Okaaay, I guess the pressure I put on myself is a known fact here in our house. Not just for work or writing, I mean for everything. Even on the weekends, lately, I feel pressured to make the best use of my time, get things done that aren’t work-related.
Sheesh, I just started taking a workshop to improve the quality of my sleep. And I can already feel myself ramping up to put pressure on myself to sleep better.
As if that will help.
Resistance is arising
Resistance is coming up a lot for me lately. I sit down in the morning on a weekday, intending to write.
Instead, my motivation to write goes completely out the window. The last thing I want to do is write.
So instead, I listen to an audio book. Or I draw. Or I get sidetracked by something shiny. Anything but writing. Anything that isn’t on my giant to-do list.
Motivation then returns sometime later, when I’m planning to do something else. For example, it might show up after 8 pm on a Monday night, when I really ought to be doing some of those getting-ready-for-sleep practices. [looking at clock warily]
Well, what’s an efficient, organized, driven person to do when faced with this unwillingness to just get to work already? Clearly I should figure out what’s blocking me and put even more pressure on myself to get past the block.
No. Turning up the pressure when I’m not getting stuff done sounds like it should work. But it absolutely doesn’t.
Why doesn’t pressure overcome resistance?
When I turn up the pressure, all I’m doing is pressing against the resistance that has come up. And when that resistance encounters pressure, does the pressure overcome the resistance? Does it just decide that my motivated self should prevail and yield?
Of course not. Instead, the resistance just increases. It’s getting pushed more, so it pushes back more.
The resistance is arising because the pressure is too much.
How do I know? Because in moments like this, when there’s no pressure to write, the words just flow.
What helps, then?
I’m not sure what will help, honestly. But it isn’t turning up the pressure.
I’m thinking self-compassion is probably a good start.
Setting smaller goals for the day.
Acknowledging the things I’m getting done that aren’t writing.
After all, I didn’t quit my job only to write a book. I also intend to use the time to focus on my health and wellbeing: cooking more meals at home, getting outside for walks regularly, clearing my space of clutter, managing stress, and yes, sleeping better.
I’m definitely making progress in those areas.
Let’s see if taking some of the pressure off helps me return to the joy of writing, rather than pushing myself into the chore of writing.
People say that networking is important. Does this mean you should attend networking events?
I say no.
Not that these events are completely useless, but I think there are better ways of building your network.
Granted, it’s possible that I’ve just been attending the wrong networking events. For example, an image search is giving me stuff like this:
Getty images on Unsplash
These people have wine. This is clearly more upscale than most networking events I’ve attended.
Portrait of a networking event
For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure, or if it’s been a while, allow me to illustrate. Here’s how networking events have been for me:
Some organization hosts an event, and you sign up. Regardless of what time the event is, it always intersects with your dinner time. Too early to eat before, too late to eat after.
The event is in the city. Public transit will force you to arrive either awkwardly early or embarrassingly late. Or, you drive, parking next to a tow zone that probably doesn’t include your car. Fingers crossed.
You find the building and follow a sign. It does look like the photo above. There’s wine, and you see a beautiful hot buffet. Sadly, this is not your event.
Eventually you find your space. If you’re early, the organizers are still setting up, and nobody will arrive until after event start time. However, if you’re late, the event will start on time and you’ll walk into a crowd already engaged in conversations.
Either way, there’s food, but it’s definitely not dinner.
Like this, but with a paper plate and no nice-looking dish of hummus. Monica Grabkowska for Unsplash. Unsplash doesn’t seem to do unappetizing pictures of veggies and dip.
You grab a soda and look around. Perhaps there is a speaker, a presentation, or a panel discussion. Maybe there are icebreaker games. Both of these things are useful, as we’ll see shortly, so don’t tune them out.
The dreaded small talk
You “mingle,” going outside your comfort zone to introduce yourself to strangers. Small talk of the smallest possible variety ensues. You’re determined to remember people’s names and interests, a noble and unattainable goal.
