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How to work with me

davidbauer.ch

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Re: How to work with me

#131

Post by JabavuAdams »

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #122
JabavuAdams wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, or we could not catastrophize and slippery-slope this. Given the eye-rolls and push-back just on evidence here, I don't think this idea has legs. I wonder how much of this is generational. Like "how freaking entitled are these kids now?" Publishing manuals on how to talk to them. Not saying I fully believe that, but it's the obvious "get off my lawn ya damn kids" reaction.

I support people's rights to write user manuals for themselves. The idea is even amusing to some degree. I just don't want to be forced to read them, and especially not be accused of not adhering to the rules in the manual. And yes, I admit the word "snowflakes" popped up in my head.

Agreed.

Re: How to work with me

#132

Post by sdoering »

teekert wrote: post #78
uniqueuid wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I got the same feeling - 4/5 of the text is worded as global imperatives, and almost nothing puts his own weaknesses and peculiarities into context. It seems like a contract required before interaction rather than a helpful guide to understanding him. That's one of the reasons I liked "Working with Claire" [1]: It is full of open subjectivity ("I hope", "I believe"), is very clear yet polite ("please ..."). [1]…

Exactly, it would be more valuable if the manual said things like: "I can come across as a dick sometimes but that is because I like to test certain stances on issues by vigorously defending them, I assure you I'm open to changing my mind if you just keep pushing, actually I feel like you are taking my intelligence more serious if you do. Not many people appreciate this, but somehow discussion makes me feel good" or…

Wow. Thanks. Need to bookmark this. You seem to know me.

Re: How to work with me

#133

Post by mplanchard »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #89

We did these at a previous company. I liked it in theory. In practice, though, it created way too much mental load and I often felt distracted by it. The ultimate challenge seems to stem from the "direction of need" when actual business needs to happen. When somebody has a challenge and is reaching out, it adds an unnecessary level of complexity for them to communicate their problem while translating it into the form…

We also did these at a previous company. The process made me fairly uncomfortable, because it felt very egocentric and unrealistic. And in my experience everyone just ignored them and interacted with each other in the normal patterns that would have developed anyway.

If you prefer people to interact with you a certain way, you’re going to have to remind them of it regularly regardless. And if you want people to understand why you interact a certain way with them, you’re going to have to explain it in context when it happens. Ultimately our relationships are formed by our shared experiences and our lived reality, and no amount of referring to a document will change that.

I could definitely see how this would be useful for a manager, but in the context of writing one to be public for my fellow employees to read I did not enjoy the experience.

Re: How to work with me

#135

Post by jfengel »

teekert wrote: post #78
uniqueuid wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I got the same feeling - 4/5 of the text is worded as global imperatives, and almost nothing puts his own weaknesses and peculiarities into context. It seems like a contract required before interaction rather than a helpful guide to understanding him. That's one of the reasons I liked "Working with Claire" [1]: It is full of open subjectivity ("I hope", "I believe"), is very clear yet polite ("please ..."). [1]…

Exactly, it would be more valuable if the manual said things like: "I can come across as a dick sometimes but that is because I like to test certain stances on issues by vigorously defending them, I assure you I'm open to changing my mind if you just keep pushing, actually I feel like you are taking my intelligence more serious if you do. Not many people appreciate this, but somehow discussion makes me feel good" or…

Or you could just sum it all up as "I'm deeply unpleasant, and I'd say that I'm sorry that you have to work with me, but I actually don't have any interest in your emotional state."

Re: How to work with me

#136

Post by karmelapple »

escapedmoose wrote: post #109

Aside from the reflexive “yikes, dude” that this gives me, I wouldn’t trust the content itself. A manual written by someone who’s worked with you for years would be far more valuable. But my first impression of a person who hands me something like this is going to be “what past interpersonal disasters have you wrought that led you to put time into something like this?” …case in point is a current coworker of mine, wh…

I think there's an important distinction between this and one post the author mentions he was inspired by, the "How to Rands" post [1].

From How to Rands:

> The following is a user guide for me and how I work. It captures what you can expect out of the average week working with me, how I like to work, my north star principles, and some of my, uh, nuance. My intent is to accelerate our working relationship with this document.

"How to Rands" is not saying "you need to do this to work with me." Rather, it's describing some of his preferences, behavior, etc.

