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How to grow professional relationships

tej.as

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Re: How to grow professional relationships

#141

Post by tejaskumar_ »

whatshisface wrote: post #131
tejaskumar_ wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a few people like this and can confirm: they're extremely difficult to be around and take pride in it, feeling great about being "free thinkers" and breaking from the "herd mentality". This I feel is unfortunately counter to the design of humankind, where we are—as you said—social animals and the only way to change for the better—at a species level—is to change together.

Isn't that basis for criticism a little broad? It sounds like you're saying that vegetarianism, every religion, and a higher than average scrupulousness towards not littering are in the same category as picking your nose during a one on one.

I don't think so: those are strong convictions that people have according to their value system and moral code and it's their right to have them. I'm not talking about that at all. To me, those are "closed handed" issues: we respect them without negotiation.

I'm talking about "open handed" issues where people tend to debate and negotiate: preferences, not convictions—if 3/4 friends want to go get a sandwich, but 1/4 insists on either salad or "go without me", this can be taxing on the relationship—especially if they also are usually open to sandwiches and have no strong conviction against it.

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#143

Post by alexpotato »

anshulbhide wrote: post #100
tejaskumar_ wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did they consider kicking Bob out of the group?

In most b-school group projects, the work is fairly easy enough such that the headache of kicking someone is out is probably greater than just doing the work amongst the remaining members.

This is exactly it.

In order, from most painful to least, in my story:

- Kicking Bob out of the group

- Getting Bob to do a fair share of the work

- Getting Bob to do ANY work

- Having Bob do no work and have everyone else share the load

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#144

Post by tejaskumar_ »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #137
the_snooze wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In software we have an unfortunate amount of people who don’t value social connections at all so we end up with a large tranche of people who can’t get past the “but why would I talk to them without a specific reason?” argument and then lament why all of their relationships end up transactional, or even better lament why no one will help them specifically because all their relationships are transactional and they ar…

It might be the depression talking, but I think in truth I don't want to like people. I'm not playing a strong Devil's Advocate for this thread, my comments are explanations and not excuses - I just don't like people, and I would need to be convinced that relationships are worth having, before I cared about how to have them. If I wanted lots of platonic business relationships I would be interested in how to have them…

If it's not too personal—why do you not want to like people?

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#145

Post by BlueTemplar »

lovich wrote: post #126
lukan wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Yup, you get a lot of people complaining about the pointlessness of small talk, but the reality is that small talk is social glue." Only with some people. Trying to do smalltalk with me, will not make me your friend. I simply hate smalltalk. (Talking unimportant things for the sake of talking) But there are a million of other interesting non buisness things I am willing to talk about at length. I also like to joke a…

Small talk doesn’t need to be about the weather as the trope goes. It can be as simple as “hey have you seen {shared colleague} recently?” Or “Hey man, you get into any new hobbies recently?”, or “I’ve been dabbling in {x} tech, have you done anything like it or are could recommend an alternative based on {personal information you got from collaborating with this person}” The main point in making is that you need to…

Small talk probably doesn't even need to be "talk", a consider the (in/)famous example of asking for a cigarette lighter.

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#146

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

impute wrote: post #108
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very good point. What's the old saying "A friend in need, is a friend, indeed." ? I like to have personal relationships, as opposed to corporate ones. Funny story: During the 1990s, my direct boss was a fairly low-key Japanese man. I really liked him. He was a marketing type, so we didn't really have a technical basis for our relationship. He was a decent chap, and I happily followed his orders. In return, he gave me…

How did you "run into each other, from time to time"? This seems to be the key part. There's research that shows that relationships are built via multiple, random encounters. Do you think he still would have dropped by your office if you hadn't had these run ins?

I would go to Tokyo, once or thrice a year. Long trip. I don't really miss it.

We'd usually run into each other at the train station, or in the corridors of the meeting room floor.

Our meets were always quite brief and serendipitous. We were in very different orbits.

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#147

Post by BlueTemplar »

sfink wrote: post #88
jameshush wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll add to this: If you want to practice following up but are afraid of "bugging" someone, start by wishing 1-3 people happy birthday every day. I put every person I know birthday on one giant Google calendar and wish people happy every day. It's a super easy way to at least say "hi" to someone once a year.

I tried this, but it didn't work very well for me. Maybe I was just catching people at a bad time? They'd always brush me off with some version of "uh, it isn't my birthday" "you've said that to me every day for a week, please stop" "stay away from me". What could I be doing wrong? Am I just choosing the wrong people to try to befriend?

> "you've said that to me every day for a week, please stop"

Did you, or didn't you ??

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#148

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #136
ghaff wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a lot of the misunderstanding around "networking" you see in discussions. A lot of tech people see it as an unwelcome task/burden. Whereas, it should be generally viewed as a pleasurable opportunity to just get to know people who may (or may not) be useful at some point in the future.

I'm not used to putting effort into friendships, so it does sound like an unwelcome task. And it sounds phony, since I have never put effort before. If I have to put effort then am I not faking it?

I'm "on the spectrum," so human relationships are a bit foreign to me. I'd make a great hermit.

Pretty much every relationship I have "doesn't come natural." I need to put conscious effort into every one.

I have also been involved in an organization, for most of my adult life, that has been instrumental, in helping to force me to have relationships with others, and it has taught me to be a good friend, and has given me good friends.

I'm not really into "transactional" relationships. In many cases, the extent of our relationship is only where we need to work with each other. I don't need to be their buddy, but, in the context of our work, I have found that it helps me to develop a true interest in the other person.

In my experience, I have realized that I'm actually a "people person." I really like people, and have found great utility, in ignoring my prejudices, and actually finding out a lot about the others in my life.

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#149

Post by lovich »

lukan wrote: post #134
lovich wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small talk doesn’t need to be about the weather as the trope goes. It can be as simple as “hey have you seen {shared colleague} recently?” Or “Hey man, you get into any new hobbies recently?”, or “I’ve been dabbling in {x} tech, have you done anything like it or are could recommend an alternative based on {personal information you got from collaborating with this person}” The main point in making is that you need to…

"The main point in making is that you need to continue in performing these relationship maintaining activities _before_ you need said persons help." Well, but I am quite good in determining if another person is just trying to be (fake) friendly, so they can get my help later and I am not interested in that and smalltalk won't create that bond for me. I am interested in genuine connections. So if someone asks this que…

> Well, but I am quite good in determining if another person is just trying to be (fake) friendly, so they can get my help later and I am not interested in that and smalltalk won't create that bond for me. I am interested in genuine connections.

Can I presume that this is the burner account of some particular billionaire if you are that good at recognizing the social situations?

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#150

Post by caseyohara »

tayo42 wrote: post #72
caseyohara wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it interesting that techspeak has a way of turning verbs into nouns. Ask, invite, compute.

I thought it's corporate America jargon

Technologists seem to have a special proclivity for linguistic nominalization (functional transformation of a verb or adjective into a noun).

Examples: build, patch, commit, deploy, sync, mock, update, upgrade, deliverable, standup, kickoff, resolve, retry. There are probably many more.

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