Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 189: Building relationships and handling negative feedback with speical guest Jeff Leiken

Episode Date: December 23, 2019

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hi, I’m a software engineer who’s recently been promoted to a technical lead. I accomplished this mainly through work ethic, dedication to improving my skillset, a couple of large/notable projects, and some minor internal networking. After going through the promotion process, it’s become apparent how valuable it is to establish strong relationships with peers and seniors in your field. What advice or recommendations do you have for establishing these relationships within a company and how would you go about seeking a more senior engineer or leader to mentor you? Also, thanks for all your hard work - been listening to your episodes for the past 6 months and finding them very enlightening! I just got my annual performance review at work. The overall rating was “meets expectations”, but I worked really hard this year and thought I did great work. I was hoping for a higher rating than that. Maybe worse, this means I got a smaller raise than I expected. The review contained some suggestions for improvement. I feel pretty demotivated by the whole situation. How do I get out of this funk? You can get in touch with Jeff Leiken at https://www.evolutionmentoring.com/.

it takes more than a fear of pointer arithmetic to be a great software engineer this is episode 189 of the soft skills engineering podcast i'm your host jamison dance i'm your host dave smith all right soft skills engineering is a weekly advice show where we answer all of your non-technical questions about the technical field of software development and we fear any pointer operations as you should listen I was raised in the soft comfortable warm arms of garbage collected dynamically

typed languages like pointers are angular scary sharp objects that point them to my soul yeah we've got some patrons to thank do you want to talk about those kind folks

yes we do big thanks to those that are supporting the show at the level that gets them a weekly shout out They are Scoof, Ivo Robotnik, Luke Bayliss, Luis Santos, Zach Grannon, Chris Hogan, Stanley Tactical Radio, Braden Keynes, Nikolai Ilyushkin, Philip John Basile, Stephen Armand Lee, John Grant, Crash Bandicoot, Vinlock, Matthew Voidovich, Nick Cantor, Ted Nugent, Agile Ventures Charity, Maple Syrup, Sonic the Hedgehog, Taras Harouk, Sonny Tai, Sean, and Michael Green. If you'd like to support the show, go to softskills.audio and click support us on Patreon. You know, we're really feeling the support from the inanimate objects. like maple syrup yeah of listeners y'all are coming in strong thank you supporting the show helps pay for editing for hosting for for all the stuff that goes into it so thank you we really appreciate it yes hey today i'd like to introduce a very special guest with us we have

jeff lichen joining us on the show today jeff is a professional mentor who mentors professionals how's that jeff would you introduce yourself hi this is jeff like and right we're kind of off to a good start already so maybe we could use a little mentoring let's say thing what you know remember that thing in school where you're not supposed to use the word in the definition you know yeah so to be to be a little bit broader in the answer is that i do have a practice offering mentoring. And I work with kind of a distinct segment of the population, which is people who are no longer children and have not yet fully gotten to the point where they feel like they totally have their feet underneath them as adults. So I am offering this service that really helps

them to navigate through the ever-growing complex world of young adult life. And I work with people all over the world. I'm actually going to China next week, but I'm the sort of available people are texting me and calling me and this situation came up and it's in their personal life or their professional life and pretty cool practice that I have. So. That's awesome. We are so excited to have Jeff because so many of the questions we get where Jameson and I are just scratching our heads, we're like, surely there's an expert who knows how to do this stuff. Well, that's Jeff. If only we could find someone. So special guest today, super happy to have you and excited to hear what you have to say. Hey, Jameson, you want to read our first

question? I will do it. This is from a listener named Nicholas. Hi, I'm a software engineer who's recently been promoted to a technical lead. I accomplished this mainly through work ethic, dedication to improving my skill set, a couple of large slash notable projects, and some minor internal networking. After going through the promotion process, it's become apparent how valuable it is to establish strong relationships with peers and seniors in your field. What advice or recommendations do you have for establishing these relationships within a company? And how would you go about seeking a more senior engineer or leader to mentor you? Also, thanks for all your hard work. I've been listening to your episodes for the past six months and finding them very

enlightening. Oh, thanks. Thank you, Nicholas. Yeah, that's great. Well, when I think about networking in the office, I just can't help but wonder if we can take lessons from Survivor, forming alliances knowing when to break them i've never watched an episode of survivor i've just seen clips with that are meaningless without context where people say english words but that are nonsensical and then everyone gasps and dramatic music plays like the conch has been tilted clockwise and then dun dun dun and then someone cries like it's pretty vague so i guess seek signals out of out of strange happenings in the office i think don't they have like physical challenges too you have to like catch 20 fish with a net you wove yourself

