Anybody who says 'I need you to...' goes on the list, even if they are not actually talking to me myself.
But more seriously:
Ensure people know what and why something is important, ideally by arriving at that conclusion jointly and as part of an overarching plan that everyone can feel involved in - thus requests shouldn't be a surprise, they aren't coming from you so much as from the plan (nebulous though it may be).
Don't try to maintain 'superiority' by withholding information.
Show consideration for other pressures that somebody might be under.
Listen when they say no.
Close the loop so that good results get back to the person who did the thing.
Handle bad results in the same way that the NTSB deals with plane crashes - find the flaws in the system instead of somebody to blame.
Be ready to help out others as they have helped out you.
In my personal experience, I prefer people saying "I need you to" over "If you could just".
The "nice" corner of the chart simply screams hypocrisy to me. Like they want to say or mean "do this" but they try to couch it in some passive aggressive pleasantry. No thank you. I prefer clear communication.
It's a hard time for people like us to be in tech (particularly startups and small companies), because the culture of extreme passive aggressive is widespread and prevalent. Many people, most people, view direct requests as rudeness or condescension, even though the net result is exactly the same.
The worst part of it to me though, is that it can be hard sometimes to figure out what the person means. If they could just say what they mean, it would be so much easier. But no, instead we have to imply and hint our way to what we want lest we be taken as rude, and this requires the receiver to exercise some part of mind reading. Most of the time it actually works fine, but there are sometimes important and consequential moments when it doesn't work fine and there is miscommunication, sometimes with disastrous results. And completely unnecessary, if the person could have just said what they meant instead of trying to hint it. It doesn't need to be this way people.
great example that shows judgement, empathy and trust matter. Some people _want_ direct communication: they find fluff annoying, and don't take any insult or discomfort from it. Others find instruction challenging/insulting/intimidating and need softer interaction. A good leader can adjust their style to ensure the communication lands appropriately. Good leadership is largely about emotional intelligence.
I am not native English speaker but for me ideal is: “I have x to be done, could you pick it up?”.
If person says no or asks why I can elaborate or hear them out why and maybe I will do it on my own or delegate to another person.
That sentence seems clear on what needs to be done and that it needs to be done, there is no “could, maybe” on the “do it” part and still gives other person control over the situation.
For reasonable request and from boss position I don’t see how would it backfire.
For unreasonable request or unreasonable person on receiving end - I guess there is no good way anyway :)
I think the article’s advice to think about and notice phrasing is good: we should all be aware of the words we use, and how they sound.
But I think your suggestions mirror my experience in actually getting the person to do the thing. The other benefit is that the same steps, more or less, work well when managing up as well as down.
Absolutely. Words matter. However, one thing I have found is that when you go around telling people to do things, they frequently tend to do them.
Sometimes, that's fine. After all, I would assume no rational human is going to "command" someone to do a thing if they don't think they want that thing done. Personally, I've found that pointing people in a general direction ends up yielding far superior results. Empower your team, and they'll surprise you, usually in a good way.
Sometimes, there just is a need for "I need you to". This is literally called delegation.
And as a boss, you need to learn to delegate and first thing about delegation is that the other person must know clearly something was delegated to them.
Playing games around delegation only makes for worse experience. Creates noise, uncertainty and unnecessary failure.
In the end, if I am hired and paid for 8h of my time, I expect my boss to tell me what she needs me to do within those 8h.
Now, there are different ways to delegate. You can tell them "I need you to" 20 times a day pointing to small things or they can tell them "I need you to" on the first day of their job and then shut up about it.
One of my first questions to my new bosses is literally "what do you need me to do", unless they have already told me. This is to avoid any confusion about what I am supposed to be doing.
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All this nice and softy stuff comes after you have the very basic business of managing team done. To be nice to your team you need to have a reason to have a team and then you need to have a team or at least collection of people who are assigned as your resources for you to delegate work to.
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There is a pyramid of needs on both employer and employee side.
The employee needs to be paid first. Then treated nicely. Given the choice of being paid and treated nicely I would chose being treated nicely but that's just because I can go somewhere else to be paid and also have savings to not have to worry about it for a long time. If you don't have savings and don't have somewhere else to get paid, you care less about being treated nicely.
