is dull, they might be a boring person. If most of the people you talk to seem boring, then you are the boring person.
You bemoan that you find almost everyone a "paper shell". And yet you are the one who has restricted your opinion of interesting people and topics with a PhD attached to it. You dismiss pursuits that have spanned all of human history like sports, family, food, religion as "pedestrian". That is indicative of an incredibly shallow and one-dimensional person. If you "peel back" the layers of people and frequently find nothing, that doesn't mean their is nothing there, it means you don't have the perception or ability to find it.
You say "all I really want is to talk to deeply self-aware people struggling with the boundaries of human knowledge", and those with "reflection" or "relevant context", and yet you seem to have done little to no reflection, have limited relevant context outside your very limited definition of what is interesting, and have little to no self-awareness. You have constructed a fantasy where everyone else is inferior and uninteresting rather than accept the reality that you are likely a dull, uninteresting person who isn't nearly as intelligent as you believe.
I strongly recommend you take a step back, and seriously challenge your current beliefs about your relative intelligence and depth, and ask if the problem is not that others are dull, but rather you are a shallow, uninteresting person without the breadth of interests or life experience to relate to others. Doing so may open up avenues you have closed to yourself previously and help you relate to others more easily.
You know, some people that you would consider simpletons are intensely happy due to their attitude in life and I for one am always interested in those people. People with a drive to explore the world or to make their loved ones happy. To me you sound pretty ignorant if you claim that you can peel back a layer on something as complex as a human mind and then claim to find it empty.
If you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you will learn the things you never knew you never knew. Though you seem to feel like you know what you don't know. And I'd consider that a somewhat boring attitude, although I'd be interested in how you came to feel that way.
One can find interest, happiness and satisfaction by pursuing passions where scientific knowledge may only be of slight advantage instead of the absolute focus.
Being a Musicians, touching the emotions of a whole crowd in a live performance is such a passion. Deeply complex, hugely important, some would say powerful, but science will only be a minor help if at all.
If you find other people boring ask yourself why you are too boring to see the ways they aren't.
Sure there are people that are ignorant, one-dimensional etc. but speaking from anecdote, i've yet to meet someone that didn't atleast had one experience that was interesting to listen too.
Life is too complex to disregard people that easily.
If you try and peel back a layer of what you think is most important, but they don't care about it at all, you won't find anything worth hearing. There's nothing there, because they've probably never bothered to think about it. So find something that they have bothered to think about, and learn what you can about that.
You do have to avoid judging others, though. If you decide someone's interest has no worth, then it's going to be a boring conversation. It takes either empathy, so you can see the world through other's eyes and understand why they're interested in it, or just having a view that any learning is worthwhile.
Is there an objective ranking of those topics? Are some of them universally better or worse?
Some people think so. This causes them to feel disdain for the others who don't share their topics of interest.
Some people are truly awful conversationalists and it is difficult having a flowing conversation with them. I've found that the topic is not the issue. The person's conversation skills are. At times I feel that I am the bad conversationalist, not knowing anything about the finer details of this year's soccer lineup. If I did not try to be interested and engaged in such a conversation, the other person could plausibly find me dull. I get to decide how to proceed and what experience they get to base their judgement on. When I do so, I do sometimes find myself learning a lot about things I knew nothing about, and sometimes pleasantly engaged in a conversation about a topic I would generally consider to be not interesting to me.
"No reflection, no relevant context, no mirror provided by an intimate knowledge of history or literature ... just nothing." These are things important to you, and it is perfectly fine to make this choice on who to associate with. Realise it is a choice, and this does not mean other values are less "important"
2. Realise, that it is impossible for each person to have complete knowledge. We are limited in what we can know and do. Therefore knowledge is distributed. If knowledge is distributed, every single person could have some gift to provide the world (and you) based on their own unique circumstance and history.
The question then becomes: are you paying attention? and is it relevant?
"The use of knowledge in society" written in 1945, makes a compelling case for the distribution of knowledge in society:
It helps with making friends, negotiating, having sex, taking care of your health and overall improves the feeling of well-being. After all, if you perceive the world through mostly logic, it's easy to become cynical or be overwhelmed.
Meditation and psychedelics can help learning that if it's something you wish to invest in. Psychoanalysis as well. They all have different time frames, costs and shapes, so it's worth testing all of them. From several sources, given the huge difference in nature and quality of the providers.
It's a long process anyway, but 10 years in, I found it worth it for myself.
Real life is intensely boring. It is constant grind for everyone, getting food, cleaning, takes most of their time.
I just had to accept it, as it is. Because most people are struggling with getting their life running, not with "boundaries of human knowledge". Then I started accepting my own shortcomings, there is much more daily easy problems to be solved here and now.
Then when you reflect on it, calling it all distasteful is just wrong on so many levels, because when you try to chase "boundaries of human knowledge" you fail at basic understanding of fellow humans.
I feel that way too a lot of the time. When I was younger I was incredibly misanthropic in many aspects of my thinking, and hell ... even though I am less so as I age, there’s a certain realistic cynicism about human motivation that I’ve gained access to that means I actually have a worse picture of people than I did 20 years ago.
All I can say is, first have some empathy for yourself. Stuff is boring. People kinda suck. That realization is not profound and can’t be just willed away.
Second, there may be some aspects of yourself you haven’t developed yet, and if you really engage in developing your own wider potential, you will find commonality with far more people.
No one, no matter how smart, is pure intellect. Wishing all your interactions with people would happen on that level is a bad framework for enjoying people and for a rich human life.
I can think of any number of people who when I first met them I felt I had nothing in common with them, and really just didn’t like them, who became important figures in my life. Seriously.
I think high IQ low IQ or whatever ... any kind of nuerodivergence makes it more of a challenge to relate and empathize with people.
It’s possible to find richness in interaction. People are much less boring than you might think, when you learn how to conduct yourself in such a way that they feel safe talking to you frankly about their experience, their dreams, their passions. People can be ridiculously insightful when you least expect it.
Your challenge is to make people want to talk to you in a real way.
Start by removing the assumption that you are anywhere near as correct or as profound as you quite reasonably think you are. This self picture is an illusion. I don’t care who you are, it is an illusion.
I used to think humility and gratitude were just dumb concepts. You need humility. Not to “bring you down to other people’s level” but to enable psychological health and functioning, and ultimately happiness and connection and to become a more complete person.
I'd also recommend trying to respect that people may disagree with you on what is important. It is quite possible for someone to have examined their life as much as you expect, and have decided that they like religion and consumerism and other things that you dislike. People are different. That doesn't make them less valid as human beings.
You also may want to think about whether people are hiding their true selves from you. It is clear that you judge people for what they tell you. Did it ever occur to you that you may have a reputation for doing that? People may actively avoid opening up to you because of your own attitudes and behaviors. It may be known that conversations with you become mini-trials of their personal values. There is far more depth to most people than they are willing to show to their co-workers, and if you are known for disrespecting that, people will hide their true selves from you.
There is overlap between PhD-level conversations and all of these topics. Off the cuff, if someone talks about kids, you can ask about genetics vs. nurture, what sorts of behaviours the parents have seen at what ages/genders, etc. There's a lot of detailed chemistry in wine making and wine pairing. Sports involve complex game theory. Religion has complex social dynamics and interplay with morality and neurology, etc.
The point being, if you can't find overlap with your interests in any conversation topic, you either need to work on your imagination, or you need to let go of the preconception that there are boring topics with no common ground, which inherently limits your engagement in a conversation.