or something like that on the island perfect maybe that's like go on call or something exactly what do you think jeff I think that I hope people don't feel like they're just trying to survive their work environment. Unfortunately, unfortunately, and that's probably part of what's behind this kind of a question is that that does seem to be the case sometimes. So here's my immediate thoughts on this. There's this kind of pretty universal expression. I don't know. I'm a Gen Xer, you know, so it's maybe more of my generation.

but it's like, don't be that guy. You all know that guy who, you know, don't be that guy. And I think it's actually a really useful way to think about this stuff is I try to take a question like this and sort of go backwards. And I go, you know, what do you not want to have happen? And then, you know, what do you want to have happen? Right. So part of the, well, what you, you don't want to be that guy who is the one who is negative or whiny or making excuses or, you know, always making the inappropriate jokes or whatever, you know, on the job, right? You don't want to be that person the rest of the team is waiting for because, you know, you misunderstood instructions or something like that.

You don't want to be that guy who in meetings is trying too hard to impress people, you know, has that sort of agenda to it, right? And what's interesting is oftentimes, you know, that guy or those ones you don't want to be tend to be the ones who don't get these kind of promotions or get these opportunities. And there's always backroom office politics or whatever, you know, but for the most part, you know, those are the things that work against. So then, you know, then it would lead to the other side of it, which is like, what does work in your favor? And, you know, a couple of things I find to be the most universal are being people who the worst you bring to the room is neutral, right? And the best you bring to it is positive, is enthusiasm, is creative, new ideas, is humility to be able or willing to ask questions when it's just an area that you just don't know. And when those questions are coming from a place of humility and genuineness, very typically people who know more than you are inclined to want to help. They actually appreciate the fact that you're such an authentic learner, so open-minded to things.

And, you know, so part of this thing for me is how do you become that kind of person who people who are more knowledgeable or higher up or decision makers or influencers, people who have leverage to one day give you that kind of promotion, you know, would want to have a more involved relationship with, you know, would want to spend more time with you or want to hang out with you or tell you stories about the old days or, you know, give you little tips about things, right? So how do you become that kind of a person? And I think that the whole piece of being somebody who's a genuine, curious learner, being somebody who brings positivity into a group, brings a certain kind of, you know, lightheartedness or appropriateness, right, of, you know, sort of knowing when to speak or not to speak or whatever. These are things that people who are in influential leadership positions notice, right? Because they're always thinking about, well, what's it going to be like if we invite you into that next meeting with us? You know, do we want what you're going to bring to it, right? And it's not just skill. You know, you can't separate out skill, obviously, but the sort of adage behind the scenes tends

to be, you know, you hire for character and you train for skill, right? So there's a certain kind of thing about character when it comes to leadership. so you know it's like don't be that guy and then you want to do be this guy you know yeah then it would be like what fills that in you know so so how do you it feels like there is sort of a bootstrapping problem here where if you're not interacting with those folks how do you create those relationships without it being very artificial and and kind of slimy and like oh i just happened to drop this list of all my cool accomplishments in front of you mr vp like what is what a coincidence like how do you how do you develop those contacts naturally

you won't believe number three on the list yeah i couldn't help but notice that you prefer this brand of coffee so i i replaced your intern with myself and will now be super deferential to you i'll laugh at all your jokes like how do you yeah how do you develop those first interactions naturally so that you have the ability to show like the qualities that you mentioned does that makes sense? Yeah, it does. And I'm imagining, you know, as you're saying that you're picturing an office, a specific office setting, right? A certain, you know, corporate environment. So whoever's listening to this is probably doing the same thing. And, you know, my answer to that is that there's natural opportunities to connect with these people that may be few and far between. So

the question becomes, how do you leverage those natural opportunities? And then the secondary thing is how do you create ones that maybe aren't so natural right yeah and yeah and you know obviously there's going to be some idiosyncratic answers to that based on you know which elevator you take or whatever you know so you're saying hobbies you pick up that happen to match the people you're trying you gotta have the elevator strategy you know like yeah oh you you hang glide here too? That's so cool. But I'll give you an example. There's a young guy I'm working with in New York. I say young guy, he's about 24, about two years out of college. He's working for a marketing company in New York. And he is trying to get into sort of a different branch of