If you’re lucky, the speakers or icebreakers can help you start a conversation. If not, here’s a typical conversation:
“So, did you enjoy the presentation?”
“Yeah, I thought it was interesting.”
You each take a sip of your soda, trying to think something, anything, interesting to say next, but your minds go blank.
“What do you do with your time?” you ask in a way that you hope is still welcoming if the person is not working.
“I work as a [job you’re not familiar with] at [company you’ve never heard of].”
As a charming and engaging conversationalist, you think of the perfect response to turn this into an interesting conversation.
But you think of that on your way home. In the moment, you say:
“Oh. That sounds nice.”
You both stare at your half-eaten paper plates of food.
“Hey, I’m gonna grab another soda, it was nice meeting you.”
Whew, an exit.
Who do networking events work for?
Nobody seems to want to be there, with two exceptions:
The event hosts
Friendly and chatty, the event hosts will make you feel welcome for about two minutes before they are called away to set up a microphone or replenish the cookies.
That one person
There always seems to be one slightly creepy person who will corner you and talk for 20 minutes about something you can’t follow. You ask them what they thought of the speaker, whose talk was about web design, and they say something like:
“I thought it was interesting but using excessively flat AI versus potential with code barriers isn’t effective in a strategic environment unless you have strong data prevention, right?”
… Uh. What? None of that makes any sense. Did they watch the same presenter you did? Asking questions only makes this person more confusing.
After a while it sounds like they are either trying to prove that they are smarter than you are or they are gearing up to ask you for something that will make you uncomfortable, like a job recommendation, a date, or an investment in their sketchy startup. Fortunately, someone else finally joins the conversation, (“hey, how’s it going? what’d you think of the speaker?”) which will allow you to make an escape while the person starts talking about “excessively flat AI” again. ???
At the end, you’ll feel a little queasy from having pushed yourself to be social with strangers, fretting about the commute home, and eating a dinner of pale raw veggies and dip, pepper jack cheese cubes, and mediocre cookies.
And you’ll have “met” a few people who, regardless of whether you connect with them on social media or not, you’ll be unlikely to ever see again.
Let’s ditch these events
I mean… I guess a networking event like this does have its benefits:
The speakers might be interesting.
You could make a contact. I made a contact once. I told a speaker that I enjoyed her talk. We didn’t keep in touch. But we later wound up working at the same company, and she somehow remembered me.
You get practice making (and escaping) conversation with strangers in awkward situations, which will come in handy at friends’ weddings, the neighbor’s cookout, etc.
All the free celery and veggie dip you can eat.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with attending these events. Go if the topic or the organization interests you.
But this isn’t your best bet for building your network.
How to do networking better
I could write a whole blog post about each of these…
Reach out to colleagues whose work intersects with yours. See how you can help. Some people reading know that I do this, because I met you this way 🙂
Find people whose work interests you. Do you have questions for them that you can’t just answer with a quick web search?
Work on something together. Volunteering, intramural sports, organizing an event, working on a committee… Something where you talk to each other, not just sit next to each other.
Help others. Answer questions, or if you don’t know the answer, see what you can do to help. Even if you can’t help and the other person is still stuck, at least they aren’t stuck and alone.
Join the conversation. Do you read social media or blogs of people in your field, especially people who have an audience small enough that real conversations can happen? Respond to someone whose comments got you thinking. Add something new to the conversation, don’t just say “great post!”
Wait, this isn’t networking
“But Leaf, this isn’t networking. This is like… meeting people, getting to know them.”
Exactly.
When people say “networking,” often the first thing that comes to mind is “schmoozing” with people you hardly know. You’re not talking to them because you actually care. You want them to do something for you (like help you find a new job). Or they want you to do something for them, and you haven’t yet escaped.
Of course you don’t want to do that. It feels bad for a reason! It’s icky! Don’t do it!
So forget about networking. Put yourself in situations where you are likely to cross paths with other interesting people. Talk to them, find out what’s on their minds, what their goals are, what’s important to them.