>Nearly every time I work up the motivation to try to really get to know someone who I think I may have judged too quickly I find religiosity, passive consumerism, an unexamined life, something so distasteful that it takes ages before I can do it again.
Unfortunately in my experience that's mostly true. I'm no bastion of social virtue but I try to give most people a chance.
Usually I'm disappointed but every now and then I get a nice surprise. I've met some people with unique outlooks on life and sometimes that's really refreshing.
I work with a lot of very intelligent people. Most of those are in a different field of expertise than myself, but I find intelligence and a sense of humour really go together.
Try empathy. These are humans too. They have their reasons for living their 'distasteful' lives.
I think it's you who's only got one note on their tune, not everyone around you.
If, in traffic, everybody is honking at you, do you think all of them are bad drivers, or could it be you?
On passive consumerism, unexamined life... I'd suggest trying to understand who it is you're talking to. Sometimes that will be a fair judgement, othertimes you'll find that people are trying their best to earn for their families, look after others and simply want some luxury to unwind before getting back to whatever takes most of their waking hours. However without knowing who you're talking to thats all speculation.
On a practical level, I would suggest you should surround yourself with like minded people. Either work in academia or aim for companies with a higher bar to enter, that should help.
I was a bit like that. Things have happened in my life that made me unable to continue being happy only looking life in one way.
Luckily, I developed hobbies and extra activities that allowed me see how many skills are out there that I can develop and learn from people by just watching and having those simple interactions.
I still like philosophical debates but I find also amazing that some people can influence other people just with smiles and genuine happiness.
Life can be broad too.
Most people have something interesting to say, if they don't share it with you it's either because they're not comfortable with you or not comfortable sharing it in that place. Bob from Accounting isn't going to talk to you about his intricate love of Georgian architecture at the work BBQ.
I used to have a similar attitude to yourself. I have a lot of niche interests that most people I come into contact with have little interest in. I learned that having an interest in building relationships with people not built on interests has a vast amount of value that is not immediately obvious if you are emotionally distant, on the autistic spectrum, ADD or something similar. It wasn't until I purposely and thoughtfully corrected for it in day to day life did I appreciate these other kinds of values that I did not find intuitive to value before.
If you only feign interest, then you are not getting to know someone as they can tell you are not genuinely interested and they will not peel back any layers for you. The fact that the average person doesn't ponder subjects you consider deep does not make them shallow.
Have you ever really tasted wine, with others? tried to figure out the different components? I had a friend tell me a few days ago that grape tannins and oak tannins are felt in different parts of the mouth (tongue vs cheeks); I'll have to check into this. I know for a fact that I taste wine differently than my husband -- we taste sweetness differently and bitterness differently. Why is that? Can it be quantified? What are the dimensions along which you'd want to get subjective ratings if you wanted to map peoples' tastes? We could have a party and taste a bunch of wines and rate them and then do a singular value decomposition to find similarity between different tasters and between different wines; maybe then we could form a hypothesis, especially if we had some chemical data...
Listen, if you want to get nerdy, you can make anything nerdy. Kids = child development, Chomsky's hypotheses about syntax, the fact that babies' noses are designed to get squashed in when they fall on their faces and then designed to pop out (if your kid's nose doesn't pop out you can gently pull it into shape). Evolution, the microbiome, whatever. Gardening -> mycorrhizae, the game theory or economics of mycorrhizae, pollinators, seed banking, GMOs, edible plants, what is a weed. And there is so much in recent science that is bearing out what "uneducated" but knowledgeable practitioners have been saying for years. Maybe it would help to consider your "boring people" as practitioners of arts that you have not been educated in. Or you can work backward from their actions and thoughts to uncover the assumptions by which they construct their worldview, and then put it into a larger geopolitical context.
Or maybe you're just burned out and tired, and need to recover. Your curiosity antennae are turned off.
Good luck.
I see every interaction with someone else as an opportunity to peer into another life. A life I didn't live. A path I didn't take. Even if that path feels to you completely pedestrian, there is still a whole life there that you didn't live.
Even if they haven't examined or reflected on their life, you can (with respect, and perhaps best silently to yourself :-) ).
You can dive pretty deep into kids: educational, behavioral, development etc...
You can dive pretty deep into wine: flavors, style, type, region, economics, science.
You can dive pretty deep into religion, especially if you are interested in the "examined" life. A bunch of philosophers did this, one famous example is Nietzsche.
Make it a challenge to find out one interesting thing about every new person you meet.
I find it interesting that you seem to contrast religiosity with your definition of intelligence. In my experience, the two are not inversely correlated.
Disclaimer: I have a PhD in computer science and I am a practicing Christian, so I'm clearly biased here :)
You really can't find anything in common with someone that you find interesting to talk about?
When I talk to people like this, I hold back. They get the first layer; everyone does. I can sense the attitude and I give them nothing after that.
It is quite possible that is why you see nothing. Nobody wants to show you more.
If not, do that first.
You’re no different from everybody else.
Humor, Modesty and Compassion!
I am a member of Mensa and read ca. 2000 books in the last 30 years. Sometimes I think just like you, although I know it is wrong (and I would never talk about it).
I often meet people who say things like "I find that anyone who isn't a PhD ... might as well be a paper shell." are too shallow and stupid for my taste, and I am one of them. Overconfident, not nearly as clever as they think they are, boring idiots, arrogant. They just think they know, but actually don't know shit about quantum mechanics, general relativity, cohomology, lisp or russian novels and Debussy.
Conclusion: Thinking that other people are stupid, shallow and boring is only allowed if you are a genius - and you aren't. Nobody is. A good life has kids, sports, wine, sex and vodka in it :-)
I prescribe 25 short stories by Chekov and falling in love immediately.
Yikes.
But since we're already here, what I think worked for me (40y old and it's gotten better with age): be yourself. Yep, that old shit. But the why and how is more important. Being 100% sincere with yourself and others will free you of tedious interactions with people who enjoy things you don't. And when you exaggerate in the PhD direction (because trust me, you do) the sincerity will cause feedback loops that will get the interaction to an equilibrium much faster than if any or both parties are pretending.
Discovering what's interesting about someone is an art. The totality of people you will meet have a much wider variety of experience than you could ever accumulate on your own. When I meet someone new, the first thing I try to find out is what it is they have done that I have not, and then I ask them about that. Often, I learn something new and interesting.
In general, people will never realize on their own what you'll find interesting about them, so you have to seek it out actively.
You need to learn how to entertain yourself and start seeing more complexity.
I feel more and more like Larry David in Curb every day.
Alan Kay describes and analyses why the majority of humanity act like you describe in many of his lectures. He answers and explains most of your points. Its hard to recommend these talks, the good bits are spread around 50 lectures. I'll be happy to discuss with you which bits you'll like. A first suggestion is [1][2].
>I really want is to talk to deeply self-aware people struggling with the boundaries of human knowledge.
I love to talk to such people also, so I search for them in the (scientific) crowd and befriend them so we can have those interesting conversations. Please contact me (morphle @ ziggo dot nl) and lets find out if we can have such a meaningful and satisfying exchange.
[1] http://esug.org/data/Videos/Alan%20Kay/StateFarm-Kay-2009-10... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9c7_8Gp7gI
I'd like you to consider that something in your manner of "peeling back" is causing people to block you out
If I get the impression someone has pre-judged me or is generally disagreeable, I don't feed the bear. I just don't care what they think and if looking dumb gets me out of that conversation quickly that is fine by me.
Or alternately, perhaps there is some sense in which that "not interesting" reflects a useful metric, and perhaps some folks might then find it useful to apply to one's self? ;) And such application might be mutual, or transient, or topical, or situational, or ... any of the many things that throttle the attention and empathy of people and groups, unavoidably or otherwise.