Likewise, the employer needs work to be done first. Whether they care for their workforce or not, work is more important because if the work isn't taken care of then there is no chance they can take care for the team anyway. At least not long term.
You can also delegate to your boss. It’s not necessarily a one way flow. I do this all the time, and any competent employee whom I’ve ever seen did the same. You can delegate decisions to your boss.
Yes. Good bosses do the shitty and awkward tasks for anyone else to do.
When a specific task absolutely needs to be done, the boss asks for volunteers, delegates, or does it themselves in that order.
The era of militarist corporations dictating downward, monopolizing information like it's some fucking government intelligence agency, and employees bending the knee to inflated egos upward is over.
Bosses now are organizational and individual employee facilitators of said employees getting shit done and improvements thereof.
Laying out what milestones need to get done and helpful bits to get there without micromanaging. Checking in and asking questions if there are any blocking items is okay.
Open-mindedness, dispassionate failure analysis, and 360 feedback are important to maintain professionalism and growth.
"find the flaws in the system instead of somebody to blame"
An issue can run the gambit from "it's the system" to person X is not doing their job inline with the basic expectations. Subpar managers will always try and blame the system over individual accountability even when the problem is blatantly obvious because if the person is the problem then that necessitates an uncomfortable social interaction. Best to understand the facts of a given problem and not jump to any conclusions about it must be the "system". There has to be some individual responsibility in the work place.
Could it be that HR/management part of the system is then at fault if a person is kept in a role where they do harm.
Most likely the system has been notified, but it has failed to react to the warnings.
> Anybody who says 'I need you to...' goes on the list, even if they are not actually talking to me myself.
Can you say more about this? I use this phrase (or slight variations) all the time in both work and personal contexts. I had no idea it could be abrasive.
In those cases I strongly prefer to use and hear, "Will you please..."
There's something in it that feels like I don't exist. It's just an announcement of what the King or Queen wants. I'm not worthy of consideration in the request.
> Handle bad results in the same way that the NTSB deals with plane crashes - find the flaws in the system instead of somebody to blame.
Definitely. I'd like to see a lot more of that, but the default often seems to be blame.
I recall a system at a place I worked where the stakeholders (native or skilled non-native English speakers) would produce requirements by holding meetings with the developer (much less skilled non-native speaker), dictate what they wanted, and have the developer take notes (which the stakeholders would not check) then immediately implement the software.
When the resulting software was built incorrectly they would blame the developer for incompetence, and hold another meeting.
This is a huge parenting tip that I hope more people see. My dad was pretty good about explaining and showing why he was making rules or decisions, but I also spent a lot of time with friends who had parents who did not, so I've seen both sides of this.
When your kids are young, it matters much less and in some cases not at all. But especially as they get older, and can start to exercise reason, you should always, always explain why you are making a decision or a rule. Even if the why is "because I get too hot and I like the thermostat being low" being honest is not only going to get more compliance, but it will build trust, and your kids will learn from your example.
> Don't try to maintain 'superiority' by withholding information.
This is a lesson I learned and it now bothers me to no end if it ever happens to me. When decisions are made behind closed doors and then commands rain down from above then I feel rage.
One thing I often say to people who I am responsible to lead is that they don't always have to agree but they need to understand. It is impossible for people to understand if information is kept from them. Even worse is if you try to fake compliance through faux-understanding using disinformation or by selectively editing information.
Another thing I do is plainly recognize when someone is being asked to do something they won't like. Understanding works here, but so does some empathy. You can both understand why the unpleasant task is required to achieve the goal and acknowledge the fact that the person tasked with the duty has a right to their feelings.
If you're looking for the right turn of phrase, you already lost. As a leader, you need to establish a rapport (with someone who is anyway initially inclined to desire rapport with you, because you're their boss and have outsize influence over future compensation) and negotiate over high-level context: IC availability and understanding what problems need solving. If everyone understands the problem and there's mutual trust, the details take care of themselves.
Of course, "establish mutual trust" is a whole megillah unto itself. But if it exists, "take out the trash" is not bossy. If it doesn't exist, "could we take out the trash?" is incredibly rude.
