Beyond Writing Code

Tag: helping others

  • Why people do what they do

    Why people do what they do

    Originally posted 30 August 2023 on Medium.

    I’m a huge fan of the DevOps Enterprise Summit, (now called Enterprise Technology Leadership Summit). Disney’s Jason Cox (Head of Global SRE) is a fine speaker and storyteller, and my favorite Disney character. His presentation on Creating Digital Magic gave me a lot to think about.

    Go check it out now, if you’d like to, because I’m about to give some spoilers.

    I’ll wait. [humming a little tune to myself]

    Registration is free, and it gets you ten free videos per month, which is a pretty good deal. It gets you on the IT Revolution mailing list too, of course, but I actually like what they’ve been sending me, so I don’t mind.

    Okay, so you’ve either watched the video, or you’ve decided you don’t mind the spoilers. There’s more to the talk than this, but here are Jason’s three main takeaways:

    1. Listen.
    2. Have empathy.
    3. Actually help people.

    Hooray! Wait…

    My first reaction was to cheer. Yes! So many people in tech need these lessons. I’m sure we can all imagine working relationships, past or present, that would be utterly transformed in positive and uplifting ways (or at least made tolerable) if they embodied these three principles. We could stop wondering if we’re talking to a wall, an ogre, or both. We could get some real work done. We’d be happier.

    My next thought was: wait… do we really need to tell people to listen, be empathetic, and help?? Shouldn’t that just be a given? As a friend of mine says, “we’re trying to have a society here, people.”

    People are baffling sometimes. Photo by Chris Arthur-Collins on Unsplash

    What have we come to as an industry, or as humanity, that we need a leader from a major company to get up on the main stage at a conference to tell us that we should be kind to each other? Great message, but kind of awful that it’s so needed.

    My third thought: does telling people something like this actually help?

    Given everything I’ve heard about the community that has sprung up around the DevOps Enterprise Summit conferences, I imagine that a fair amount of Jason’s audience already behaves in the way he’s exhorting people to consider. I suppose it’s pleasant, for someone who already puts effort towards listening, empathy, and helping to hear a champion of those principles speak about them with enthusiasm. I’m sure there’s an element that believes they don’t behave that way, when in actuality they do, and I suppose the message could motivate those people to try harder.

    But what of the people who already aren’t listening, being empathetic, or helping? Do those people actually hear this message and think “you know… he’s right, I really ought to try that”? And if they do think that, is just telling someone this (granted, in a heartfelt and well-presented way) enough to get them to change their behavior?

    Underneath it all for me is this deeper question…

    Why do people do what they do?

    There’s a huge hazard, one that trips me up all the time. The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to chalk up someone else’s actions to something inherent to that person, but one’s own behavior to external factors.

    Some relevant examples:

    • They didn’t listen to me because they don’t care. I didn’t listen because I was distracted by an urgent issue that came in.
    • They aren’t empathetic with me because they’re egocentric and childish. I am not empathetic with them because they’re giving me attitude all the time.
    • They don’t help because they’re lazy and incompetent. When I don’t help, it’s because I’m busy and overwhelmed.

    We make up stories about other people all the time (“that look she gave me means she’s nervous”) and if we’re not careful, we take them as reality. The fundamental attribution error creeps into these stories and influences the narrative we write. Add to that any other reasons we might be defensive and ready to blame others while exonerating ourselves — e.g., looming deadlines, personal financial woes, traffic jams — and we’ve got a potent combination for believing others to be awful and oneself to be an innocent victim, neither of which are especially useful conclusions.

    Just telling people — even yourself — to do something is generally not enough. If you want behavior change, you’ve got to work out a plan for it.

    In other words, “great, Leaf, but what do people DO about it?”

