Hello this is Kevin O’Shaughnessy from zombiecodekill.com, and I want to share with you the most valuable lessons I have learned this year.
For the past few years I have found it useful to have a personal goal to achieve each year, and this year has been my most ambitious goal yet: completing a Pluralsight learning path in every month in 2016. Continue Reading
There are times in life where no matter what happens, you feel like a fraud. Where your inner critic says you aren’t worthy or capable of doing a certain task, even if you’re good at it. I asked a few friends to share some experiences of theirs where their inner imposter spoke over their own skills:
“Sometimes when I’m part of a discussion on politics I just say something and shy away”.
“How can I ask for more pay? I’m nowhere near as good as …”.
“I can’t hold a presentation at [some event]. I’m no expert on this topic”.
“I love pair-programming, but hate when I’m typing. What if they realise I need to google simple things? Would they think less of me?”.
“I can’t write blog posts. People will laugh at my lack of knowledge”.
You’ve probably experienced some thoughts along those lines. You doubt yourself with every brain-cell and are afraid someone will call you out for being a fraud. I know I have. You see, those experiences arent from friends of mine. They’re actually my own.
Yet I know I can do all of them, I get feedback from my friends, peers even strangers confirming the value of what I do. Why is it then so hard to recognize my accomplishments?
Working in a distributed team isn’t easy, especially when members are spread across 4 locations. I was recently part of a team that was doing pretty well, but wasn’t functioning as a cohesive unit. There seemed to be hesitance towards pair-programming sessions, even though doing quick Skype calls seemed to be fine. We were relatively open during retrospectives, but were missing out on the deep conversations.
I had a feeling this was a trust issue, and that spending more time together could help. Sitting in an online meeting doing team-building exercises didn’t seem like the best approach, which is when I stumbled over Mob Programming as a way to both get work done, and build up the team’s collective trust and understanding. Continue Reading
I recently wrote about candor as a better way to achieve truly open and honest communication. Candor Inc created the framework of “Radical Candor” as a way to categorize your feedback and communication.
What I didn’t do in my previous post, is dive into how the different ways of communicating actually would sound like. In this post I’ll explore the framework more deeply and also look at an example.
Working in any team environment will involve communication between its members. To really bring the best out in others and yourself, having a culture of where honesty is important. It’s also something almost anybody will verbally agree to. Yet being open and honest in a good way is extremely hard. How often do you refrain from saying something completely honestly because you don’t want to embarrass someone. Or what about the time somebody called you out on something in front of the team? Sure you may have needed that feedback, but what happens to your relationship with that person? What about the team dynamics?
Blunt honesty can not only be harsh, but downright devastating to hear. How then are we meant to move beyond the complications of honest communication and get to a place where our being honest actually provides room for everyone to grow? Continue Reading
Burnout is a difficult topic that people experience in varying degrees throughout their professional and personal lives. Demands from our modern societies take their toll through ever-growing expectations from others, ourselves and what we believe others expect from us. There is a great deal of focus on how we can do more, but not on how to do less. Which is why I was positively surprised about a recent article from HBR which promoted the value of down-time.
Just from reading from the title, you may have already made up your mind about what this article is all about (and you’re probably right). I’d also wager that if I’d said this directly to you, you’d be ready with a response just as I was uttering the last word. But do you really know what I mean? Why did I use those words? The need I’m trying to express? Which assumptions do you have when interpreting my words that lead to the immediate response or feeling you have now? The thing is, you suck at listening, and I do too.
Developers often find themselves in situations where we need to make decisions, weigh in our opinions and persuade others of our views. We often fail miserably by oversimplifying, jumping to conclusions or arguing. Our responses and thoughts are based on our experiences and assumptions. Which is great since it reduces the cognitive overhead of actually listening to each spoken word. Communication isn’t easy, but we can improve drastically by talking less and listening more. Continue Reading
Most developers can master the skill of listening to spoken words quite well. It’s easy to grasp words, run them through the compiler in our mind and spit out instructions. The compiler is based on sub-routines created through our life experiences, ready to give an output based on any input. These sub-routines remove the cognitive burden of weighing and considering each and every spoken word.
We spend our careers learning how to understand communication with compilers, yet struggle to effectively communicate with the people around us. Can we shift our built-in compiler to interpret words and actions in a way that opens us up to more empathic communication? Continue Reading