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Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You

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Re: Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You

#71

Post by lostcolony »

Bartweiss wrote: post #64
jbattle wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've worked at different companies. I've seen the opposite. In smaller organizations there's more of a ... for lack of a better word ... team spirit. Conflicts rarely devolve to a zero-sum faceoff and people are more likely to be interested in the same goal (i.e. moving the product forward). The bigger the organization, the more muddy the waters. Cryptic territorial fights, all up and down the chain, become a shade…

> The bigger the organization, the more muddy the waters. Cryptic territorial fights, all up and down the chain, become a shade coloring a great many decisions. I heard a story recently of a fairly simple decision that put two territorial groups in conflict. It escalated to the person at the split between branches, who made the decision. Which is fine, except that the arguing parties didn't overlap one or two levels…

And the best part was the person making the decision was completely non-technical, and unaware of the actual considerations. Their decision was likely based on as much valid insight as a coin flip. Had a coin flip been agreed upon earlier, not only would the results likely have been the same, but morale would have been better, and costs would have been lowered.

Not necessarily advocating for a coin flip approach, just, you know your company is unhealthy when decisions can be made equally well if not better via random chance as by allowing your process to handle them.

Re: Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You

#72

Post by dang »

godot wrote: post #61

I actually absolutely agree with everything in this article; but I did find it amusing that the article is titled "How To Get Your Coworker To Agree With You", and the answer is actually, "Don't." The three sections can be summarized into: 1) Stop the first reaction of trying to do it, 2) Check yourself also, 3) Let go. Again, I actually agree with the author, just thought this was amusing, and may not be what reader…

Ok, let's try replacing "How to" with "Don't". Or perhaps it should say "How to not"?

Re: Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You

#74

Post by redwolf2 »

My approach would be:

1. Talk to Kara, why she prefers her approach and not yours. Don't tell her that the icon is wrong. Ask her, if the icon could be changed to the other. Maybe she is right and you are wrong. She's the expert in this scenario, not you. If shes professional and her approach is wrong, she will see the mistake and adopt your idea. After that, let it pass and don't go out and tell everyone she was wrong. That's not very humble and fair.

2. If you really think you are right, be subborn. Stubborn people are more successfull then non-stubborn people if you look at statistics. That's why most subborn people are working in management.

3. Don't approach disputes based on a single formula. Be diplomatic, stubborn, helping and supportive. Fight the good fight.

4. Don't talk about the fight club.

Re: Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You

#75

Post by ams6110 »

Thought immediately about posting a rant on the obsessive use of "they/their" in a singular context. Pick a pronoun for Kara and use it. Whether he is a she or she is a he, Kara is not a "they"

But then I thought, nah. I'll just read something else.

Re: Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You

#76

Post by iamcasen »

matmann2001 wrote: post #62
BSVino wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello there! Author of the article here. I love the point you've made. Often there are long term costs in e.g. technical debt. I assumed in this article that the stakes are low (and they are more often than we think) but I have a future article in mind about how to make team decisions when the stakes are high, and it'll be something along the lines of: Have a strong process, and make it the responsibility of one pers…

Hello! It's wonderful that you're joining us here today. I found your article insightful as I'm dealing with a very similar situation at work. I was wondering if I could ask for some further advice. Here's my story: I'm currently working on a multi-faceted project, where I have essentially become responsible for all things UI related. This is fine, considering UI/UX was a decent part of my educational background and…

I was in your shoes at my last job. I tried many techniques for over 2 years, but eventually I had to resign because nothing was going to change no matter what I did.

I was constantly being dictated to or ignored as if I was a Jr. Dev, even though I had by far the most experience on the team. I'm sure I am not the best at handling the nuances of interpersonal communication, so I'm sure I'm somewhat to blame. That being said, what can I do when someone argues against me about something they are truly incorrect about? Just let them carry on and do the wrong thing and further sink our codebase into oblivion? I guess so...