    What to do

    Here are a few things I’ve tried in the service of breaking the habit of telling fundamental attribution error stories:

    • I have a sign taped to my monitor that says, among other things, “Is this true, or a story?”
    • I’m starting to use being angry or upset as a warning flag that I’ve got a story going on. It’s useful to tune into signals from the body if you can. I’ve spent decades being a floating head, so I get it if that’s hard.
    • The phrase “that’s one possibility” is helpful here. Or try my dad’s favorite: “Is that so?” Both are good litmus tests for spotting when you’ve got a story instead of a known truth.
    • I just finished Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick’s book Agile Conversations, which suggests a practice of deliberately considering alternate explanations, including some ridiculous ones to get the ideas flowing.
    • I try to figure out under what circumstances I might exhibit the behavior for which I’m criticizing someone else.

    Let’s try an example.

    They don’t help because they’re lazy and incompetent! Hey, I’m angry here, my jaw is tight and my hands are clenched. This might be a story I’m telling myself. So… yes, lazy and incompetent is one possibility.

    Maybe they don’t have enough people to handle the workload. Maybe I wasn’t clear in my request for help. Maybe they somehow heard a message that this wasn’t urgent, so they’re prioritizing more urgent work. Maybe they are fending off a zombie attack and I’ll be lucky if they can help at all.

    What has caused me to not be helpful to others in the past? Well, I sometimes get requests from people who don’t realize that I’m out of the office, so maybe a key person is on vacation. I keep getting stuck in meetings, which gives me less time to help; maybe they’re getting pulled into too many meetings. And hey, sometimes people are simply asking for something unreasonable. Could it be that my request is not as reasonable as I think it is? Maybe I’d better check into that.

    Where I landed

    Right then. Jason’s three takeaways — useful, or no?

    I’d like to see more speakers go past explaining their ideas to suggesting things to try. But just the same, I’m going with yes, his talk was useful for me. It got me thinking about how we determine why people do what we do. It led me to articulate some things I’ve tried to bring more depth to my conclusions and go beyond accepting the first and likely problematic story that comes to mind.

    Have you caught yourself telling yourself stories? Have you noticed times when you’ve made the fundamental attribution error? What might you do differently, or what have you already done or tried to do, to listen more, be more empathetic, or actually help others?

    New p.s. for 2025: I’ll be at Enterprise Technology Leadership Summit in Vegas in September. If you will too, come find me there.

  • Why Everyone Else Knows More Than You Do, and What To Do About It

    Why Everyone Else Knows More Than You Do, and What To Do About It

    The developers you work with know stuff that you don’t, and you know stuff that they don’t. Obvious, right?

    So why does it seem like everyone else knows more, and you’ll never catch up? Why does it seem like you’re a little kid on a tricycle, trying to pedal faster while the big kids zoom by on their bikes?

    This is how I feel sometimes. Not shown in photo: all the big kids on their big kid bikes. Photo by Tommy Bond on Unsplash

    The answer is that it’s true: everyone else you work with does know more — collectively. Taken all together, everyone else knows more than any one person does.

    The mistake you’re making is the subtle assumption that if one person in the group knows something, everyone else — or at least most people, other than you — must already know it too.

    Let’s say someone asks a networking question, and you don’t know the answer, but one of your colleagues does. Then you’re having trouble getting API authentication to work, and one of your colleagues advises. Another developer helps you with a thorny NodeJS issue. Someone else teaches you how to fix a build failure. And another colleague whips up a quick script to get you some data you need. After a while you start to worry if you are the least knowledgeable person in your group… your company… maybe ever.

    Everyone else is on their tricycles too

    Here’s what you’re not seeing: Your network-savvy colleague might have been the only person on the team who could field that question. It’s not true that just because one person knew that, everyone else did. Also, that network pro might not have a clue about API authentication, or Node, or build failures, or scripting.

    Even harder to see: you definitely know things others on your team don’t, and I’m not just talking about your bank account password or the name of the imaginary friend you had when you were little enough to ride an actual tricycle. You have job knowledge, industry knowledge, business knowledge that others around you do not.

    For many years, I had a hard time seeing this. I assumed that everyone around me must already know all the things I do, for some reason. But again, it’s not true that just because one person (you, in this case) knows something, everyone else does.

    The person who helped you with the API might not know React like you do. The developer who solved the Node issue might not write clean code like you do. The script-writing whiz might be totally lost if you start talking about code security.