I think I know what you mean since I prefer to talk to friends who are genuinely interested in programming and not just a job. Colleagues who are just here for the job I still talk to them but with other topics which I usually learn from as well - as long as you are willing to listen despite what you may think of them.
"why did you find yourself interested in wine?" "what was it like having kids?"
etc. learning to ask very open-ended questions is really helpful here. you don't need to have knowledge of their interests to share in their interests.
I think you may get more out of life with a more open mindset. Things may surprise you. That being said, you value what you value, we don’t have to like it or agree with it.
https://www.holstee.com/blogs/reflections/being-interested-i...
Try to explore a person like you’d explore another world. Consider that this person had just as much time as you in the day, and they filled it up with other stuff. Why did they choose to focus on X, what do they find so appealing about X, what nuances or locations do you not know but they have intimately experienced?
Adult people, after all, did a lot in their life. Why not get new perspectives?
It also seems you don’t do a lot of physical activity, sports, or developing yourself in that way. You may motivate yourself by looking up to people in an area you truly would like to improve in.
“We are all idiots, just on different subjects” - who was that?
In addition, if you haven't found what makes someone interesting or can't conceive of it, you haven't looked past the outermost level. Once I started sitting down with people, setting my ego aside, and listening to what they're interested in, I was way happier and realized that the small world I placed myself in—this artificial bubble of grandeur—was kind of depressing, and pure intellectual pursuits alone aren't enough to live a fullfilling life. You have to find balance.
I trade long diatribes about urban development with meandering tales from the theater industry or discover the background I didn't know existed in the colleage that I've been working with. I'll concede that in a vast, vast minority of cases I can't find a thread to go deeper on. It's usually because they've put up a wall for some reason or another, or their current set of pursuits or passions or romances is just pretty vanilla, and that's okay. Sometimes it doesn't work out, but you gotta explore the human connection. If I didn't take this approach, I would have written off everyone in my life, including one specific developer I know who had a very similar attitude. Through time, I found the value in those people and it's super rewarding to me that they remember my name after a year being gone from a relatively new city. We're just people passing through this world, and everyone has something different and interesting about them... if you let your gaurd down.
Of course all others are "below you" but you know what?
THIS is your blind spot (let this be told to you by people who understand humans much better than you ever will). In science I've seen a lot guys who think like this and the most of them struggle hard to organize their own life.
If you'd be less arrogant you'd see how interesting and fun live can be and how people you now consider "waste of oxygen" might surprise you again and again with their skills and points of view.
I deeply wish that you can overcome this and be happy in your life some day.
If I'm not trying to live up to that standard, at least in how I treat others, or if I'm unable to learn a lesson about peoples potential from that, then I am probably not seeing the bigger picture.
Edit: I find people generally interesting so it's easier for me to find specific people interesting. If you dig a layer deeper and try to figure out why people have that religiosity or consumerism it can be fascinating.
Next time you find someone boring, try to understand what made them this way. And I swear the answers is more complex than "it's capitalism/neoliberalism/consumerism/religion/whateverisyourfavoriteevil, stupid!"
There has to be something even if it is a primal behavior motivated by survival and reproduction.
Anyway, the vast majority of people care about something. Maybe you can sympathize with that if not with their lack of reflection, imagination, and eloquence.
For example : In my team of 6, I am the only one who isn’t married and who doesn’t have kids. The other people almost always talk about their kids, show photos, brag about their achievements - after a while, fatigue sets in. Maybe because I can’t relate? I don’t know.
Wow, so wasting years and years of your life studying texts and churning out reworded content about those texts, instead of having life experiences makes someone more interesting to you?
I always view meeting new people as opportunities to think outside of my own worldview.
One doesn't have to accept or agree to other viewpoints.
Simple. You don't. People like frauds. Even though they fall victims over and over again, they just can't help but like them. You are doing nothing wrong in being what they like you to be.
getting along with people at work generally entails (for everyone) to laugh at jokes you don't find funny, and be ok with behaviours you wouldn't accept from 'friends'. That's life, learning to live with people daily. it's one of the most valuable things you can learn, to get along with people even if you don't like them or have no interest in them.
Just remember being nice and helpful doesn't mean you need to be someone's friend. you can be nice and helpful to everyone you meet and still dislike them or find them uninteresting. it's just making life easier / causing less friction daily.
Look into a mirror, and imagine that the person in the mirror is a different person. Try to discern how that other person feels about looking at and talking to you.
Now imagine that you are the reflection, and that you actually do not exist when the real person is not looking into the mirror. What could you do for your person to keep them looking into your mirror longer, and therefore allow you to exist longer?
Once you have mastered that perspective shift, remove the mirror, and instead stand in front of another person. Imagine that you are their reflection, and they are yours. What would it take for the person and person-reflection that you both are together to be happier in that moment?
There are no NPCs in real life. Everyone wants to believe that their existence has value, even when all they ever do is useless, dull, pedestrian things all day and all night. Maybe they are that way from lack of intelligence or ability. Maybe they once had hopes and dreams of usefulness that were ground down and rounded off by the endless tides of banality and mediocrity, until everything they once wanted to be, or to do, is now beyond their reach. Maybe they discovered that intellectualism was a false promise, and that those who pursued it became lost in self-delusion, believing themselves to be better and more important than others, when in reality they were all just walking slabs of meat that hadn't died yet, just like everyone else.
When someone gazes into the void, they feel that fear--the fear that nothing really matters, that everyone you have ever known or loved or heard about will die, and everything everyone has ever done will be forgotten and lost to entropy. The one thing that salves it for the moment just may be that knowledge that someone out there knows your story, today. If you can submerge your ego, for just a moment, to stand and listen to someone's boring-ass story about some trivial part of their stupid life, without showing on your face or with body language that it is excruciatingly dull, then that person will no longer be empty. You will have put a small reflection of them inside of you, and that might make them happy for a bit. You won't advance the boundaries of human knowledge, but you will make humanity a tiny bit more connected and eusocial.
Is that important? No. Not at all. Everyone you have ever known or loved or heard about will die, and everything everyone has ever done will be forgotten and lost to entropy. Billions of people have lived, died, rotted, and disintegrated, with little more left of them now than a damaged strand of DNA in a fragment of a tooth. And so will you. Any illusion you may have that you, or the things you do, are greater or more important than other people is just preventing you from connecting with those you see as lesser. All that crap you cannot stand in other people--their irrational beliefs and practices--may be their attempt to avoid even glancing at the screaming black maw of nihilism, so it doesn't eat away all their sanity and motivation. They might only be doing it because no one cares to know their story, today. And if you wish to be seen as important, isn't that just your desire to put a tiny reflection of yourself in as many other people as possible?
I put up with people talking about kids and gods and sportsball and food, not because it is important to me, but because it is apparently important to them. I can stand between them and the void, because I'm not scared of it any more. I can help people pretend that their life has meaning, and I don't need to pretend that mine has more meaning than theirs--because zero equals zero. If you only have to peel back one layer to find the empty, is that better than peeling back two, or five, or ten? Is the value of a person in the number of hollow shells they have around their nothing at all? I personally don't need to be considered important or remembered any more. And that makes me boring, because I generally don't talk about myself, or my niche interests, unless someone asks. Nobody ever asks. So instead, I put on a distracting performance, with the existential black hole of the inevitability of utter annihilation by time and entropy as my backdrop.
Get over yourself. You are as individually important as a raindrop in a hurricane. Take the opportunity to dance in the wind before falling back into the ocean.