what their company is doing, sort of a different segment of the accounts that they have. And so what he's done is he is working with his direct boss and he's done really well. And he's takes criticism really well, all sorts of things that really work to his advantage. And the other thing that he's done is he's sort of dropping direct, not just hints, but like really direct requests with his manager saying, you know, I'm really curious to learn more about how this stuff is done. Whenever there's opportunities that I could sit in on a meeting or listen in a conference call, you know, can you let me know? I would really, I really appreciate it. And it's working because he's gotten a couple of opportunities where his boss, his manager has

said, you know, why don't you come sit down in this meeting? And what happens is that about the third time that he's there, you know, the, the manager's now sort of introducing, like, you know, here's Benjamin. The reason that, you know, that he's here is, and so he's sort of starting to get this exposure to this other group that he wants to be having, but it's done with like a professional endorsement, right? His manager's like choosing to bring him. He's not bringing anybody else in, but it's happening because he's requesting it, right? Nice. So I think, you know, the thing you have to look at is you go, how can you like leverage the opportunities or find sort of little ways in that don't seem like you're just trying to push way ahead of everybody else. It's just

a natural curiosity. Like I know there's this new project being worked on. I'm really curious about it. You know, could I sit in or could I listen in on this kind of thing? And then you start to get where people see you, you start to become visible to them. That's a fantastic idea. I love that. And I like how you say couch it in curiosity, not in, hey, Mr. Manager, I just really want to get a big promotion next year. I want to make a lot more money than I'm making. Can you invite me to this meeting? Right. It's like totally the opposite. It's very the opposite of that. And if you do it, you know, obviously in a way that's so forced that it's just obvious

that that's actually what you're doing, it's going to backfire, right? So you have to, it has to sort of be in the genuine flow of how they experience you, you know, so you've been there for six months and over six months, they find that you're the guy who's, you know, sort of after every meeting, sort of constantly going up to somebody like, hey, look, tell me a little bit more about this thing that just happened or this update that happened, you know, then they sort of get like, oh, you are that curious guy. And then it's sort of easier to make that handoff to, yeah, come and sit in on this. Or I'm thinking of bringing you on board with this. You know, let's start to get you up to

speed with it. Right. Yeah. I've always found this crazy paradox in human interactions in group, especially in group professional settings, where if you want something really badly, especially when it comes to ambition, you know, more money, more, more responsibility, more leadership, you have to pretend like you don't want it. And you have to find alternative reasons that you should get those things, but that, oh, well, you know, the fame and the prestige and the money, that was just a nice benefit, a nice bonus I wasn't planning on. I really was just doing it because I was curious, you know? And isn't it interesting, though, that the most successful people who do that, at least in my experience, are not the ones who are overtly

ambitious and overtly like clamoring for those leadership positions? Going back to my don't be that guy you know sure but there's no question when you're not needy because people can smell needy right it needy has a whole vibe to it it has you know it we all sense it right when you're not needy when you're just right it's it's what comes across and as you have kind of an inner calm about you right and it's much easier we want to have people like that around us you know interesting all right so let me reframe not reframe let me just kind of tweak the conversation now a little bit. So this listener, Nicholas, says, you know, now that I'm in kind of a more leadership role, I detect the impact that networking had on my path so far. Very positive

impact. And he says, what do I do now to find someone who's more senior than me to mentor me? And where do I go? What do I do? So my response to that immediately, and this is obviously I don't know all the details of his journey, you know, to get to this point. But my response immediately is now that you've had the success, your transparency about it will serve you. So going to somebody who's more senior and saying, I've been doing this long enough to realize that having people who are far more knowledgeable and experienced giving me input, I can get more from a half hour conversation with you than I'll probably figure out in three months on my own. And if you're ever willing to give me that half hour of time to just let me sort of talk you through some of the things

