How to Get Your Teammates to Follow Your Lead • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Get Your Teammates to Follow Your Lead

#21

Post by lkrubner » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 12:19 PM UTC

codingdave wrote: post #20

Or... first get the team to acknowledge the problem and agree that a fix is needed. Then have everyone research solutions. Propose your tool while asking what other solutions have been found. As a team, talk about the pros/cons of each option, and facilitate those discussions. Build consensus by listening and understanding what your team has to say. Once you agree on the solution, talk through the configuration quest…

But my co-workers might have strong emotional attachments to answers that I know are wrong. I might have a co-worker who promotes their favorite technology as the answer to all problems. I might already know, from previous battles, that particular people are going to distort the conversation in particular ways. If I'm going to go into a situation without trying to push a particular agenda, I'd have to be willing to let the wrong choice be made.

Re: How to Get Your Teammates to Follow Your Lead

#22

Post by phkahler » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 12:27 PM UTC

BSVino wrote: post #11

TinyBig wrote: post #2

Curious if anyone here has seen success with the first step, "Get Approval From Leadership". I tend to favor "ask for forgiveness, not permission". Nobody is more resistant to change than middle management, so I tend to jump straight to small-scale adoption and coalition building.

Hello. Article author here. You can do this and it might be the appropriate approach in some situations, but you run the risk of degrading your reputation with management. Putting aside the personal risk, I tend to think of maintaining your reputation with your teammates as more important in the long run than accomplishing something or being right about any particular issue, since it preserves your ability to persuad…

Perhaps it's a subtle point but how do you contrast your comment with this part of the article:

>> When I explain this process to junior team members, an objection is often, "I don't feel like I have the authority to do this. This is a job for our leadership." They feel that a person must be empowered to make a change before they can venture to do so. That's not true. Team members become senior not because they are deemed senior and granted senior responsibilities, but rather because they show that they're capable of effectively taking and addressing senior responsibilities.

Re: How to Get Your Teammates to Follow Your Lead

#23

Post by chiefalchemist » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 12:37 PM UTC

To Further Reading I would add:

The Influential Mind By Tali Sharot

It was on FT's shortlist for Best Book of 2017.

https://upliftconnect.com/tali-sharot-influential-mind/

---

That aside, tools, I would think, are a function of culture; and culture a function of leadership and hiring. Whether a tool is good for any individual - as the author presented in this article - is irrelevant. Either it improves the end product and satisfies leadership's lead (and target ROI of adoption) or it does not.

That's not to say it will make adoption easy. But the less clear that foundation is the more friction there's going to be.

Re: How to Get Your Teammates to Follow Your Lead

#24

Post by euroclydon » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 12:56 PM UTC

lkrubner wrote: post #21

codingdave wrote: post #20

Or... first get the team to acknowledge the problem and agree that a fix is needed. Then have everyone research solutions. Propose your tool while asking what other solutions have been found. As a team, talk about the pros/cons of each option, and facilitate those discussions. Build consensus by listening and understanding what your team has to say. Once you agree on the solution, talk through the configuration quest…

But my co-workers might have strong emotional attachments to answers that I know are wrong. I might have a co-worker who promotes their favorite technology as the answer to all problems. I might already know, from previous battles, that particular people are going to distort the conversation in particular ways. If I'm going to go into a situation without trying to push a particular agenda, I'd have to be willing to l…

Robert Moses would never have let any of that happen. There’s a lot of hierarchy in companies, naturally. The team constructs are artificially induced.

Re: How to Get Your Teammates to Follow Your Lead

#25

Post by ricardobeat » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 1:23 PM UTC

euroclydon wrote: post #24

lkrubner wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But my co-workers might have strong emotional attachments to answers that I know are wrong. I might have a co-worker who promotes their favorite technology as the answer to all problems. I might already know, from previous battles, that particular people are going to distort the conversation in particular ways. If I'm going to go into a situation without trying to push a particular agenda, I'd have to be willing to l…

Robert Moses would never have let any of that happen. There’s a lot of hierarchy in companies, naturally. The team constructs are artificially induced.

Is that the guy who inspired generations of architects and engineers to build inhumane car-centric cities, and wanted a six-lane highway crossing through Manhattan? A good example of determined management, yes, but what about the outcomes?