    Sometimes you’re the big kid on the three-speed bike, and one or more of your colleagues are on their trikes, wishing they could zip around like you do.

    You can DO that?

    Years ago, I worked with an experienced developer named Nick. Knowledgeable, skilled, kind, thoughtful — Nick was a role model for me. He’d written a lot of the code for the application I was working on.

    One day, when I was still new to the team, we were in a staff meeting. The boss started talking about some technology I’d never even heard of. I was just a little kid on her tricycle, trying to keep up with the knowledgeable big kids, so I decided it was best not to interrupt the meeting to ask.

    I was making a note to myself to ask someone later, when Nick politely interrupted the boss and said:

    Photo by Marcos Luiz Photograph on Unsplash

    “I have no idea what you’re talking about. What is this?”

    Yep. In a room with some super-knowledgeable peers, Nick had just admitted to not knowing something. The world did not end. Nobody rolled their eyes, or hinted that Nick should know this already, or otherwise had any judgmental reaction. In fact, a few people looked relieved. I’m sure I was one of them.

    The boss apologized for getting ahead of himself and took a verbal step back to explain what he was talking about.

    You know, I don’t even remember what the technology was. I don’t think anyone even mentioned it again after that meeting. But, twelve years later, I remember being floored that someone who I thought “knew everything” could just state calmly, in front of his colleagues, that he didn’t know something.

    Ask, and ask publicly

    In that moment, I saw that it was part of the role of a lead developer to speak up and ask when you didn’t know something, because your newer colleagues might not have the courage yet. Since I wanted to be a lead developer, I was going to have to get used to speaking up.

    Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

    Later, I saw that the pressure to appear knowledgeable is universal, no matter what your experience level. If you’re new, you might feel you have to prove to your team that you know what you’re doing. If you’re more experienced, you might feel like others will judge you for not knowing as much as they thought.

    Let’s smash the stigma around asking questions or asking for help. There’s no shame in not knowing something. The problem arises when you don’t take action to try to find out — either you don’t try at all; or you do try, but when you get stuck, you don’t ask for help.

    How do we smash the stigma? Ask questions, and ask in a way that others see it. I know, it’s less intimidating to message a trusted colleague privately. When you keep it quiet, you maintain the illusion for others that everyone around them knows everything. When you model the behavior of humbly asking for help, you teach others that it’s okay to do the same. When others start to join you, you’re changing the culture for the better.

    Photo by Mars Sector-6 on Unsplash

    Pro tip: modeling good behavior, teaching others, and changing the culture for the better are things leaders do. When you speak up, you’re not highlighting your weakness, you’re demonstrating your strength. No joke. My boss told me recently that one of the key factors in hiring me was that I was not afraid to ask questions.

    Furthermore, when you ask your questions publicly, others can benefit from the knowledge transferred. Someone else, when they encounter the same problem or question, will get stuck just like you did. When you ask in a more public way, everyone else benefits. When Nick asked our boss for more information during our staff meeting, the whole team learned.

    Change that culture

    So, raise your hand in that staff meeting, post that question to your team, or use (or establish!) a Slack channel specifically for developers across teams to ask questions and help each other out.

    When a colleague asks something you don’t know, add a comment that you’d like to know as well. They, and others, will see that they’re not the only one with that question.

    Photo by Randalyn Hill on Unsplash

    When a question comes through that you do know how to answer, share your knowledge! Some days, you’re the big kid on the bike, and someone else is calling out to you from their tricycle, trying to keep up.

    Above all, always be kind, regardless of the question or who is asking. A question might seem basic or obvious to you, it might be answered by a simple web search, it might be better asked in another forum, it might have been answered two days earlier in the same forum… it doesn’t matter. Be kind. Establish the norm that questions are always responded to with kindness and without judgment.

    That’s what a leader does.

    Do you feel like that little kid on the tricycle sometimes? What do you do to help the people around you feel more comfortable admitting when they don’t know and reaching out for help? Let me know in the comments.

    Originally posted 13 June 2022 on Medium.