I agree with you. Looking for the right word is missing the point and to me feels like overanalysing instead of understanding. I've only worked in one manager position but I noticed that different people liked different styles - some want to understand why we're doing something and figure out the best way to do it themselves, as it gives them agency and confidence in their abilities - others felt overwhelmed and wanted a more direct approach (do this, in this specific way, in this amount of time) and didn't care what the reason was.
If your staff knows your character and that you will stand up for them and back their needs in the work place, the phrasing is secondary. The most important thing for me is to see the individual before directing them, and that takes time, empathy but also for them to see that I'm worthy of listening to (the criteria differ here).
> If you're looking for the right turn of phrase, you already lost. As a leader..
If you're not considering your language and phrasing as a leader.. then you're not doing it right. Self reflection and adjustment is a huge part of leading.
Yes, but I think the ops point is that the correct phrasing is report-specific, and trying to get phrasing down without considering whom one will be speaking to is a sure sign of failure
"We need the trash taken out. Bob, are you going to be in the office Friday and can you do it?" is arguably better. I can't think of a situation in software development where you need someone to just go do something with zero discussion because seconds matter, other than maybe on-call.
I disagree. No matter how much trust there is I accept nobody to tell me "I need you to do ..." or some other direct variant. Fortunately I encountered few bad bosses like this.
This is honestly fascinating to me, so I ask these questions in a curious and honest attempt to understand you more.
Do you know why you feel this way? How does it make you feel when somebody says that? Does this stay true even for a significant other?
Meta: I upvoted because this is a legitimate perspective and one I think that needs to be shared. For the down voters, why would you down vote this? Is there a reason besides that you disagree? Down voting something just because you disagree is silly.
Good tech leaders generally don’t command: they inspire.
And when you’re at the point where you’re trying to figure out the “right way to say things” you’ve already, utterly, failed.
Good tech leaders influence, guide, and grow people. They are honest and authentic.
The management style I have seen work the best is when people act in a real, genuine and sincere ways that are true to who they are as individuals and avoid manipulative behavior. They can still be hard chargers. They can still be abrasive. But they generally have a great degree of self-honesty and consideration to others to go along with their ambition.
Spending oceans of time trying to figure out the right turn of phrase is a terrible idea. It’s focusing more on how things look rather than putting the focus on how things are and how things should be.
Obviously there are oceans of management styles. But I can say that the smooth talking, super considered people who are focused on how exactly to say things rather than bigger picture leadership ideals are typically to worst, most manipulative people I have ever worked with.
> Good tech leaders generally don’t command: they inspire.
Ding ding ding! You win the prize.
The way I always put this to people is that "if dictating worked, there'd be a lot more dictators in the world."
> Good tech leaders influence, guide, and grow people. They are honest and authentic.
> The management style I have seen work the best is when people act in a real, genuine and sincere ways that are true to who they are as individuals and avoid manipulative behavior. They can still be hard chargers. They can still be abrasive. But they generally have a great degree of self-honesty and consideration to others to go along with their ambition.
The best managers I've ever had never told me to do anything. At my last position (from which I was unfortunately laid off a few months ago) as a senior staff engineer at a ~100 person startup with a ~30 person engineering org, my manager, the CTO, raised this to an art form. I joked with our other senior staff engineer (whom I hired) that our manager never said anything but "Figure it out." Once, after an eng all hands meeting, I Slacked my colleague and said "Well, if that wasn't peak $CTO-NAME, I don't know what is. I'm pretty sure what I just heard was the 25 minute version of 'figure it out.'"
"Figure it out" is a great message when you have a talented group of engineers working with you. They're experts at what they do, otherwise they wouldn't have gotten hired. "Figure it out" gives them room to get shit done, and it also goes a long way toward validating any concerns they might express. It's almost magical, really.
I worked there for almost a year, and I what I just wrote here for all of you is the absolute most valuable thing I learned in all that time. As a leader, telling smart, curious, and deeply technical people to "figure it out" will get you everything you ever dreamed of and more.