When life itself has no inherent meaning, what you choose to do anyway becomes performance art.
Your self-examination hasn't yet led you to realize this ain't 'all you really want'?
You're probably projecting. All your hyper-specific interests are intensely boring to ordinary people, so you retaliate by declaring them boring. It maintains your self-image.
People aren't boring, they're extremely interesting creatures that can be studied endlessly. Unlike the other great apes, you can even interact with them with human speech! So many possibilities, yet you're sitting here wasting it all.
You'd probably counter this by saying that looking at people this way is somehow immoral. I'm not going to argue with that, it's a useless argument to have.
> Small talk, feigning interest in kids, in sports, in wine, in whatever useless dull, pedestrian thing a coworker is into.
You don't have to feign interest, just let them talk about themselves and stay polite until you get what you want, which is either that the moment of conversation has passed, or something about them (or people in general) that is interesting. Either way, you're not going to be stuck in the conversation forever.
Childhood behavior in particular is an interesting topic, as is the decision to have (or not have) children. I know, you're not going to have children, but you have a rationale for that. What's that rationale? It's probably something highly misanthropic, outside the overton window of the ordinary person. Isn't it fun to see people's reaction to that? Well, perhaps not the best thing to do at work, but fun nonetheless.
> I find that anyone who isn't a PhD (or could easily have been if they hadn't gone into industry) might as well be a paper shell. I can put on a mask of civility and charm when needed, but all I really want is to talk to deeply self-aware people struggling with the boundaries of human knowledge.
Really? That's what you want to talk about over a coffee break? Come on...
> Nearly every time I work up the motivation to try to really get to know someone who I think I may have judged too quickly I find religiosity, passive consumerism, an unexamined life, something so distasteful that it takes ages before I can do it again.
Yeah, maybe don't be such a judgemental person. You clearly haven't examined yourself enough to recognize that this is a ridiculous attitude. You need to realize that this is a defense mechanism of your brain to save your fragile little ego from getting hurt. The flip side is that if you're overly judgemental, you'll be overly judgemental regarding yourself, as you clearly are.
> How do people put up with it?
Routine.
A way to meet the second part of don't go looking for a fight is to follow advice that's actually a rule here and assume the best possible interpretation of what's being said.
I really love this recommendation.
I was reading reading "the making of a manager" by Julie Zhuo earlier this month (which b.t.w. I personally think is a very good book), in her book she mentioned the book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie (at first I was a bit scared by the title, to me it sounded like a mind control bullshit boot, but it's actually very interesting, I can't definitely recommend it, because I'm only on page 50 or so). But I think the book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" is a good source to learn or just get remembered about the things you mention in your question, like "dealing with your own emotions" or "improving the quality of the communication with your coworkers / team".
For another group of people the complete and opposite advice is the "right" way to go about it.
Trying to live life by other's people strengths and desires will cause a lot more problems than it will solve.
There are also people like Grothendieck who were notorious for insisting on individuality and were the better off for it.
You can also be likeable and follow these steps "naturally" in a group that is closer to your affinity whereas in other groups you are the clear outsider.
Maybe I just don't like these kind of books?
"It may be fair to say that it’s impossible to win an argument." 10/10
Interacting with people is like driving: you have to avoid crashing into others, but sometimes you make a mistake and others will avoid crashing into you. And wear seat belts.
Everyone is complex. There are aspects we're comfortable with and others we are not. So you want to improve the latter and stick with the former as long as they work for you, in a sense they help you achieve what you aim for.
Some aspects of yourself aren't really working in some environments so you would just be an idiot to display them while failing to get the results in life you really want to.
You would not believe how much smoother everything at work is when you learn to recognize early the signs that you're holding on to a bad opinion, or that you're headed towards a fuckup, and just saying it out loud.
The praising / agreeing thing is a bit more complex. I've noticed more recently that people tend to be quick to disagree but remain silent even when they agree with someones opinion.
Specifically calling out when you agree with an idea has some marvellous effects. The silent ones who also agree join in, people who disagree join the fray, and a rough consensus can be reached quickly.
Avoiding judgement of those that have screwed up or have done something wrong, and simply working with them to correct it goes hand-in-hand with this. By the time someone admits they did something wrong, they already know what they did - by dwelling on that you're just wasting time and energy.
I wonder occasionally how many problems there are in the world that have become much bigger than they needed to be simply because the person who messed up knows the news won't be received well, so they keep their screw up hidden. Similarly, I wonder how effectively we teach children this kind of dishonesty by teaching them that honesty results in punishment.
I hate it when people hold something against someone forever, even though they've already admitted fault. If they get punished even if they repent, there's no incentive to ever repent again. They might as well just keep doing bad things because there's no difference for them.
pushing to production at 5pm on a friday is not a reasonable screwup, and I absolutely will let you know if get called in to fix something that should have waited until Monday.
When I was in a 50/50 debate/discussions, in many cases I leaned towards myself being wrong and the other being right automatically...and later would feel discontent with everyone when I turned out I was right and should have pushed harder. But I guess dont know how to be assertive without being offensive or overly brazen about my frustration.
1. Avoiding acknowledging doubts or weaknesses in the position you're arguing for.
2. Allowing a decision to be finalised when you remain unconvinced.
These two behaviours have different outcomes if you take 'outcome' to mean 'who won the debate'. But they're both flawed and they both come from underconfidence.
Confident engineers care about finding the best consensus. They openly entertain doubts in their own position (and happily change their position in front of others), and they also persist with the discussion until they're genuinely satisfied with whatever consensus is reached.
These days I temper my "I'm not certain so we should investigate this" with "but you're not certain either so you're not getting out of investigating it and admitting you're wrong if it comes to that."
You think this or that project is not solving the right problem? Speak up. You think some key result should be achievable with fewer people and sooner than what was planned? Speak up.
I learned this recently, sharing feedback that I was concerned would sound harsh, only to fall on receptive and understanding ears. If anything I should have spoken up sooner/more often!
Your team/startup/etc. will thank you.
> Admitting I'm wrong or that I screwed up (1), and likewise praising others when they're correct or have ideas I agree with (2).
That's what I'm focusing on, now. However, although I always mean it, both (1) and (2) — at least in my ears — sound fabricated and artificial, even patronizing at times, as if I've been trying to manipulate the people around me instead of being a better human.
So, that said... How do you do (1) and (2) properly?
For me, realizing that I ought to behave in some manner is only half of the problem; the other is finding out _how_ exactly I should do that.
What is your goal? Is your goal to be right, or is your goal to feel right? Because those are not the same things at all. When we get attached to our ideas and emotional, it's because we believed we were right, and we don't want to give up that feeling.
But if our goal is to actually be right, then it's super easy to recognize when you got it wrong and move forward.
It also helps to stop thinking of things as 'correct' or not, and look at them as a spectrum of 'less wrong' to 'more wrong'. If you're constantly working your way towards being less wrong, then it becomes really easy to abandon ideas that have outgrown their usefulness.
Get it? This is the whole trick.
I try to make it more meaningful by saying why I agree with or like something in order to clarify the (prefferably shared) values behind my appreciation.
I've also recently used a torrent of appreciation (the Mesita strategy) to build up the self-esteem of a person struggling with self-confidence.
The trick is it has to be honest and at least somewhat meaningful to them (it's not good to compliment someone on things they don't value).
A really over the top example: complimenting a woman in the workplace on her looks. will definitely not be appreciated and these days might get you fired ;)
In other cases you're arguing different aspects of the problem and not realizing it.