I'm doing and maybe get your feedback or how you might do it differently, I would be just extremely grateful if you would give that to me. And when you're that transparent, you're just that humble, more often than not, people will not only be honored, they'll be excited to tell you how they would do it differently, right? So you're sort of appealing to not just, you know, obviously a little bit of their ego, but you're also just appealing to their natural humaneness that it's nice to be recognized that I have learned something. And it's nice to have somebody who actually wants to hear what I

have to say and wants to learn from me. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I've also found that some companies have a more or less formal process for this kind of relationship. You know, for example, at my company, it's well accepted and generally well known that people have mentors. And at all levels of the organization, people will approach others and say, will you mentor me? And it's pretty much understood what that means. You know, we're going to meet regularly. We're going to talk about your challenges and confidence. I'm going to advise you, help you find connections and things like that. And everyone knows what that means. But at my previous company, we were smaller. I mean, there were about 50 or 60 people in the engineering department. The word mentor was like a four-letter

word. It was like, what's that? Like, that sounds old and stodgy and formal, and we're not into that here. And I think it's a little bit harder to navigate that situation when you don't have like all these well-established infrastructure around you for finding mentors. Some of that might be just in the marketing of it too where you you could you could probably figure that out about your employer and and then figure out is this a thing that will sound weird if i ask will you be my mentor is it a thing i just do i just need to say hey can we go out to get lunch together or something like that yeah just never say the word mentor then yeah can we go out to get lunch where i talk to you about my career and issues and questions i have and you advise me can we do

that regularly and again though i think somebody who's in that situation where you can't just use the word mentor and it's immediately understood and embraced. You're just going to get further if you're more specific about what you want out of the launch. You know, I've got some questions, some things, ideas I have. I'm not quite sure if I'm thinking clearly about this. There's some situations have come up that I've handled didn't go as well as I want. I'm curious, you know, how you might have handled it differently because I've sat in meetings with you and you have this, you know, elegant way that you handle things. And, you know, if you're really specific about what you're asking for, it becomes easier for them to say yes to it and be excited about saying

yes to it. Yeah, for sure. I like how you slip in a little compliment. Absolutely. And oftentimes that will lead to them saying, well, yeah, let me know how it goes. Get back to me. That's how you sort of started the relationship. Yes. So I just want to share one funny story. Jameson, I don't know if you remember this, but several years ago, we had a show where we were asking we were asked about and getting into a mentor relationship and one of the jokes we made was that whenever you want to get into a mentor relationship with someone you should buy a pack of mentos and present them to the person and say will you be my mentor with the mentos do you remember this i have no memory of this joke i also completely forgot about it but like six months or

a year after that happened someone at my company came to me and scheduled a meeting with me a 30 minute meeting called it a one-on-one and showed up with a pack of mentos and i would he was like he's like looking at me with these expected eyes holding out this pack of mentos and i'm just like and i'm like what are you doing like remember and it was so awkward because he had to like recount the whole episode and i'm like oh man i am so sorry anyway it was great it was a fantastic anyway it turned into a you asked for it exactly i'm like i can't be i can't be accountable i can't be i can't be held accountable for everything i've said anyway it turned into a great mentorship relationship i still keep in touch with him he's left the company but we still we still talk and

it was all because of the mentos so let's you know that's the most important element here is bring a pack of mentos and even if they don't know what it means the symbol lives on and pay it forward yeah have we answered the question i think so should we wrap it up and move on to the next one? Yep. Good luck, Nicholas. Do you want to read our next question, Dave? Sure. This comes from an anonymous listener who says, I just got my annual performance review at work. The overall rating was quote meets expectations, but I worked really hard this year and I thought I did a great job. I was hoping for a higher rating than that. Maybe worse. This means I got a smaller raise than I expected. The review contains some suggestions for improvement and I feel pretty

demotivated by the whole situation how do i get out of this funk have you ever gotten a meets expectations review jameson yeah and it made me so mad that i went to a warehouse and punch danced out my rage like in is that footloose i got the reference okay yeah i've never been like enraged or demotivated by feedback though i have gotten a meets i haven't gotten a rating that i feel like demotivated me though so maybe that says something about my own expectations for myself yeah i don't i don't have quite this experience though what were you going to say jeff so actually this is actually it's an interesting question because it's amongst the most common struggles that clients i have are are dealing with and usually the pattern goes like this

they were generally high achievers through their formal education through high school through University, and they had grown accustomed to getting the proverbial good grade, right? These were like A students or something. And the other thing is, is that if they're the millennials, you know, who all sort of came of age after 9-11, they have this fear that if they're not seen or perceived as being very close to perfect or great, that somehow things are not going to go their way like the you know there isn't going to be margin for error you know there isn't going to be second chances or something and so they're not used to getting criticism that comes back negative and then there's a lot of fear that becomes associated with it and the fear is usually what