I think a rename of OP's title from "How to work with me" to "How I like to work" or even just "About how I work" might more clearly communicate the author's original intent. (if I understand David's intent correctly, that is!)

[1] https://randsinrepose.com/archives/how-to-rands/

Re: How to work with me

#137

Post by karmelapple »

davidbauer wrote: post #31
andersco wrote: post #21

My boss at my previous company created one of these with the intention of being “helpful”. It basically stated you should address me in this manner, use this form of communication etc. I asked him if he would be ok with me also creating a similar user manual telling him how I should be communicated with. He said it would be ok, as long as it did not contradict his user manual. IMO, these seem to me to be a friendly w…

Tongue-in-cheek title aside, I really do believe that it's helpful if a lot of people do write down some sort of user manual for themselves. These can be a great starting point for having conversations on how to best work together and spot potential areas of conflict in advance. In no way should these be seen as dictating the rules.

Based on the comments here, I don't think people are getting much cheekiness from the title. As I mentioned in another comment, it might be useful to change the name, since I think a lot of people are seeing "How to work with me" as a pretty direct command to "do these X things."

And I don't think you intend that :)

Re: How to work with me

#138

Post by mplanchard »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #104

I love the idea of these. Last time I heard of them I sat down to write one and couldnt get through more than 1 or 2 points before feeling like it was a incredibly self indulgent exercise that wouldnt actually be helpful to anyone. I couldnt imagine sharing this with a coworker. Even if I did, I cant imagine they would read all of it and internalize it. Most people act how they act. They may adjust their behavior sli…

I completely agree, and I felt the same way when we had to do these for a previous job. The whole process felt _embarassing_, honestly. And, in practice, just like you said, people just act how they act, and interactions with people were shaped infinitely more by that than by the user manuals, which afaik were never referenced by anyone once written.

I might appreciate being able to read this as a manager, and I would take what insight I could glean from it as a coworker. However, even as someone who tries hard to adapt my natural method of interaction to other people, I can’t imagine their poorly self-descriptive document is going to be more useful than a month of direct contact and honest communication.

Re: How to work with me

#139

Post by mplanchard »

I don’t think these kinds of documents are particularly useful unless they are to-the-point explanations of things about the person that significantly differ from the norm, which someone might actually have a shot at remembering in practice.

For example, “I love direct feedback. Please don’t sugar coat things with me.” or “I am sometimes very direct and it comes across as rude. That is never my intention, so please feel free to call me out on it when it happens.”

Even that though is less useful than the constant work of difficult, honest communication that is actually required to shape your interaction patterns with others. I worry that user manuals might be used to absolve oneself of that work.

This document is a nice piece describing the environment the author wants to work in, in my opinion, rather than being a user manual for the author. Maybe reframing it that way would engender a better response in readers.

All that said though, the response here is often verging into the downright cruel, and I am disgusted by a lot of it. Many folks are making sweeping proclamations about this person’s personality or character and/or directly attacking the author. I think there are things to critique here, but it’s hasty as hell to assume that this document gives you enough to judge an entire person, and a whole other thing to rip that person down with insults.

Re: How to work with me

#140

Post by lostcolony »

spookthesunset wrote: post #117

> We can’t be successful together if we’re aiming for different outcomes. If one of us feels our goals or motives aren’t aligned, we need to talk. That is actually not true. When building a team it is important to learn what each individual seeks out of the "project". For example your goal might be to use the project as a way to get promoted. I might not care at all about getting promoted and instead my goal is to le…

You're aiming for the same outcome in that example; it's just that your incentives for it aren't the same. That's okay.

Oftentimes different incentives imply different outcomes, though. I've been in environments where product's incentives were not "enable dev to get to work" but instead "create documentation/slide decks for upper management". So they were busy as hell, creating artifacts that did not help dev identify what problem they were solving (let alone what solutions might look like), and were extremely successful based on what they cared about, but meant that the dev teams had very little time or direction to be successful with, leading to low morale and high rates of burnout.

In the example you provide, if that leads to one person going off to play with new stuff while the rest of the team is focused on the project, that's a problem. Likewise if the person wanting to get promoted insists on taking on all the high visibility work (or worse, just taking credit for it), that creates a problem. As long as the desired outcome is the same and you can create a path towards it that aligns with everyone's incentives (project succeeds, people get recognized for their contributions, we use some new stuff along the way) you can be successful.

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