I do agree with you though, admitting being wrong is better than being stubborn and wasting time and progress. It is something everyone up and down the chain of command should take to heart, you'll find yourself wasting less company resources, time and energy.
Those who didn't that got a headstart, went further, earned more, took some opportunities that weren't available to me and now, with more money, bigger houses, happier wifes and families, they like to say that they should have acted different in the past.
Doesn't this make you feel good but piss of the other person even though they may be wrong? On the other hand it never wears off if you don't let it out, but the problem is there are lot more peoples opinions to consider other than the person you are dealing with. Its lose-lose situation.
That only works when everyone is (from your perspective) not a bad actor. But how do you deal with an Executive Director who will bald-faced lie and say whatever he needs to say to ensure his deadlines are met and your needs are completely ignored?
My boss taught me how to pin that ED down and get what I need by documenting everything to exhaustion but also by building consensus around the bad actor so his peers were on board with forcing him to comply. I hope to never find myself in that situation again.
Consensus: everyone agrees. Most time consuming.
Vote: have two or more appealing options. Majority wins, but everyone is relatively happy with the outcome.
Consult: get everyone's input, but ultimately you decide.
Dictate: you decide, no external input. Fastest.
If you start a meeting by outlining which process you intend to use it helps. All are valid approaches, and depend on the context of the situation.
I use consult quite often when deciding on a technical direction.
We should start identifying and naming these ploys in categories. The tactics are so diverse and situation specific that the list is too long to be more useful than a bunch of grievances, but their logic that identifies the opportunity to apply the tactic is going to be a very small set.
Is it just asserting counterfactuals and betting on the agreeableness of others and your power relationship to them to become implicated in it?
e.g. 1. "You're going to have this by thursday." Repeat until people stop challenging you because you are unreasonable or insane. 2. tell a third party, "X told me he would have this by thursday." 3. "If you don't have this by thursday Third Party will hold you accountable and I will not help you."
The play seems legitimate because you are driving an issue by getting bigger players to have a stake in the outcome, and making yourself the broker between that power and the delivery team.
As awful as it is, some of this is just the lot in life of being on the delivery side instead of the management side.
I was fortunately(?) well into my career before I really encountered bad actors (somehow, I only worked with decent people, until then), and it was shocking where I finally did find it, which would've been the last place I would've suspected.
Another thing I learned, after the existence of bad actors, is that, AFAICT, there aren't really that many of them. (Well, outside of some pockets, including aspects of business and politics that expect and embrace a cutthroat environment, and in which professionalism involves calculating game theory of relationships and grabbing advantage.)
What's very, very common, however, and I think often mistaken for bad actors, is various kinds of arrogance. Most everyone has at least a bit, in some regards, (I do) and some have a lot.
Another way arrogance and bad actors can get conflated, or the lines blurred, happens when a very arrogant party gets in a mess because of that (imagine a powerful person who gets away with a lot, until they don't), or mistakes someone else for a bad actor, and then bad actor behavior is summoned to fix.
I think that the "how to deal with bad actors" chapter of book is never written or the general advice of "just appease them to avoid them retaliating", then the good actors are not equipped to deal with bad actors.
Well... turns out just because I like to hear feedback or orders directly, doesn't mean everyone else does. Part of why your manager treads carefully is because they have to try and create a shared language across your whole team (and really good managers know how to talk to each of their directs because they know exactly what kind of tone is effective for each of them).
Not everyone is the same. Understand that everyone likes to be treated well, but the way you do that is different. Empathy is an extremely underrated skill to have.
I started examining the times when a boss or co-worker would really piss me off and realized it was because their tone was off. I also realized that the great managers were so good at tone that I wasn't even realizing they were telling me to do something, I just did it as if it were my idea without any of the rank-pulling that goes into being ordered to do something. I think the only way to learn this properly is to watch the reaction of someone when you ask them to do something like a hawk, then adjust your tone accordingly.
The fluffy language itself is just one of the more generic techniques to avoid pissing off your reports, but a great manager goes way beyond always fluffy. In particular, "I'm not too sure about this thing, can you take a look at it?" is like my big red launch button and several managers have found it.
> It's generally a policy to keep pay and pay negotiations confidential.
I know that your general point is about the personal relationships, but I want to point out that this policy is bullshit. You can legally disclose your salary with anyone (including in the US). From my experience in the UK employers don't even try to pull any of these 'policies', although often employees don't go around discussing their salaries simply out of courtesy.That communication is incredibly important.
That the higher up the org chart someone is the busier they are. So what you spend 40 hours a week thinking about they might not spend 45 minutes thinking about. So over-communicate and remind them of important information about the project. Because they will forget lots of important details, and things that are glaringly obvious to you won't even show up on their radar.
How to sell.
Something related that I wish I had learned much earlier: Just because that person forgets the details doesn't mean they don't care or that they're just stupid. Expecting someone several levels removed from day-to-day development to remember the exact structure of that table or how exactly we do dependency injection makes me the unreasonable one.
Respectfully, that's a proverbial crock of trite bullshit perpetuated to game the naive/inexperienced.
If the next level above me couldn't spend at least 45 minutes thinking about the general problem I've been trying to solve in the past week, then that person:
a.) is stretched way too thin (which should be pretty obvious); or
b.) seriously needs to GTFO for the sake of the rest of the team.
P.S. As a de facto (not even official) technical lead on a US$3mil+ project that I've been assigned to, I spend at least 45 minutes a week sitting on a toilet bowl thinking of ways to improve the performance of my team while literally taking a shit. What's your project manager's excuse?
-Be impeccable with your word.
-Don't take anything personally.
-Don't make assumptions.
-Always do your best.
Everyone can do it, but not everyone does it. If you make an effort to actually imagine yourself in others shoes, your boss and your colleagues, and then feel it... Do this especially whenever any negative emotions or uncertainty appear in response to a colleagues actions or words.
I think all of the so called "people skills" are just side effects by comparison. If you empathise, it's genuine, and so called people-skills will emerge naturally. This also goes beyond the mere appearance of people skills, because it will make you better understand the needs behind the demands of others, and make it more likely they take the effort to understand yours when they see you understand theirs (subconsciously).
Like I said, as a premise, it's absurdly simple, but in practice it's a big deal.
Its very difficult to understand the top down view sometimes, or the view of someone in a lateral position. I used to fight against decisions I thought were bad too much. I try really hard to understand their perspective these days- its still a struggle, I am not always successful. To be honest though, instead of getting emotionally invested (and pissed off), its super helpful to say "ok, this is not what you would do. Lets step back and try to understand their circumstances as to why they are doing this?" Immediately everything becomes depersonalized, and its just a system to model and understand how to put your input into it to try and get the outcome you want. My stress and emotional involvement go down, happiness goes up.
I personally found it very difficult to start actively empathizing, but its really helped, and I feel is what will take me to another level in terms of leadership.
Try really hard not to be negative, even when there is reason to be. Try not to be openly negative about the company or a particular employee. It's poison for you and your teammates and makes you feel worse.
Don't get defensive when someone makes suggestions to your code (I still battle this).
Don't base your self worth by other people's compliments. They're nice, but the company complements you every time they cut you a check.
When someone does compliment you, the best reaction is a simple, "Thanks!"
The people you work with are called colleagues, not friends. Sometimes it can hop over, but don't divulge personal information to a colleague that should only be shared amongst friends.
Keep your behavior professional, even if the company's culture isn't so much. Also, never get drunk at company parties.
Drinking at company parties is so on point. If you need to drink a lot, make an appearance at the party and go drinking with trusted friends after.