leads people into the funk right if you if you have a sense of you know it's a long season there's many many games i miss this shot but i'll get up tomorrow and you know i'm fine then you have that happen and well it's kind of a setback you you roll with it you take the feedback you you know make some adjustments, you move forward. If on the other hand, you go, I got this feedback and it's just really affected my self-confidence and now I'm worried about my career with the company, then you start spiraling down this like emotional road that's probably more often than not way disproportionate to reality. It was University of Michigan that did this study where they had people rate themselves on scale of like, are you a below average, average or above average in like

three different categories. And it was like 85% of people rated themselves above average. You know, right. So it just, you know, there's a certain point with this where it's far more common with younger generation that getting critical feedback is debilitating to them or discouraging to them. And I would say, you know, again, I get so many on the moment, you know, in the moment text messages from somebody saying, can you talk? I just had my performance review. I couldn't believe this, you know, and it's a lot of me of reminding them, like, you know, you're still participating in an American, you know, business culture here that, you know, it's just people look at this as the long view, right? Like you get in this company, you work your way up. Nobody expects you to become, you know, a vice president of the company in 12 months or something.

And so getting this kind of feedback is actually data for you to understand how you're being perceived, you know, what the company is looking for, what the company needs. It's opportunities for you to make decisions whether or not, you know, the company is for you in some cases or to make decisions about, you know, where you need to be developing more skill and being strategic about how to ensure that the next, you know, review you have goes better than this particular one. And one of the strategies that I am oftentimes advising is set it up with whoever's doing the review with you that you're not going to have to wait six months to get your next review. This is a really powerful strategy, right? It's just, you go back the next day and you say, you know, I've really been thinking about it. And I was a little discouraged to hear that. And I think I understand what I need to be doing.

You know, can I get together with you, let's say like in the end of the month and you sort of give me a sense or you're already seeing progress or I'm starting to do this better, you know, or at a higher level or whatever, right? So you can kind of set it up that they're already gonna be noticing

the improvements that you're doing. So you're already moving away from the year that was to the new year that you've clearly already improved upon so strategies like that i also will point out that meets is fine it's not i think in some ways we tend to translate these to letter grades in the states at least you could see a c as being like the middle grade out of five and meets is generally the middle grade out of five and a c is a bad grade in school but but a c is not a meet is not you didn't do bad like you you did well and especially if you look at what level you're at generally these these ratings are calibrated based on the level you're in and

maybe you're in a more challenging role so the expectation is higher and you met that higher expectation like there's a lot of context and nuance here besides i didn't get the top rating and and in my experience the top rating is pretty rare anyways so i guess i wouldn't hold i wouldn't look at that as a negative or a black mark another interesting thing is the section about feedback and improvement do you have any advice around how to respond to that feedback separate from the the performance rating and kind of how you look at you kind of mentioned the long game and the feedback culture but but what about the specific feedback how do you handle that like the in the moment when you're sitting there hearing it is that what you mean or just let's do both sure yeah in the moment

and then over the long term in the moment i mean gosh this is so valuable for somebody who's just coming out of college and entering the workforce, if they're listening to this podcast to be ready to go into your first performance review, in the moment, you know, it's like exactly like, don't be that guy, right? Don't be that guy who, you know, tears well up, you know, your pupils start dilating, your heart rate goes up. And, you know, in that moment, you have to really just manage and just take it all in. And really, if you're on your game, be prepared to ask very specific questions. This is one of the challenges about the sort of general language, right, of meets the expectation or something. You want to get into like, well, what specifically, like if I was doing it in a way that you would have walked away much happier about how I presented in that meeting, what would I have done differently or what would I have said differently?

Yeah, like, I mean, when you're considering the list of questions you should ask, the pointed questions, probably number one should not be, how dare you? Right. Don't you know who my father is? You know, it's just the more you can be prepared to just breathe through it and get into specifics, you know, because sometimes they get into the specifics and you realize like, oh, really what you're talking about is you didn't like my PowerPoint. You know, like, and I didn't know that, you know, like I put too many details per slide or something. And if I had changed that, you know, and it's not the end of the world, you know. But that's the thing is you've got to be prepared to just breathe through it and get as much specific, you know, detailed feedback as you can so you know what they're looking for. I'm imagining this scenario where I've got like noise canceling headphones in so I can't actually hear the review, but I'm recording it on my phone. So like in the moment, I can just take it in completely neutral. You know, like I hear nothing. And then later go back and listen to it when I can freak out.

