I wish I had learned better how to listen and observe without my own insecurity getting in the way. Also being able to ask for something without apologizing or justifying.
Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
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Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#12The Four Agreements[0] is one of the best "user manuals" for how one should live life, both work and personal: -Be impeccable with your word. -Don't take anything personally. -Don't make assumptions. -Always do your best. [0] https://www.miguelruiz.com/the-four-agreements
I liked this too. Also the sentence "You are entitled to your actions but not the results" from the Bhagavad Gita helps me.
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#13Not everyone responds the same. I hated when people would use fluffy language: "would it be okay if you could do X?" Dammit...just tell me to do X. I know you're not really asking me you're just trying to be nice for something that has to be done. Well... turns out just because I like to hear feedback or orders directly, doesn't mean everyone else does. Part of why your manager treads carefully is because they have t…
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Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#14I learned the hard way to not underestimate how competitive and treacherous some people can be in the workplace. I was a long-term contractor in a large company and had an incident where I confided to another employee about some issues I was having negotiating my pay at contract renewal time. I never mentioned any numbers, just that a manager had previously promised me a pay-raise and was not honouring their word. Within two hours I was called into a senior manager's office to be reprimanded for discussing this matter publicly. In retrospect I can see the warning signs exhibited by this employee that I had ignored, and I now see that I should have kept this to myself, however I worked very closely with this employee and felt that this employee would keep what I had told them in confidence. After this incident I saw many other examples of how duplicitous this particularly employee could be when they felt threatened by the ability of others. Ultimately I was not disciplined, but I learned a valuable lesson in the process.
For anyone wondering why this was an issue in the first place: It's generally a policy to keep pay and pay negotiations confidential. Employers fear the friction that can result if an employee discovers that they're being underpaid.
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#15I was homeschooled from grades K-12 (for those outside the U.S. essentially from age 5 to 18) which in and of itself leads to poorly developed social skills.
But I also have ADD. One of the symptoms of ADD is poor impulse control and rejection sensitivity which leads to issues with "emotional intelligence." So I would advise anyone, if you suspect you may have adult ADD, talk to a physciatrist and figure it out. Fixing underlying mental health problems will improve your professional and personal life!
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#16People are 100X more sensitive to negativity than positivity. So if you feel the need to say something negative, either wait for someone else to say it so you can laugh and agree, or say nothing at all.
Likewise, offer your opinion as little as possible unless it's positive or you've been explicitly asked for criticism. And even then describe how the thing could be improved, not how it sucked or how much.
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#17How to manage expectations. That communication is incredibly important. That the higher up the org chart someone is the busier they are. So what you spend 40 hours a week thinking about they might not spend 45 minutes thinking about. So over-communicate and remind them of important information about the project. Because they will forget lots of important details, and things that are glaringly obvious to you won't eve…
> Because they will forget lots of important details, and things that are glaringly obvious to you won't even show up on their radar.
Something related that I wish I had learned much earlier: Just because that person forgets the details doesn't mean they don't care or that they're just stupid. Expecting someone several levels removed from day-to-day development to remember the exact structure of that table or how exactly we do dependency injection makes me the unreasonable one.
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#18No one is thinking about you as much as you are. At the end of the day, people are reacting to their own feelings, values, and ideas as much or more as they are to anything you said. Taking yourself out of the debate - no matter how personal it feels - is always a good first step.
I had to read this twice. But just to confirm what you mean: We should take our personal feelings out of a debate -- but surely we must still remain in the debate?
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#19“How to win friends and influence people” is an absolutely wonderful book I wished I’d read 10 or 15 years before I did.
Some important ideas
- Just, get along with people. A bit reductionist but if you don’t place a high priority on getting along with people you certainly won’t learn how. It really is a habit, and it’s incredibly effective to remember the Cognitive Behavior insight that when you don’t get along with someone, you are almost always choosing not to get along with them ... you know exactly what to do to get along with them and just don’t want to do it.
- Conversly, not everyone will like you and that’s ok. You aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. Being ok with that is an important mental tool.
- To crib from 12 steps or The Four Agreements, nothing is personal. DON’T TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY. Even if someone hates you, it’s not YOU per se. It’s their experience of you. It’s not personal.
- It may be fair to say that it’s impossible to win an argument. Getting your way by “winning” an argument seems to come with an unacceptable cost attached most of the time. Try getting good at “yes and” style conversations where you run with the other persons point and build upon it creatively, it tends to make conversations more interesting than debating people. Truly, I find compulsive disagreement to be a boring conversational style.
- Take personal appearance seriously, and view it as an ongoing project too. So many people fall in to the trap of thinking they can avoid dealing with signaling, which is silly, you always are signaling so best take a look at what you are sending out there. I think it is very psychologically healthy to care for yourself, the act is good for you, and you can change how you present yourself gracefully as you age, which people screw up all the time and it makes them look older, somehow, instead of younger.
Re: Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
#20I learned the hard way to not underestimate how competitive and treacherous some people can be in the workplace. I was a long-term contractor in a large company and had an incident where I confided to another employee about some issues I was having negotiating my pay at contract renewal time. I never mentioned any numbers, just that a manager had previously promised me a pay-raise and was not honouring their word. Wi…
Can you say white kind of warning signs were on display? This sounds like something I would walk into.