You don’t have to talk to a lot of them. Meeting one or two people who you keep in touch with beats meeting a dozen people who you’ll never encounter again.
Not everyone you meet will click with you, and that’s okay. Don’t take it personally. Maybe they’re having a bad day, are tired or distracted, or had only celery and baked goods for dinner and don’t feel so good. No need to take the disinterest of strangers as feedback for you. (If you want feedback, ask a trusted friend.)
Allow people who do seem to respond well to also see a little of who you are and what’s important to you.
And if you have people who you crossed paths with before and you would like to stay connected, reach out now and then. Send a note, “hey, this article reminded me of you,” or “I was just thinking about our conversation, how is your project going?”
I was told once that I “should feel empowered” to influence strategy, something I had been blocked from doing in multiple ways.
This was not welcome news.
Feel empowered!
I could feel empowered all I wanted, but until I actually had the power, it wasn’t going to help. I also pointed out that it seemed like a setup to pin blame on me for not doing something I wasn’t actually allowed to do.
This wasn’t a matter of my having low self-esteem or a flawed sense of my own abilities. I had been learning the hard way in the months before this feedback that I had in fact vastly overestimated the power that my role held.
I had confidence in my abilities. The barriers to my getting things done weren’t in my mindset.
Thinking about it now, if I had actually felt empowered and tried to influence strategy any more than I did already, it would have brought me criticism for stepping out of my lane.
I’ve read suggestions for managers about empowering their teams. But if people actually have the power they need to get their jobs done, then they don’t need someone else “empowering” them.
And if your people don’t have the power they need, simply telling them to feel empowered doesn’t change that.
It may even be harmful. You might just be informing them that, if they don’t do the work they don’t have the power to do, you’ll blame them.
Instead, figure out what power that person needs, and make sure that’s inherent in their role.
How do we keep each day from blending in with all the others? Why does it seem like time passes by so quickly?
It was beautiful out this morning. I drove my husband to his eye exam, and while I was waiting, I found a cafe nearby with outdoor seating in the shade. Perfect. Chai and pastries acquired, I set up my laptop at a tiny table on the patio.
I nibbled on a tomato, mozzarella, and basil bialy and eavesdropped on a pair of cyclists at the next table over.
“Is that your racing bike?”
“Yeah, I race with that.”
“Why’d you take your racing bike for a ride with me??”
That’s when I noticed that I was being watched. She was staring at me from surprisingly close by on the sidewalk. She moved between me and my cafe neighbors’ bikes. I wondered if she might take a seat at my table.
For a split second, I worried that she might make a grab at my bag of pastries. Unlikely, of course, as she was hardly the size of a pastry herself.
I put the rest of the bialy back in the bag and took out the lemon poppy seed scone to nibble on next. “I see you,” I said to the curious sparrow, as a warning. Just in case she got any ideas. I folded the top of the bag of pastries a little more.
I’ve heard that seagulls have been known to take food right from people. Not just “hop up to the beach blanket and grab a cookie while you’re not looking.” Mr. or Ms. Steal-Your-Fries will saunter across the picnic table and pull that half a sandwich right out of your hand.
Sheesh. I have never had this happen to me. I hope it remains the stuff of legend.
But I can attest that seagulls are capable of grabbing something that size. While walking in Boston early one morning, I did a double-take when I saw a seagull fly past me with a huge bagel in its beak. A minute later, I spotted a forlorn bag of at least a dozen bagels, sitting by the sidewalk on Atlantic Ave, torn open. (The seagull may have been thinking “Best. Day. Ever,” but unfortunately bread is not good for birds. Also, clearly the bag of bagels didn’t make it to its destination, but why not? What happened here…)
House sparrows are much smaller than seagulls, though. Taking on humans directly would be daunting, and it’s a lot harder to fly off with something twice their size. So instead, they hop around by the cafe tables, hoping we’ll drop a crumb they can scavenge.