Yep. You privately freak out? I mean, would you agree that there's usually nothing you can do in the moment to change the review? You're probably not going to be able to debate your way to a different outcome, right? Right. Unless, you know, you've got somebody who's really truly just being taken advantage of by, you know, politics or whatever, you know, where you truly do have the upper hand in this whole thing. You know, I have a record of emails showing, you know, the stuff or whatever. And then you can, you know, take it to a higher level if you have to.

But I agree for the most part, you know, it's, it's best to do nothing, but to do, to take it into do nothing in the moment and then think about strategically what you want to do the next day, right. Then to try to argue where you're way out of it in that moment. It doesn't like you're suggesting using it to, to dig in as much as possible though. So you're not arguing, you're trying to understand as much as you can in that moment. because for better or for worse for some people this is yeah they're only the only way they ever get feedback from their manager because it's kind of forced by this process so so it is pretty

valuable where someone has to give you feedback and they they have to it's tied to a rating so they can't sugarcoat it so much that you can't like right they can't just say everything's fine if the rating says otherwise you know and that happens a lot doesn't it where people feel like I'm not getting feedback you know and and it's it's disconcerting because if you don't have enough experience in your field you don't have enough of you know trust yourself like what you're measuring against right to you know to know that you're on the right path or whatever and so you know that's one of the other things where the needy person is going to go every day am I doing okay am I doing okay a person who's not being needy but it's just being very authentic would

just say to them, this is a new project for me. And it's just helpful for me to know benchmarks to know that I'm really doing this right. So, you know, can I get some more feedback from you? Or can I sit down with you at the end of the week and kind of review where we're at with it, right? That's just, that's the stuff that's going to make you stand out. It's going to make you look stronger. You are teachable, which is an enormous quality that people want. You know, you're not such a big ego that you're going to pretend you know everything or you can't take feedback. for sure yeah in my experience people also give much better feedback when they are asked specific questions instead of yeah hey do you have any feedback because that's real broad it's hard to

know the scope it's hard to know what their tolerance for bluntness is too it's easy to feel like you might under or over over communicate in terms of directness but if you say hey how could this project have gone better? Or what do you feel like I could have done to deliver this faster or convince people easier? Just the more specific questions you ask, the more direct feedback you'll get. Yeah. And the other side of it is anybody who's listening to this, who might be in a, you know, sort of a newer managing position where you're supervising others is to be prepared with people say to you, can I get feedback to respond with, you know, about what right so that you know it's exactly that's a very good question let's be clear you

know yeah you know i'm happy to do it but about what you know just you smell great yeah you know that's very interesting just put it back on that i mean like look you need you need to own judo move judo management judo but it's like you you need to own it right like you need to own the your own career path and your own development. And so if you want feedback, you better be prepared to ask specifics. When I introduced myself, I said, you know, my work is really about helping people get to this point where they just feel that they totally embody their authority as an adult, you know, their position as an adult in the world. And one of the conversations that I'm having, which is a really common, almost universal conversation, is about how the dynamics of power

work. And you have to know how the dynamics of power work. And you have to be able to recognize when it's being done to you. And you have to know how to do it to others. You have to know how to be able to handle it when you're in these situations. But one of the dynamics I frequently talk about is how in any conversation, whoever's asking the questions is leading the conversation. The power comes and you guys, you can ask me whatever question you want. It's your show, Right. So I come into this kind of submitting and compliance, whatever you want to do with it. Right. And if there's a point there where, you know, I want to direct it a different way, then I'm going to ask a question. Right. Because now all of a sudden I'm I'm leading it. Right. So it's a real you know, it's an art form ultimately to do this. But you don't have to be some master linguist or something to do it. You can just ask the right questions and you'll lead where people are going to be going with it. If they don't want to go there, they'll, you know, they'll tell you not now or, you know, I don't have an answer to you or whatever.