Re: Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You

#77

Post by lambdasquirrel »

There's some caveats to all this. The most obvious is that you're right and Kara's wrong. The problem in creative orgs is that it's often hard to tell you apart from Kara. Learning and unlearning are important abilities in a creative setting. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a creative setting. How many of us (in ops) have had to argue with coworkers about the usefulness of configuration management (back when that was becoming the best way to do things), and who now have to talk with coworkers about the need to containerize our build and deployment? So, what might've been wrong (or right) at some point in history, may not be wrong (or right) now.

And yes, as others have pointed out, there is usually a lot of technical debt at stake.

In UI/UX settings, agreeing with your coworkers (as someone who's done design, talking about engineers), it usually means that you end up with a real stinking pile of a UX, where the designer gets overruled every time unless product intervenes. There's just more engineers than there are designers, and all of the engineers are living in the same bubble.

That leads into the other caveat. This strategy works okay when you are in an org with enough clearheaded people (who have the power). With a critical mass of clearheaded people, you can carry forth and the cumulative effect of things going wrong doesn't overwhelm the org's ability to repair them.

Are there meta-abilities involved with creativity? I know for my own individual flow, it was important to recognize when I was stuck, and to take a walk. Creative people are often very stubborn, and, maybe this works well in a traditional, management context, but, I'm pretty sure this works against us in our creative bread-and-butter. And, I'm not sure there really is a general way to teach creative ability (whatever that is) that works for everyone, including this fictitious Kara.

Re: Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You

#78

Post by iamcasen »

some_account wrote: post #2

The problem is that if you are actually do know best, everybody else has to make that mistake and learn, and while doing so, is halting progress that could be made in the right direction. In my world as a software developer, I've found that if my group of colleagues and the boss has very different culture and skills than you do, it's very hard or impossible to influence change. Because the entire group would have to…

This is so spot on it hurts. At my last job, everyone was going about building things completely wrong, and to them it was completely normal! I found it very difficult to work with them because they didn't view me as their superior, so they weren't receptive to me teaching them anything, and whenever I would suggest an idea on a design, they wouldn't have any opinions because they didn't know any better.

They would often times ask me to explain why it should be done one way or another, and have me to it in a 30 minute meeting. In reality, it would take us reading a few volumes of computer science text books before they had enough knowledge to understand where I'm even coming from.

It was endlessly frustrating.

Re: Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You

#79

Post by master-litty »

godot wrote: post #61

I actually absolutely agree with everything in this article; but I did find it amusing that the article is titled "How To Get Your Coworker To Agree With You", and the answer is actually, "Don't." The three sections can be summarized into: 1) Stop the first reaction of trying to do it, 2) Check yourself also, 3) Let go. Again, I actually agree with the author, just thought this was amusing, and may not be what reader…

Beyond amusing, it's great writing. I see we've already changed the title but I wish we hadn't! I bet it's really persuasive for offenders.

1. Lull the reader into a false sense of security: This article is going to help you with a problem!

2. Really dig into it: Share a highly relevant story and connect with the reader's current frustration. Make it as clear as possible that the reader is understood.

3. Now that you have a shared foundation, introduce your argument.

Discussions that start with the argument immediately don't stick as well to a lot of people. Give them a reason to listen.

Re: Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You

#80

Post by zerocrates »

ams6110 wrote: post #75

Thought immediately about posting a rant on the obsessive use of "they/their" in a singular context. Pick a pronoun for Kara and use it. Whether he is a she or she is a he, Kara is not a "they" But then I thought, nah. I'll just read something else.

That's a pretty petty reason. Also, you're only going to see usage of the singular "they" increase, so you'll be skipping a fair amount of content with that policy.

Especially in the workplace context, assignment of a particular gender for an example like this is often an issue. Many people (myself included) take the reasonable opinion that "they" is preferable to "he or she," if only on aesthetic grounds.

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