A few minutes later I saw another house sparrow — a male, they look like they have a little beard — doing the same thing. There was a little flock of tiny winged cafe regulars, patrolling the grounds, keeping an eye on the humans in case we got careless with our baked goods.
“Fruit and seed? Surely that lemon poppy scone is for me.” Photo by Maria Hossmar on Unsplash
Capturing little moments, like being spied on by a posse of sparrows on a cafe patio, or watching a seagull fly through Boston with a bagel, may be part of how we keep life from passing us by.
Earlier in my adult life, I believed that the sense of time going faster had to do with time being perceived as a portion of one’s life. When you’re only six years old, and maybe you only remember as far back as age four, any given summer is something like an eighth of your whole life. It’s huge! But as you get older, it’s a smaller percentage of your experience.
Now I’m not so sure that’s right. It may be more of a function of where we place our attention. If we’re doing the same things, day in and day out, no moments stand out in our memories. I was happy to take my husband to his appointment in part because it involved going somewhere different from my usual places. There was potential in it for a moment that would stand out.
And capturing those moments helps, too. We might capture them in words, as I do here; in drawings, as Nishant Jain does with Sneaky Art; in videos, like Cesar Kuriyama does in One second every day; or in other ways, maybe photos or music.
My husband and I started a habit of writing down when we make a memory, or when something makes us laugh. We note it on a slip of paper and put it in a jar. At the start of a new year, we can review the past year. I’m holding onto them, so we can review previous years too.
The book Storyworthy, by Matthew Dicks, recommends a practice he calls “homework for life.” At the end of each day, write down any stories you remember from your day, as well as any other stories that come to mind. Not the whole story, just a few words to help you remember it. “Early morning seagull with giant bagel,” perhaps.
He says that doing this has slowed down his life so that not everything goes by in a blur, with all the days blending together. I’d like to try this as a habit and see if it does the same for me.
And that’s my wish for you, and for me: may our lives not go by in a blur. That and not getting our food stolen by birds.
In the midst of a recent LinkedIn discussion about whether scrum is a methodology or a framework, I considered a few questions:
Do we even know if people agree on definitions of terms like methodology?
If people haven’t established agreement on the definitions, is there any point to having the argument? (For that matter, even if they do agree on the definitions, what’s the benefit of determining the answer?)
Furthermore, if they disagree on the definitions, is it necessarily true that one (or both!) of the people is “wrong” about what the terms mean? Is there a single “true” definition for these terms? (I’m going with no.)
Geeks are often quite opinionated. I am sure some of my friends could hardly finish the first sentence of this post before needing to tell me whether scrum is a methodology or a framework, expounding upon their definitions of these terms. And some would accept no counterarguments. They know the true definitions of these terms and anyone else is wrong.
It reminds me of this question: Is a hotdog a sandwich?
Unsplash has some seriously unappealing photos of hotdogs. Is there a hotdog under that pile of stuff? One of them looked like it had tuna salad on it. Ew! And some of them looked barely cooked?? Come on people! Hats off to Ball Park Brand, whose photo this is. The first three photos that I considered using were all theirs.
I’m imagining myself at a cookout with two people arguing about whether a hotdog qualifies as a sandwich. Carry on. I’ll be over here eating a hotdog while I watch you argue.
One of my dad’s favorite questions was: “what are you going to do with this information?” Once you’ve decided if the hotdog is or isn’t a sandwich, are you going to do anything differently?
Let’s say you argue it isn’t a sandwich because there aren’t two separate pieces of bread and it’s not getting cut in half. Or maybe you argue that it is a sandwich because it’s a filling with bread on the outside to make it easy to hold. So what? Does that change what you put on it or how you eat it?
I feel the same way about scrum. I don’t really care if it’s a framework, a methodology, a set of practices, a bunch of ideas, or a cat on a unicycle juggling a set of printed-out Jira issues.
I gather that people are concerned because methodology implies that one must follow one rigid set of rules in order to do scrum correctly. My response: it does? I just think of “methodology” as a “way of doing stuff.” I’m probably wrong.