But it's really useful to recognize who's asking questions and learn when to ask questions. I got to tell you, Jeff, you just kind of blew my mind. Your statement there, you said the person who's asking the questions is the one leading the conversation. And like I'm thinking back over the last 15 years of my career and I am a serial question asker. Like I ask so many questions all the time. And I just now it's just now dawned on me when you said that, that this is probably like my number one technique for leadership. You know, like I had never really put the two together. I'd always thought of myself as a as a curious person. I want to understand how everything works and what all the dynamics are and what's going on behind the scenes. And that manifests as question asking. But I think I think now I'm just having this reflective moment where I think people perceive a stronger degree of leadership because of all the dang questions I ask. It's like nonstop. Oh, here comes Dave again. It's going to be a barrage of questions. Right. And I would say there's no doubt that that's people get that. Yeah. That's so interesting. The other if you want me to riff on this for a minute, please. It's your show. See how we just did it right there. Yeah, not anymore. now it's yours. Oh, man. This is why cops always say, I'm the one asking the questions.

Yes, it is. Or brilliant lawyers, right? Who do that, right? So the other one, the other real power dynamic is about who makes the rules. And it's just, this is always how it goes. Whoever's making the rules is the one who's going to lead and is going to win. So in any, you know relationship or any meeting or any you know activity that you're doing you know when you walk in a room like if I go into a room and I'm meeting with a group of people like I'll be in I was just referencing I'll be in China next week and you know I am tracking you know who in the room is sort of dictating okay let's get started you know or you know Jeff why don't you come sit over here right that's making the rules that's demonstrating the the power structure to it right

So the person who schedules a meeting with you and always shows up like 15 minutes late and essentially establishes that you're just going to have to wait for me, they're making the rules. The rules are, right, that I show up when I want to. This is pure evil. I don't think we can publish this episode. I feel like we're sharing the dark arts. Please don't use your newfound powers for evil. Well, that's what your editors are for. i'm just imagining like all these software developers next week they're like yeah i know

we said stand-up starts at 9 a.m but i'm showing up at 9 15 and you're just gonna have to deal with that yeah i brought my snuggie to stand up and there's nothing you can do but curl up on the ground but you usually you know when you learn this stuff you use it the other way it's actually used the other way it's like you're in charge of a team and you have people who are supposed to be on a call at 9am, start the meeting at 9am. And people very quickly understand the rules are when I say 9am, it's 9am. Right? And you know, if you wait until they're all on the call, you've now sent a message that they make the rules. Oh, man, I'm sorry. I'm just like, I'm just over here with my jaw on the floor, just thinking about all the professional interactions I've had over the last

15 years. And just wondering if people were doing this on purpose, or if they knew the dark arts, I would say most people don't know the dark arts. And I don't think most people are really, really aware of the extent to which, you know, that exists until the last election cycle, quite frankly. I mean, I was really trying to be careful not to bring that up. But it's just, you know, if you look at the, you know, the masters of influence, and who's, you know, framing the argument, and all that stuff, like it's, you know, it's sort of really in our face at this point, right? So most people aren't necessarily aware this is going on. They're either, you know, doing it or they're compliant with it, submissive to it. And I just think it's important, you know, as you're staking out your position in life to sort of decide, you know, where are you non-negotiable? Where are you just going to say this is how it's going to be? And if I'm a young professional put in charge of a project, I don't want the people underneath me dictating how the meeting is going to run. I want to dictate how the meeting is going to run. When it's time to take questions, I want to determine it's time to take questions. So I'll be the one who says, are there any questions? Even asking if there's any questions.

You get that? That's how subtle it is. But people really get, you have the authority, you're running this. And if you do it very conversationally, they won't even notice it. Oh, man. We made it sound kind of malicious, too. But I think a lot of this is recognizing how it works in the world, not necessarily some trick that people are using to manipulate you. It's just it's a thing that happens that if you recognize, you can also use deliberately.

To be fair, I do all of these things all the time. I've never done them maliciously. Like, I'm the question asker. I'm the one who's like, let's start the meeting now. I'm the one who's like hey why don't you sit over here I think it'll be better for you you know and I just do this constantly and now I'm gonna have to make sure I'm not doing it with evil intent evil intent just doesn't even go in my head when I'm talking to you guys or talking to people who are listening to this podcast I mean it's a they're not I don't come across many people

who have that in life but where it's like an example of this with somebody who's sort of a young professional is you know I'll suggest like if you're in a group meeting you can kind of sit there quietly and then at some point you can say you know I don't know if we're gonna have time for but I would appreciate if maybe there's a couple of minutes at the end that we could just do some questions, you know, sort of, you know, an open forum for questions. And whoever's running the meeting most of the time will say, yeah, it sounds fine. And you as the young professional have actually just set the rules, but you do it just conversationally elegant. And it, you know, and it shows that, you know, you're not a pushover and you're somebody who's willing to ask questions

