Of the Importance of Stretching to Become a Great Technologist

At work, you probably have met two types of people: those you work with, and those you deal with. People you deal with are people you need to work with – but it’s really a pain. It’s like a needle in the foot. They never seem to be doing the right thing, you keep repeating them ten times the same thing and you never agree with them.

Then you’re not happy when you come at work just thinking you’ll have to deal with them. You have arguments with them, and your stupid manager just blame you for one bad sentence you said although you worked each and every night of last week.

So unfair.

So what to do ? Well, in most cases you are the one to blame - not them. I’m not saying they’re right and you are wrong, I’m saying you cannot do everything on your own and a great technologist need to put people on his side then leverage the best fromthem. It’s not about politics or kissing ass, it’s about applying your engineering skills to social interactions to make the world a better place through technology.

Here is the most important thing: you need to find pride in doing that.

Don’t think it is just boring stuff and solving technical problems is more sexy. It’s actually pretty cool: a system is a system, does not matter – to some extent – if you are dealing with java classes, pools of servers or team of people. It’s all about understanding what are the goals, the constraints and find an solution. If you’re good at fixing bugs, there is no reason you cannot become good at fixing social interactions. There is a huge amount of value there (see my other post about working as a team).

Most people fail about inspiring others because they focus on the wrong goal. They think they have to prove their proposed technical solution is right, and once others are convinced they will be forever grateful that you have shared your great wisdom with them. It works sometimes, when you are really an expert and they are novice. Both need to admit it too: the type of relationship between - let’s say – a trainee and his tutor at a photographic workshop. But more often then not, following this “share my wisdom” approach turns into an argument. You may think it is a healthy fight. First, let me tell you your manager – this guy who promotes you and gives you more responsibilities - will never think so because he has no idea of what you are talking about and he just sees two kids yelling at each others instead of doing productive work. Second, are you really sure the other party thinks that is an healthy fight too ?

If you are not sure and have more pleasure helping people than beating them up, change your perspective and stop thinking in terms of winning or loosing. Think about moving the person closer to the right solution. The great Budha said: "You cannot guide people, just show directions".

You may not succeed that particular time – but don’t worry: there will be other opportunities in the future to mentor people on coding guidelines or availability principles. It is like stretching: nobody can do a lateral split the first time. You need to be realistic about where people are starting and how far they can go. You want to go every day a little bit lower, in small incremental steps.

If something is wrong while you stretch, pain will tell you immediately and warn you before you get injured. Signals are more subtle in people interaction, you need to actively look for them. For instance if the person keeps interrupting you, he’s probably not very receptive to the quality of the argumentation you may deliver: just let him speak, and wait for another opportunity to answer. Can be a few minutes later, or another day. If they take it personally, switch to different topic: for instance speak about mistakes you made in the past, and just ask them if they think that experience would apply to their case. If people don’t ask questions and you keep talking, they are probably not very interested in what your are saying; focus on delivering your key message instead of going into the details.

Doing that monitoring, and keeping the feedback loop opened as you deliver your technical argumentation is hard: it’s like eating with your left hand while playing ping-pong (sorry: tennis table) with your right hand. Before that becomes a second nature, it’s a good idea to take notes immediately after the meeting while things are still fresh in your mind. Using a voice recorder works too! Another great idea is to monitor interactions between other people; for instance if you see this great guy who is so good at convincing people, analyze his strategy (don’t feel bad – he probably stole from somebody else himself too !!).

In some cases, you will not be able to convince somebody on a critical issue. It’s really important not to let it go, this type of behavior would create completely dysfunctioning organizations where people spend more energy trying to look good than solving business problems.

Again, think about stretching: you need to push the person as far as you can, but don’t enter the red zone. If you feel that you are not going to win, don’t continue down the same path. Switch from a mode where you try to convince to a mode where you just listen and collect information. Don’t be the only one to take the heat, try to involve more people. The Chineses call it “always leave a door opened”.

You’ll need to drive to the end, don’t take people’s time and drop the ball on it. So before you do that, make sure to choose carefully your battles: focus is as much about deciding what to do than what not to do. If that does not make it to your short list, just speak informally to whoever you feel is concerned. They may not decide to work actively on your problem that time, but at least they’ll know about it. If they hear about it a few more times, then it may make it to their own short list one day.

If this problem really bothers you and nobody seem to pay attention to it, take that as an opportunity: maybe you are the only one passionate enough about solving it, and you may get great reward in doing so.