Re: How to Get Your Teammates to Follow Your Lead

#26

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 1:26 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #16

marmaduke wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is predicated on the suitability of the tool to be adopted, in the first paragraph, so he omission seems fine. Obviously there are cases where the tool being pushed isn’t right, but that’s a completely different albeit important discussion.

The opposition might have good reason to opposing you, despite you being convinced you are right initially. As in, while you are pushing for that thing, be willing to listen to them, especially to those in roles different then your role, in case you are just about to cause them problems. You will just do more damage otherwise.

[deleted]

Re: How to Get Your Teammates to Follow Your Lead

#27

Post by ricardobeat » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 1:27 PM UTC

peterkelly wrote: post #7

Totally missing from the article is any notion that the tool or thing you're trying to push might not actually be a great idea. The assumption seems to be that the author was Right (TM) and all that remained to address was the challenge of getting others to see the one true path. If you're trying to convince others to make a change, and they're pushing back, listen to those concerns and revisit whether or not the cha…

The article addresses that in the starting paragraphs: there was no real opposition, just an unwillingness to compromise on how to do it.

> Everyone agreed we should have Figlets, but nobody agreed about its configuration.

Re: How to Get Your Teammates to Follow Your Lead

#28

Post by tacostakohashi » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 1:28 PM UTC

euroclydon wrote: post #24

lkrubner wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But my co-workers might have strong emotional attachments to answers that I know are wrong. I might have a co-worker who promotes their favorite technology as the answer to all problems. I might already know, from previous battles, that particular people are going to distort the conversation in particular ways. If I'm going to go into a situation without trying to push a particular agenda, I'd have to be willing to l…

Robert Moses would never have let any of that happen. There’s a lot of hierarchy in companies, naturally. The team constructs are artificially induced.

Maybe we work in different kinds of companies. In my experience with large corporates, sure we have hierarchy in the form of an org chart, managers and job titles / levels, but management very rarely enforce outcomes or resolve day-to-day disputes.

When it comes to getting coworkers or other teams on board with a new workflow or tool, it's really completely up to powers of persuasion, providing good examples, documenting, and letting people move at their own pace. It can be frustrating to work through, but it's probably for the best, in the sense that it probably is genuinely the best tool or workflow that will win out over time, instead of the favorite of some senior person that doesn't know all the details.

Re: How to Get Your Teammates to Follow Your Lead

#29

Post by ozim » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 1:35 PM UTC

lkrubner wrote: post #21

codingdave wrote: post #20

Or... first get the team to acknowledge the problem and agree that a fix is needed. Then have everyone research solutions. Propose your tool while asking what other solutions have been found. As a team, talk about the pros/cons of each option, and facilitate those discussions. Build consensus by listening and understanding what your team has to say. Once you agree on the solution, talk through the configuration quest…

But my co-workers might have strong emotional attachments to answers that I know are wrong. I might have a co-worker who promotes their favorite technology as the answer to all problems. I might already know, from previous battles, that particular people are going to distort the conversation in particular ways. If I'm going to go into a situation without trying to push a particular agenda, I'd have to be willing to l…

Yes and the biggest possible win you can make is to let go off your own "good solution". Beeing humble and dealing with problems later in lieu of beeing always right is correct choice.

You have to prevent only catastrophic decisions.

If you are working on CRUD web platform most decisions will not be catastrophic. Maybe inconvenient, maybe eat more budget but probably company will not go under because of some technical decision.

Re: How to Get Your Teammates to Follow Your Lead

#30

Post by humanrebar » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 1:37 PM UTC

ricardobeat wrote: post #27

peterkelly wrote: post #7

Totally missing from the article is any notion that the tool or thing you're trying to push might not actually be a great idea. The assumption seems to be that the author was Right (TM) and all that remained to address was the challenge of getting others to see the one true path. If you're trying to convince others to make a change, and they're pushing back, listen to those concerns and revisit whether or not the cha…

The article addresses that in the starting paragraphs: there was no real opposition, just an unwillingness to compromise on how to do it. > Everyone agreed we should have Figlets, but nobody agreed about its configuration.

Then Figlets was not a solution by itself. Just an implementation detail. By analogy, you can't say "we need a graph data structure", agree on python as a language, then consider the actual computer science an implementation detail that is being bickered over.

For a code review tool, "details" like CI integration, approval process, deployment integration, etc. are the solution. Figlets is just a shortcut for a big piece of that. Figlets could even be a blocker for certain features (like being to review code without a VPN connection).