But just like with the hotdog, it just doesn’t matter for me. Even if there is a single right way to do scrum (which I doubt, doesn’t sound very agile to me!), I don’t care. I’ll check that way out, but ultimately I’m going to do what works for my team.
People. Do what works for you. I once ate a hotdog between two halves of a slice of bread, when I ran out of hotdog buns. It was fine.
I think the only time I want to know if scrum is “a methodology or a framework or what” is when someone asks me how to define scrum.
Which actually happened a few days ago! My aunt saw “scrum” on Wordle. (We all knew it was a rugby thing, but, as a software developer, I felt I should elaborate on its use in my field.)
“Scrum is… um…”
This is where I start to go for words like “thing” because what are my own definitions of “framework” and “methodology,” anyway? I’m not sure. Not that my aunt would have argued with me.
“Scrum is a way of working for development teams,” I told my aunt. Or so I like to imagine. Because in reality my mind spun into an extended lecture on agile and modern software development practices. But that was way, way more than was called for.
So instead, I just stammered awkwardly, then I turned to my husband to see if he could rescue me with a concise way of describing scrum. Alas, he did not rescue me. Not bad for two developers who have been practicing scrum for years, including me with my PMI-ACP certification. Yeah!
Fortunately, I don’t think my aunt was actually looking for details. She just wanted to assert that “scrum” seemed a little on the obscure side to be fair game for Wordle. We didn’t need to agree on a definition here either.
I apologize if this post made you hungry.
If you’d like to read more of my writing, I’d love to share! Sign up below for my email newsletter. May contain food analogies.
I keep reading that there are two keys to connecting to your people online: consistency and content. Show up regularly, and keep creating content people want.
Great, but show up where? Should I be building my Substack audience? Enhancing my creator profile on Kit? Keeping things on my own website?
I’ll tell you where you can find me, in a moment. But where do I find myself?
Where am I?
Key to answering this question, for me, has been the podcast Own Your Impact, by Macy Robison. Macy breaks thought leadership down into ten archetypes. I’m pretty sure the one that fits me best is “Wisdom Writer,” because the written word comes easily to me. Others include, for example, the Resonant Orator, the Experience Facilitator, and the Research Innovator.
Don’t worry, they’re not thought leadership astrological signs. They’re just patterns of what approaches might work best for a given person. It’s a way of finding out what activities might or might not be a good fit for you.
And the archetypes aren’t meant to box you in – I may not be a “Resonant Orator,” but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t bother speaking. I spoke at Enterprise Technology Leadership Summit last year and I loved it, and I’m excited to be speaking at LeadDev StaffPlus in New York this year. Nobody’s 100% one archetype.
But writing, as a primary mode of expression, is going to work out much better for me than making videos on YouTube or running an in person workshop.
The point: don’t just copy what you see other people doing because you think that’s the only way. There are multiple ways. Take the time to figure out what is a good fit for you, and do that.
Macy just unveiled a quiz that can help you determine what your primary archetype is. You can find it on her website, macyrobison.com.
And I’m paying attention to that exhaustion, to what (good or bad) I get in exchange for my efforts.
What works for me and what doesn’t
When I’m writing for my newsletter, it feels good. And I’m often working directly on the book, which is glorious. This week, I’m also going to start sending an additional issue of the newsletter about art.
When I’m writing for my blog, that’s great too, although I don’t think I have many readers on my website. I need to figure out how to get my website blog posts to post automatically to Substack and Medium…
When I’m posting and interacting on social media, I’m often getting ideas for writing from the interactions I have with others. That works.
However, when I’m just reading social media, I have to be careful. It can be a huge waste of time, or it can be draining, or both. There’s interesting content from time to time to be sure, but it’s in a sea of ads, “suggested” content, endless commentary about AI, and upsetting news. Very easy to be overwhelmed.