This is disappointing. Offices are like high school without the fun parts. I think part of what bothers me about work in an office environment is the lack of being human or myself for so much of the day. That probably sounds more dramatic then reality. I do feel like you have to turn off emotion except overly happy.
It's really hard to know when you are one though. Hardly anyone thinks they're an asshole, even when they are, right?
1b. Seize every opportunity to give an honest compliment
2. Look for a way for everyone to win.
3. Build people up and help them succeed.
4. Pick your battles, and only engage in conflict when it’s truly important.
5. You may get upset, but the character you play doesn’t.
6. It only takes a moment to make a good impression but it can take years to overcome a bad impression.
Books:
- Influence by Caldini
- growth mindset
- How to win friends and influence people
- the war of art
- 48 laws of power
- 50 rules for aging
- the like switch
- what every BODY is saying (book on reading body language)
- the prince (Machiavelli)
- art of war (if you only get one idea from this book, it’s that the great general wins without fighting a single battle)
Likewise, offer your opinion as little as possible unless it's positive or you've been explicitly asked for criticism. And even then describe how the thing could be improved, not how it sucked or how much.
Being able to critique things is really important. It's essential for identifying problems, developing good ideas, and improving systems and products and well as people's personal development.
You say to explain how things could be improved rather than talk about the problems with them. The problem with that approach is it's usually important to first identify exactly what the problem is, before coming up with ideas for how to fix it. Sometimes it's not obvious how to improve things. It may take days or weeks to get to that point.
1) Animosity (the person dislikes you)
2) A broad description of a mistake
3) Different taste
Only (2) can be somewhat useful, although (3) is permissible sometimes I guess. Often the person already knows he might be doing something wrong or not good enough; simply pointing it out leads nowhere, knowing what not to do still leaves unancessibly vast possibilities.
It seems much better to directly (and probably privately) suggest alternatives, offer solutions, etc.
I like this opinion piece about this:
http://fanaro.com.br/negative-language-why-you-should-avoid-...
Diverging should be discussed under some circumstances though, specially if you clarify your rationale (or when discussing unconsequential things like foods and such).
Overall pointing out solutions and affirming good values, qualities, outcomes if much more useful (and has the bonus of being charitable, even affectionate).
There is absolutely such a thing as knowing how not to be asshole about negative opinion, but never saying it in the long term harms projects.
Now I teach the social and emotional skills underlying leadership, entrepreneurship, and initiative at NYU (student reviews: http://joshuaspodek.com/this-is-one-of-the-greatest-classes-... and videos of them describing the courses: http://joshuaspodek.com/nyu-students-speak-joshua-spodeks).
I made book versions of the courses. Amazon makes the first chapters of each available free, which goes into more detail on what I learned and its value:
Leadership Step by Step: https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Step-Become-Person-Others/...
Initiative: https://www.amazon.com/Initiative-Proven-Method-Bring-Passio...
The basic idea is that love and affection are not just feelings, but actual skills that need to be learned and cultivated.
It also introduces the distinction between being lovable and being loving.
HWIP largely teaches how to make yourself lovable, whereas the Art of Loving teaches the theory behind actively loving and embracing other people. I think it's a vital skill to have in any area of life, including business.
So no matter how much you disagree with them, from their perspective it makes sense and is ethically correct.
2. Most people are in perfect agreement on most things eg. Motherhood and Apple Pie are Good Things.
Most conflict arises from differing priorities being assigned to various "Good" things.
3. There are precisely two things and ONLY two things you can change in this world.
What you do and how you react.
No matter how important it is, those are the only two things you can change.
I've learned, you need to uphold your teammates, make friends and allies.
Lonewolf teams are only ever as productive as one person. Large companies, Intel, Google, want you to act as a multiplier, not an asshole. After all they are paying everybody, not just you. If you are perceived as individually great but rotten in a team, you are simply perceived as rotten in a team.
Learn to make your team and everybody in it look good and you will see your greatest successes.
Honestly and simplicity are the best policy. Don't bs, don't overpromise, own up to your failure, and follow-through on the things you say you'll do (and it will be easy to do this if you are honest about what you can / can't do)
Favorite book: 7 Habits of Highly Successful People; the title sounds like a business book but it's really about how to be a better person / friend / parent / colleague / etc
To extend upon that, I think listening is important in order to understand what people actually mean by what they say. Just because what they are saying is imperfect doesn't mean that the actual point they are trying to get across is invalid. I've noticed that people spend effort coming up with the next response that they only bother to argue against the surface of what the other person is saying without taking into account the actual substance and intent.
Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
Compliment other people and good ideas.
I've become conscious about things like mansplaining and talking over people.
Don't let technology get in the way of human interaction.
When you do something offensive (it happens, even if rarely), apologize.
Speaking of musicians, I wish I had learned to play music. Every place I've worked there have been some very talented musicians working there and I wish I had the skills to play with them.
I currently keep an electric guitar in my office and picking it up and playing (unamplified) is a great way to break my concentration when I'm stuck on a problem. I still can't really play though...
I continuously struggle with how to present that to a non-technical person. Being direct almost always invokes a self-defense response, usually redirecting towards a [legit] inadequacy of the speaker (which is fine, that needs to be received). But for the problem at hand, it is neither helpful nor my intention: I was trying to solve a problem in the best interest of everyone. It seems the response of most technical people in this situation is to just avoid it all together.
Some stakeholders and managers don't understand software, the importance of clean code, and how insidious feature creep can be. They are used to a world where strict deadlines are necessary to keep people accountable.
There's no changing people like that. There's only choosing your battles and doing your best to (politely) contain them.
See the book,"The Economics of Self-Destructive Choices": https://www.amazon.com/Economics-Self-Destructive-Advances-J...
Research keywords: "intertemporal discounting"
Wholehearted acceptance of people; their motivations and fears; their habits and aspirations. When I am able to exercise this superpower (which does not happen often), I am able to open them up and change their trajectory. And in process, I myself learn and grow.
I find often when I've been difficult and uncooperative it's because people have been not quite so accepting.
I guess I've typically felt like the "weird kid" (as many of us technical people have growing up) and if you make me feel like that again I really, really don't like it.
Also get to know your boss' boss. Make sure they understand your value to the company. Don't be afraid of them.
Lastly we all fall into groups and many times it's a battle between dept a and dept b which is useless. Get to know people outside the group you identify with.
Another example is RIFs (reduction in force). An executive in IT gets a bonus for cost containment by not hiring appropriately. This leads to longer hold times, poorer service techs, and less training. Overall it costs the company more time lost and wasted effort, but this isn't tracked, only bottom line. The exec gets his bonus for cost cutting and the company gets less efficient and effective for it.
This is a major problem in large corporations and why CEOs are really useless employees in most cases, and almost universally overpaid compared to results. Generally a company could do without a CEO it choose one at random and get the same results.
Another way to look at it is that there's always a perfectly good reason _from a certain perspective_.
I also wished I had learned to be assertive to sensitive people. In the military world honesty is king. If you hold on to sensitivity in conflict to honesty you absolutely will not advance. In the corporate world kindness is far more important, even if that means lying to people. This is sometimes understandable in purely social contexts, but not in product or engineering discussions. Bad ideas are bad ideas. I wish I learned to take the kid gloves off and simply be more honest about really bad decisions in the corporate world instead of being tacit or accepting. It’s hard when you really want to be a team player but some people’s number one priority is face-saving behavior and find disagreements grotesquely disgusting.
- Give glowing, public praise to the work and behavior I want to see more of, rather than complain about what I want to see less.
- Perform the necessary rituals with a smile, and not reveal any worry about their lack of purpose / fitness for purpose.
