A change of perspective is worth 80 IQ points. ~ Alan Kay
Recently I was faced with a familiar situation at work. As I saw it, my team was pulling me off a bug fix in favour of shipping a new feature. I applied my normal pushback by referencing The Joel Test , referencing Rapid Development , pointing to the Agile Manifesto , and making a principled argument for quality-in-service-of-long-term-velocity. At the end of the interaction, I felt frustrated, thwarted, and demoralized - it seemed liked the team was folding to pressure instead of making a principled decision.
As I stewed on this, it occurred to me that arguing was no longer effective. I was in the midst of a perpetual problem in the workplace. This reminded me that perpetual problems require a different tact because debate fails. I remembered "Dreams in Opposition" from The Gottman Institute , and I decided to give their approach a try in a workplace context.
I asked my tech-lead for a 20-minute meeting, about the team's choice. I explained that I would take the role of an interviewer, would keep my perspective out of the way, and would work to understand the decision. The result was fabulous . The questions that I asked are my own workplace adjustment of the questions that the Gottman Institute recommends for romantic relationships.
- What do you believe about this problem?
- What do you feel about it?
- Does this relate to your work history in some way?
- Tell me why this is so important to you.
- What do you need?
- What would be your ideal dream/goal here?
- Is there a fear or disaster scenario in not having this decision honoured?
- Is there a deeper purpose or goal in this?
The answers provided me with the missing context that I needed to understand the decision. Once I had that, the decision made total sense to me. I doubt I would have surfaced this information from continuing to argue my point. It turned out that the "new feature" that I though we were adding was in-fact a fix for an extremely problematic bug in our system. That hadn't come across in the original conversation, and I probably started arguing too early. My team and I were very much on the same page about quality-in-service-of-velocity.
Here are a few observations about what worked in the meeting.
- It felt awkward for me. I've never asked probing questions like this of a colleague. I didn't mention my awkwardness, though, and instead maintained a professional stance during the interview.
- At the beginning of the conversation, I tried to short-circuit any perceived attempt at forced intimacy by saying, "If a question seems awkward or too intimate, lets ignore it and move to the next question. I don't want any of that forced intimacy at work bullshit." I said this with a smile on my face, and I swore on purpose, because I wanted to keep things light and to avoid pseudo-psychotherapy relationship building.
- I framed the conversation as an interview, so my technical lead new in advance that this would be a one-sided conversation that was about me learning.
- I regularly checked-in with my understanding by using the "reflection of content" active listening technique: "If I understand correctly, what you're saying is that..."
I am grateful to have a tech lead who was open to meeting in the way. Finding a new approach to resolving this conflict probably wouldn't have happened without the civility and respect we show each other at my current workplace, and I am grateful for that aspect of my team. Woot.