And trying to keep up with ALL of the social media? Not gonna happen! I need a tool to go fetch just the best content for me from the sites I’m on. And there’s no way I’m cross-posting everything I write to multiple spaces, not unless I can find a tool to do that for me too.
What works for you? Do you have tools that help you manage all this online content?
If you check out Macy Robison’s archetypes, let me know how it goes!
And if you’d like to sign up for my email newsletter, you can do that below.
Another post about AI? I just made one earlier this afternooooon…
But then Forrest Brazeal posted this, which got me thinking:
If we treat AI like a junior developer, do we interview AI the way we interview junior developers? Make AI do a whiteboard coding exercise? Insist that it can demonstrate more years of experience with your tech stack than are appropriate for a junior level? Put it through several rounds of interviews and then ghost it?
Walk me through your thought process here. Photo by Walls.io on Unsplash
I’ve never heard of anyone doing that. Why not? Probably because hiring a human developer is a Big Deal involving great expense, and something like an AI coding assistant is a comparably smaller expense.
I wonder if there’s also a measure of “with humans, we need to consider what this person is like as a colleague,” with a corresponding assumption that we don’t need to consider that for AI because it’s not a person. Is that true?
Granted, AI will get its fingers all over your codebase in a way that no single developer can, because you’ll deploy it on every team. But that’s okay, because just like hiring an army of junior developers, you’d have senior developers providing careful oversight. Hm. Is that true now?
I wonder who’s easier to “let go,” if they aren’t working out: AI, or human. Who is evaluated more carefully. What “working out” means for a developer, anyway. Oh, we’re back to the topic of “what makes an effective/productive developer” again.
I promise my newsletter isn’t all about AI. Sign up below!
I’ve seen a few posts on social media with questions like:
Why are we still trying to figure out exactly how much more productive developers are with GitHub Copilot when it is so cheap? Who cares? Just give them the tool!
Well, let’s think about that. Who does care? (And is Copilot cheap?)
I’m imagining a conversation like this:
Person A: It will make [or it made] our developers more productive!
Person B: How much more productive?
As my dad used to say, “what are you going to do with that information?” If you’re not going to act differently based on what you learn, is the effort to find out going to be worth it?
Person B, what are you going to do if the answer is “10% more productive” vs. “50% more productive” vs. “300% more productive”?
Sometimes my answer to my dad was: “I was just wondering.” Asking a question can still be worth the effort, even if you’re not going to do anything at all with the information.
In this case, though, Person B: is it worth someone else’s effort just to satisfy your curiosity? Seems iffy to me.
Purely research
Maybe Person B is a researcher. Are they comparing different tools to see which is more effective? Are they collecting a baseline to monitor changes over time as tools (hopefully) improve? Are they just trying to be precise, because “I dunno, it’s more than a few percentage points” isn’t great in a scholarly article?
Persuading people to use the tool
Could be that Person B is trying to convince someone to adopt Copilot. They are selling licenses. They think it looks interesting and want access for their teams. They bought a bunch of licenses already and want them to go to good use. They think AI is the way of the future and want to make sure people are on board. And they are hoping for a convincing-sounding number.
Return on investment (ROI)
Perhaps Person B has been pushing Copilot because they thought it was cool (or because their management told them to push Copilot), and now management wants to know if this was a good use of resources.
Could be some judgment involved here too. Person B might be checking for confirmation of their suspicions, thinking “I bet it’s not great, AI isn’t that big a deal,” or “I’d say anything less than ‘2x as productive’ and they’re using it wrong.”
Speaking of resources, is it actually cheap?
People say, “it’s only $20” (per user, per month). True, but there’s also developer time spent learning and experimenting. Add to that, potentially, costs like training, governance, monitoring, reporting, legal considerations, privacy and security concerns, risk management, etc.
Maybe that’s still cheap compared to how expensive developers are, but it’s not quite as simple as “if I cost $50/hr and it can save me an hour a month, then I should have the tool.” That simple math falls through when your developer saves a few hours but also inadvertently exposes private data to the public, causes the company to lose millions in some transactions gone awry, or introduces a security vulnerability. And the company is held accountable by auditors who say there should have been more training.