- Use videoconferencing only for presentations, never for substantial interactive discussion. (Travel, make the decision locally, or write documents).
- Be away from my desk when I cannot tolerate interruption, rather than risk a curt or dismissive response to a tap on the shoulder.
- Do not mention small problems to people who overreact (but do mention big problems when you need airstrikes).
This as a habit explains a lot of unsavoury corporate behaviour. ;)
(I may have been a B52 pilot in the past, indiscriminately bombing left and right)
- Understanding that emotions drive people often much more than logic. And that many people already know this and temper their communication based on the emotions it will provoke. And that participants in a conversation can know this about others and infer more than what is said by them.
The first time I was able to read into a conversation between a few others and see that their (apparently irrational) discussion was really a different form of communication built on top of theory of mind was mindblowing for me.
- The corollary of the above is learning how to use a sense of people / theory of mind to more effectively disagree. Either focusing on not creating a barrier when disagreeing. Or focusing on effectively convincing the other party based on pathos in addition to logos.
I found the following most helpful while learning this:
1. Podcast: Career Tools / Manager Tools.
2. Book: "Secrets to Winning at Office Politics: How to Achieve Your Goals and Increase Your Influence at Work" - Note, she quickly redefines 'winning' as 'benefiting both yourself and the organization'. I thought it sounded slimy at first before I read that.
But I also have ADD. One of the symptoms of ADD is poor impulse control and rejection sensitivity which leads to issues with "emotional intelligence." So I would advise anyone, if you suspect you may have adult ADD, talk to a physciatrist and figure it out. Fixing underlying mental health problems will improve your professional and personal life!
Then I realized my kid had an attention disorder and decided to research it. I realized I fit the description as well. I discovered this is often passed from parent to child and I had no idea how to navigate this myself or how to help my kid... Who I gave this thing to in the first place.
In the short years since I figured this out, talked to professionals about it, and generally started setting myself up for success instead of living moment to moment running from failure... Things have changed such an incredible amount. ADD will never go away, I'll always be like this, but now I have some sort of foundation and understanding to work from. I'm motivated to overcome it so I can help my kid, too. There's no way he can have the experience I did.
It's so worth talking to someone. I suspected something was wrong for 10-15 years and never did anything and I seriously regret it. What if I had an extra ten years of being aware of this thing? Would my family be happier? Would I own a home already? Would I be happier and have better self esteem? Probably yes to everything. Don't delay, take care of yourself.
> Fixing underlying mental health problems will improve your professional and personal life!
To what degree these are fixable though? I've always though of these as just people having different personalities and tempers, out of which some are unfortunately very hard to live with. I'm not sure if we can change our personalities to a significant degree. Happy to be proven wrong though!
I didn't mention it as I knew she had had a miscarriage and dint want to risk saying something and then her lose the baby.
- Being trustworthy and getting along with workmates is sometimes more valuable than being a favorite / teacher's pet to a manager. You ideally want to be amicable with both.
- Say nice things about your colleagues when they accomplish things
- It's okay during interviews to ask for time to show and tell projects, talk about your experiences. There's no rule written in stone to follow their format to the point you can't showcase strengths directly related to the job description.
Things that you can do that don't help you always:
- Being proactive: Taking responsibility for preventative things when not asked to. I fixed / averted many headaches that have gone totally unacknowledged over the past decade+. Here's the thing: I'd feel dishonest / unprofessional to not be proactive if something is breaking CI loops, typings, etc. It's hard for colleagues / managers to see the value until you wait for it to be a blocker.
This is frustrating to me, because I haven't found the solution to reasoning about it. I don't like the idea of waiting for a problem to rear it's head and all developers are blocked by a problem.
Things to not do:
- Don't bring up any political discussion with colleagues, including outside work. No matter how moderate, harmless you think your viewpoint is. It can only do damage to you, never help.
- Even in unfair situations, e.g. it's untenable and you need to end the relationship, to take the route to ending it amicably as possible. Say you're moving to the next place.
Whenever in doubt / under stress: default to being professional as possible.
- if your bosses boss doesnt understand/know of how to resolve a conflict that is making a fleet of people unhappy, and they are backing the person causing the conflict (in my case, a person that takes credit for everything everyone did by frontrunning their work to them), just leave. Dont wait too long, it doesnt get better.
- your career is important, and make it align with your boss'. If you do, he'll back you up. If he feels threatened, he will wear you down. If your boss is not a competent person, this is the only way to survival in such an org.
- you cant usually change people, the ones that are willing to admit their mistakes and want to improve wilk usually be very obvious. Lean on them, learn from them. Run away from the ones that wont ever change.
- things usually dont get better, be careful, learn to move on.
Aside from picking my battles, I am just myself. Never read a book about it and I am pretty skeptical about them in general. We have several psychologists, mostly training sales people, but I wouldn't say most of them are very proficient in being "people persons", only for people that fail to notice a lack of authenticity. That is a self reported assessment by themselves.
We connect some arbitrary skills for being in a leadership position. In an American culture a leader has to be confident and that fact is pretty much treated as a dogma. But how can you have respect for anyone that dances like a monkey may be a question that comes up in other cultures.
It seems to be often just about your character traits being fashionable. Many people can read a person after a while, so disguising your character won't always help you anyway.
There is very little advice on what to do when you have not done mistake but someone is still trying to convince you or others so. Or when difference of opinion is casted as your mistake. How to recognize that situation.
2.) How to recognize when people bluff and pretend knowledge they don't have.
3.) How to promote yourself without becoming asshole. Again, I read all that be humble advice and it fired back.
4.) All in all, I would like to have more realistic advice about communication and not the overly naive "be humble, nice and admit mistakes and everything will be rosy".
5.) Right now, I would like to know how to deal with manipulative sociapath/narcissist.
* The Ultimate Sales Machine - Chet Holmes - good even if you're not in sales
* The Effective Executive - Peter Drucker - Great book overall
* The Phoenix Project - good for understanding project flows and silos.
* Thinking in Systems - good for how to set up processes so that even if you step away the job still gets done. Essential for getting promoted, no one can promote you if you're impossible to replace.
If you say everything like a Gospel truth, even when you're just brainstorming, the two end-states I've found are constant argument or constant acquiescence, and neither one is healthy for collaboration.
Conversely, if you always hedge your opinions, even ones that are against your moral code, you may end up unhappy, doing some unsavory stuff, etc.
A book that goes through this in detail is "Opening Doors To Teamwork and Collaboration". They have a very jargon-heavy approach to it ("notion", "stake", "boulder", "tombstone"), which I don't agree with, but the concept is important.
You always come out ahead when you apologise.
He didn't give a shit what anyone thought, he was such fun to be around even if it embarrassed the hell out of you sometimes.
I think “not caring what others think” gets too much credit, honestly. It’s fine to care, because that also brings joy, for example I bet your uncle was damn proud that you liked him so much for whom he was :) that only works if you care. Which I’m sure he did.
Allowing yourself to be vulnerable in public is a laudable skill.
Lately I've been extracting audio from YouTube videos and shadowing, this helps. Spoken fluency is mostly muscle memory, I think.
I spent way too much of my early career being that prima donna asshole who would show up when they felt like it.
I'm a bit older/wiser now, I apologize to anybody who had to work with younger me.
I now genuinely love being proven wrong. Smarter everyday and all that :-)
A lot of times I just don't even debate with whoever doesn't want to listen.