And, you know, that's how this stuff's done. I guess maybe this is a whole other podcast to do or something, but I just, I'm telling you, these are like some of those common conversations I have with people when they're starting out their careers is you got to know how the power structure works and know, you know, how to react to it when it happens and know how to, you know, do some of this yourself. And you have to be able to take feedback and stay cool when it happens, you know, and then strategize what you're going to do about it. I'm glad you just brought it full circle because, you know, now we're back to the young professional who just got some feedback from their manager at their annual performance review.

And what's a great way to manage that situation? Well, you go into question asking mode where you say, look, I'm going to lead this feedback session by asking you the questions that will give me the information I need. And then it's about me driving improvement and not just about me getting beaten down and feeling like a failure. I like what you said about driving improvement, too. It feels like one of the ways that this could fail is if you feel like you do not have control over the rating that you get. If you feel like I did everything I could and it wasn't enough, that's pretty demotivating. But if you come out of this with information that helps you decide what you're going to do differently, then it's not inherent in you. It's just some information you didn't know that now you know.

You can change based on that, which is much more motivating. So it's a problem to solve, not an essential attribute of your character. That's right. you are meets expectations it's like stamped on your soul i don't know i was just thinking to myself like wouldn't it be great if when i die i put in my will that on my headstone i want every one of my annual performance review ratings etched into my headstone no this really is me realize dave yeah 2003 exceeds expectations 2004 meets expectations i mean just on and on how great how great would that be like hopefully like

watching the stock market or something right what can I say it was 2008 it was a real bear market for a while I wasn't focused on work because I was speculating on subprime mortgages just like everyone

oh man well you think we've answered the question and about 15 others yeah this is great Yeah, I'm just I'm just fascinated. I got a lot to think about now about my my own behavior and watching the behavior of others. I mean, it's just fascinating stuff. And I think part of the reason I'm so fascinated by it right now is that I work for a large company. And I think in small companies, you see this stuff. But I think it's attenuated, like you see it to a lesser extent, because it's like, look, everyone's wearing every hat here. We don't have time for power structures and these kinds of dynamics. It's like, look, we got to we have a boat that is sinking. and in three months it will be sunk unless we get this thing up and running. Like that's startup land, right? And it's like everyone is just as busy as they can be building out the boat and bailing the water out of the bottom.

But at a big company, it's more like, no, no, I'm angling for my career and there's a lot of dynamics at play. There's a lot of people at play. So just absolutely fascinating to watch as an engineer. And I think a lot of engineers are pretty unaware of a lot of these things. At least that's the stereotype. And I can say that in my own experience, it's reinforced by my observation is that it's just uninteresting to many engineers. You know, they're like, I'm here to solve coding problems and I'm here to build software and build things.

And relationship dynamics are not as important to them as the code they write. But huge mistake, I think, because the more you engage in this world, the more opportunities you'll have to solve cooler problems and to work on teams that are doing the best and most fun and exciting things. and you'll have more control over your own direction and get to work on the things you want to work on. Yeah, couldn't agree more. Yeah, so fascinating. We've answered the question, I think, and a good one. Thank you for asking this.

What can people do if they want their own questions answered, Dave? Go to softskills.audio and click ask a question. You can fill out as much or as little information there as you want and be sure to join our Patreon group. And if you join, you get access to our Slack community where you can join over 100 other people who listen and have great conversations every week. there are a handful of really interesting conversations about situations at work.

It's been fascinating to engage in those. And Jeff, where can people go if they want to learn more about you? So if you want to learn more about me, go to my website and reach out to me, send an inquiry to connect with me. But the website is evolutionmentoring.com, evolution mentoring. And my clients right now on the young end are high school students and my oldest clients are in their late 20s. So I have quite a range and it's kind of all over the world because thanks to technology,

thanks to people like you, we can jump on Zoom calls and FaceTime and text and thanks to airline travel, I travel all over the place and meet a lot of people. So be happy if somebody wants to reach out to me

and just talk about how we might be able to be of some help or support to them. So thanks so much for your time, Jeff. Yeah, it was great talking to you. Awesome. Thanks for having me, guys. Yeah, this was super great.

All right, we'll catch y'all next week. Thanks for watching!