Changes of plan
My first thought when I tried to answer the question of why find the specific percentage: are we doing math? Like “if developers are 50% more productive, that means every person can now do the work of 1.5 people. That means 2 people with AI equals 3 people without AI. So I can reduce my headcount by 1/3!”
Or: “if developers are 50% more productive, then what they used to get done in 3 weeks should now take only 2 weeks. So I can move up my delivery date projections!”
Both of these worry me…
So many questions
The more I write, the more this topic is raising other related questions I want to talk about. I’m sure I’m omitting plenty of other reasons for seeking a specific percentage. But some of the questions raised:
How do we define productivity? A classic, and a great question to ask anytime that word starts getting tossed around.
How did we get this 50% number? Is it even real? (Okay, in this newsletter it’s for illustration purposes. Please don’t cite my 50% as fact, okay? I made it up. But in real life, if someone gives you a number, ask where it came from and what it actually represents.)
Why the math above to reduce headcount might be a problem
Why the math above to move delivery dates up might be a problem
What skills do developers with AI need in order to get the biggest productivity gains?
I’m sure I’ll be writing more from the questions sparked by this post. I’m still sorting out what writing belongs in my blog vs. what belongs in my newsletter (sign up here!), but I already have something I want to write next. I want to start in exactly the same place as this blog post, but then take it in a completely different direction. That will probably be in the newsletter in the next week or two.
Make sure to join my email mailing list so you are getting the goods right in your inbox. In the meantime, drop a note below with your thoughts about AI and developer productivity. Have you been asked to give a percentage? How did you measure it?
Many of my blog posts start as a response to something I see online. I start typing away in a comment box, and I soon realize either:
I’m going to go way over the character limit
I’m going to want to reuse this
Or both. Today, definitely both.
Someone in the LeadDev community recently posted this:
I’m a tech lead / staff engineer (20+ years in the industry). I’m quite technical, I was an engineer… I’m kind of hitting a ceiling and I’m looking at what I could learn next.
This person considered a number of different educational or certificate programs including some technical ones, but added:
but I feel I need to learn leadership skills, or find a blend between technical and leadership. Any idea or inputs for me?
Well. Good to know that there’s demand for the book that I’m just starting to write! But I also can’t write an entire book in response to a question on Slack. “Hang on about a year and a half and I’ll have something for you…”
So let’s boil this down to some concrete steps that worked for me.
Talk to your boss
If you have a supportive manager, that might be a good place to start. Your manager may be able to give you some feedback (knowing your existing skills and strengths) and advice (knowing what opportunities there might be at the company).
Take on a challenge
You might look for a new assignment within your role, or even a new role entirely, that challenges you in new ways. Leverage your existing skills to show why you are ready to take on something that might at first seem to others (or to you!) like something above your level. “My experience creating mid-level strategies will be useful on this project where I would gain additional experience [doing xyz]…”
And don’t sell your current skills short! You don’t need a people-manager title to be a leader.
Look for a mentor
Would it help to have a mentor – someone (who isn’t in your reporting chain) to turn to for advice on leadership challenges, who might help you get more visibility into how leadership works at your organization, who may be able to nudge you in the right direction?
I wrote about some of my experiences finding and working with my mentors here: Choosing a mentor. Note the distinction between “mentor” and “sponsor.”
Provide guidance to others
You could also be a mentor, but there are other ways you can offer guidance to others beyond a formal mentoring relationship:
Responding to requests for help from developers who are stuck
Presenting or doing a Q&A session on a topic you know that others may not (e.g., the architecture of a solution you worked on, or a new technology you’ve tried)
Documenting a tricky process to make it easier for the next person to go through it, or breaking a confusing topic down to make it easier to understand
Study the leaders around you
Whose leadership style do you admire? Why?