Non-Technical: Learning to speak the Will-to-Power language of executives; coded Power-Talk and all that. Once you start getting to the Senior Manager / Director / VP level whole battles are won and lost based on being able to play their games. I got burned a couple of times before I caught on, and lament not picking it up sooner.
# Assertiveness:
Alberti, R. E., & Emmons, M. (1995). Your Perfect Right. San Luis Obispo, California: Impact Publishers.
Paterson, R. J. (2000). The assertiveness workbook: How to express your ideas and stand up for yourself at work and in relationships. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.
# Anger Management:
McKay, M. & Rogers, R. (2000). The Anger Control Workbook: Simple, innovative techniques for managing anger and developing healthier ways of relating. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.
# Social & Emotional Intelligence:
Bilsker, D., Gilbert, M., & Samra, J. (2009). Antidepressant Skills at Work: Dealing with mood problems in the workplace. Retrieved from http://www.comh.ca/antidepressant-skills/work/workbook/pages....
McKay, M., Davis, M., & Fanning, P. (2009). Messages: The Communication Skills Book. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.
# Some High Level Take Home Messages
- negotiate your own behavior
- everyone is doing the best they can
- communication is goal oriented
- humans make more sense when we understand the hidden variables
- it's possible to use social skills and to be authentic
I built https://socialarts.club as a side-project for my own use; it might someday be useful to others once I have added privacy measures.
If I could have learned one thing earlier on, it's how to be more serious. It's hard to be the chill, no worries guy and also the guy to be taken seriously and not be crossed.
1. Taking responsibility for one's mistakes.
2. Knowing how to actually apologize for a mistake, and when to do so.
3. Actually learning and improving from those mistakes.
The ability to say "That was my fault, I apologize for it, and I will correct it and make sure it doesn't happen again" is something that is seemingly lost on a lot of people.
Instead, most will tend to deny responsibility, deflect blame, put it on someone else, argue that other's do the same thing so why can't they, and more.
It's a child's strategy, and is very transparent to the adults in the room. It is also maddening to see people, especially those in positions of power who should set a better example, get away with it on a daily, if not hourly basis.
They do an amazing job of condensing down a lot of material into very succinct and digestible lessons (aka missions). Everything is also referenced so if you want to deep dive into a specific topic you can.
The whole course is short enough to finish in an afternoon, or can also be broken down in 20 minute slots.
For most of my work life (20+ years) I suffered from severe anxiety that led to fits of anger, resentment, self pity.
After facing enough consequences (being fired, quitting in anger) I finally looked at myself hard in the proverbial mirror and asked for help and went to therapy.
My favorite books are from Jocko Willink: - Extreme Ownership - The dichotomy of leadership - Discipline Equals Freedom
Mainly leadership books that I use to be better at leading myself.
1) The purpose of talking to people is not to figure out the right answer. The purpose is to figure out the next thing we can all agree is a decent idea.
2) Almost no one has bad motivations. When I think someone is trying to be a jerk, I now realize that I am probably misunderstanding a person who doesn't know how to be nice in a way that works for me. Probably, the person thinks he or she is doing the best they can.
3) Everyone is fighting battles, internal and external, that I cannot see. It is always right to be generous and sympathetic.
Seriously, if there's one thing I could tell my 18 year old self, it would be to learn to meditate and trust in the process. I tried very unsuccessfully to start a few times (guided meditation really isn't my jam), but quickly formed a habit once I found what works for me. It has been seriously life changing and has improved my relationship with myself and others at work and at home.
Giving credit where due, particular to more junior colleagues when they have made a good contribution to a team effort.
Speaking in a more straightforward way - I'm English, and it's common for us to speak indirectly and suggest stuff, rather than say it outright, but I'm working in a mostly non-native English environment, and it has lead to issues once or twice.
So always think twice before speaking, and if so, speak wisely.
The other one, tho related, is to never lose your temper. Never ever. This can get you in so much trouble that it is basically suicidal.
The satisfaction of a little rage is never worth the cost.
Also, Robert Greene's The Laws of Human Nature.
(Now, if it's more than a rare occurrence that's a problem, but sometimes, some people will be angry at you. And that's OK).
I think I learned this best in workshops on effective communication, where we could role play.
"Each person you are talking to or walking by is as important to themselves as you are to yourself. Everyone is the hero of their own story."
It is easy to get intellectually, but to really internalize this leads to empathy and understanding.
How to Win Friends and Influence People
And many others...in particular books written in foreign languages, which I cannot share here due to linguistic barriers.
Don't worry too much about doing the perfect thing or building your product the right way. Whatever organization has hired you and your peers is by definition less knowledgeable, critical, and aesthetically sensitive than you are. Their goal isn't the "A-to-B" thing that you might think it is, because they don't really know what "B" is. Their goal is more like: hire some people, keep them happy, do some things that have a chance of bringing in money, and hopefully keep the lights on long enough to hire more people and take more chances at bringing in money.
However valuable "B" might seem, it's still finite. Comparatively speaking, culture and morale are infinitely valuable because they can get to so many other places than just "B." Whatever shortcomings you perceive in your implementation of "B" are at the end of the day are shortcomings of your team, and if there was a shortcut to get a perfect result out of imperfect people then capitalism as we know it would have already collapsed into something else. The only way to improve "B" (or "C" or "7" or "^" or whatever you do next) is to improve the team that's already there.
So relax. Have fun with the people you're stuck with. Try to do things better, sure, but don't blow out the engine trying to win the day's race.
Read Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse.
- If people under you on the org chart are being friendly with you, laughing at your jokes, etc., it is partly due to their desire to get ahead in their careers.
- Every person is the hero of his/her own personal struggle. This self perception explains a lot of human behavior.
- If you are managing people and you don't think you can fire someone because your own boss would not be supportive, then you will never succeed as a manager in that company. Find a new boss.
- The more a startup becomes successful, the more it will attract Slytherins and the more hostile it will be to Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs. This is not a value judgement about the different houses, just an important reality to keep in mind.
- When hiring, the "weekend test" works very well. Would you want to spend a weekend in the office working alongside this person?
- Be upfront with people about their own personal goals and time horizons. Collaboration can exist when everyone's incentives line up, but that doesn't entail that everyone's incentives will always line up. Being honest about this will make people feel respected.
Trust your gut feelings about people, they are usually right.
Figure out what kind of work culture you want to work in, and do your best to make your job match this culture, or find a new job that is a better match.
Invest in your friendships, and develop habits and hobbies that let you continue to make new friends even once you start to settle down a bit.
Read books like "How to negotiate anything" and "Impro" to better understand the way interpersonal dynamics influence negotiations and the perception of a person's behavior.
If you are a thinker, spend time cultivating the ability to listen to your own feelings and to use your emotions and hunches as valuable input into your more rational decision processes.
Realize that your mind and body are one and that you will be more complete if you treat your body well (food, exercise, sleep).
Leadership is a force, not a title. Regardless of the situation or who is officially in charge, bring leadership to the world wherever you go. This does not mean bossing people around, it can mean many things depending on the context.
edit: not sure why this got downvoted, maybe something I said struck a nerve. I'd be curious to find out what it was rather than just have this downvoted.
Don't yell and judge the fuckups, unless someone does the same mistake over and over again. The only one kind of person does no mistakes - the one who dosen't do anything.
Try to help people around you, sharing knowledge etc. It makes everything go smoother.
Tl;Dr Be professional, keep calm, and leave your prejudices at home.
Work shouldn't affect(nor care) about your private time, and vice versa.
Machiavellianism(manipulate/deceive others)
Psychopathy(lack of remorse/empathy)
Sadism(pleasure in suffering of others)
Narcissism(egotism/self-obsession)