Who seems successful as a leader in your organization? Who has the respect of your peers, of their peers?
Who is “leading without authority”? They are clearly a leader, but they don’t have the title or rank perhaps you might expect.
Are any of these people approachable?
Books I recommend
I’ve read a lot of enjoyable books, but here are a few that were not just good reading but which actually changed how I think.
I’m in the process of reading The Staff Engineer’s Path, by Tanya Reilly – but recommending that in LeadDev might be like recommending The Phoenix Project in the DevOps community – something that people have read already!
Formal training?
I’ve looked at a number of academic-type programs in leadership, like certificates from various universities, but I’ve never been able to bring myself to spend the money on them (some are five figures, ouch). I’m more of a fan of getting my training in the work setting, where I can get paid to learn as I go.
One certification I’ve considered is Gary Gruver’s Engineering the Digital Transformation, and I did at one point buy the course material for it… I just haven’t had the chance yet to go through it. I would read Gruver’s book by the same name first, though, which will give you a good idea of what ground the training would cover. (It’s also a great book.)
That’s a start. I can never tell how obvious (or not) some of these things are to others who have been in the field a long time, so I’d love to know if things on this list are helpful to you. I’ll also keep updating this as I think of new items that belong on the list.
Good luck on your career journey! (And do sign up for my mailing list if you’d like updates on the book.)
My first full time job after college was as an administrative assistant at a health insurance company. I did a lot of what you might expect: directing incoming phone calls, keeping our office supply cabinet stocked, answering cries of anguish from distressed colleagues…
One fine afternoon, I hear someone calling my name from across the office. It is definitely one of those cries of anguish. I hurry around the cubicle walls to her desk.
She gestures nervously at her monitor, which is displaying what appears to be an empty word processor document. Uh oh. With panic rising in her voice, she explains the situation in detail:
“The thing disappeared from the thing.”
I take a breath to steady myself. Absorbing her panic is not going to help us here, and things disappearing from things might be Bad with a capital B. She gets up and steps aside, fretting. I sit in her chair and lean in to inspect the situation.
This photo came up in my search for “word processor”. It was the most accurate of all the results. Photo by Fabian Møller on Unsplash
Okay, she’s got a document open, but there’s no text. There’s no blinking cursor either, that’s odd. But otherwise things look pretty normal. I study the screen without touching anything.
I notice the scroll bar at the bottom of the screen. Aha – she’s somehow inadvertently scrolled off to the right of her document. Why is this even an option? Who knows. I click the scroll bar once. The view shifts back to the left. The text she’s been working on reappears.
With a huge sigh of relief, she thanks me and declares me a miracle worker, an assessment based more on her previous level of panic than on my level of skill.
I try to explain what saw and how I solved the problem. I want to teach, so if the thing disappears from the thing in the future, she has the knowledge and skill to solve the problem on her own.
But she doesn’t care about scroll bars. She’s just glad she didn’t lose her work.
Should she have cared about the scroll bars? Would she have been better off, if she’d learned about scrolling to the right, in that moment?
I usually want to know how things work. It expands my ability to troubleshoot in the future. So I wanted her to know, too!
But she just wanted to get her document written and get on with her work. Maybe she’d feel empowered and capable if she could troubleshoot her word processing program. Or maybe this bit about scroll bars would have been useless clutter in her mind, information she’d never use.
After all, the first thing she did once she got her text back was save her document. She was reminded, in an emotionally-charged way, to save early and save often. This might be the more important lesson!
Next time this happened, she could just close the word processor and re-open and maybe she would only have lost a few minutes of work. Or maybe she’d even save a copy of the “empty” document (under a different name, just to be sure she wasn’t overwriting her last save) and she’d open that to find it was all still there.
She could rescue herself from problems where knowledge about a horizontal scroll bar wouldn’t help her at all.
Hi! If you’re enjoying my blog, you might like my newsletter. Approximately weekly, I’ll be sending thoughts about software development, writing, or both, right to you. Sign up here.