The only problem is that if you're not careful, you can end up talking too much, which leads to the other half of the lesson: shut the fuck up. Literally just stop talking, and leave some space in the conversation that you're not filling up with words. It's best if you can stop talking right as you've sketched out the barest outlines of a big idea, or told a good story, or you've just got something that's conceptually interesting to drop in the other person's lap.
Once you do that, "figure it out" + interesting idea + "shut the fuck up" is just like weaponized nerd sniping.
I would add to this the importance of listening to be part of this approach. I used to work at a company with a couple thousand engineers. My team was 20 or so people at the time and our dev environment was constantly breaking. It was not unusual for me to spend more than a full day each week trying to get my dev environment working and unable to do any development on what I was supposed to be doing. And that was common across the whole team. We had 1 to 2 senior engineers working close to full time on improving the situation, communicating with the team who maintained the dev environment and finding workarounds for our requirements, but often in a week or two those workarounds would stop working as the devops team made more changes. To be fair, the devops team was actively working towards creating a new dev ecosystem and our team had some dev needs that were not needed for most (maybe any?) of the rest of engineering. So they kept breaking our workarounds, we would be told we shouldn't be doing things that way anyway so it wasn't their fault, but also there wasn't an officially supported way to do what we absolutely needed to do to do our work.
Eventually the situation got escalated up the chain and the director came to our site to look into the situation. I was hopeful that that would lead to some improvements but when he was introduced to the team and gave a little speech it basically boiled down to "back in my day engineers would get their hands dirty and figure things out, maybe as a company we've become too lazy and expect other teams to fix things for us" - i.e. "you guys need to stop being lazy and figure it out yourselves". We were pissed. Fortunately the management chain was able to get him to understand the situation and he assigned one of the main devops guys to work with us to make sure our needs were met going forward. He never even apologized to us, I think he just decided it would be better to disappear and let things settle (we worked in a satellite city and he was at the main office so this was the only time many of us had ever interacted with him).
I recently quit a dev job because the project manager micromanaged everything (among other reasons). In that job I was treated as a set of hands to execute someone else's vision and nothing more. No one ever said to me "figure it out", even though that is my number one skill as a developer, and that is the part of my job that I love the most.
Thank you for sharing this anecdote. It has helped me understand the management style I prefer.
I don’t think this is necessarily true. Delegation is the name of the game in any large organization - managers exist to sift down tasks to a doer. You can’t delegate many kinds of tasks by inspiring people. You can generally only inspire people into things they want to do and find interesting anyway but the unfortunate truth is that there is a lot of boring/annoying/not fun stuff that needs to be done and it can’t all be done by the CEO alone.
Ive owned several businesses and probably hired about 100 people in my life. Ive never commanded a single one.
These are voluntary relationships. I’m paying for their services. I don’t command the waitress to bring me a drink, and she doesn’t command me to pay her.
Why would I ever issue a command? Either you’re choosing to work with me, in which case you want to provide me with your service, or we’re not working together.
Sure, but who is going to cut the wood and build the ship? In your first example, no one explicitly owns executing that task, which is very bad if you do want to sail the high seas.
I find 'take out the trash' so much less hsrsher than 'you will take out the trash'.
The first statement permits the response 'no'. It is clearly an order, with room for agency on the other side.
The second statement doesn't permit a response. To disagree you have to say 'you are wrong'. The statement leaves no room for free will. It assumes the authority of the command to be overwhelming. Or perhaps it is a threat.
I don't mind direct commands from a boss. But a boss that tells me what I will do, might likely find himself wrong.
It might be a stylistic choice, and an Office Space meme, but I tend to prefer issuing certain kinds of instruction in a vulnerable way. So for example "Hey X, I need you to take out the trash." But tone is a little important since if you sound insincere it comes across as condescending.
The first one is, I think, almost a put-down - less a command than a drill-sergeant-like drubbing, a punishment for stepping out of line.
The second one reads as a news report: like I, the reader of the oncall rotation, am sharing the news that your name has come up. (If I was the sole controller of the oncall rotation it might come across a bit differently, as an actual command).
The author is way too enamored of "I need" or "The trash needs" constructions that are passive-aggressive. I would go nuts if my manager talked to me that way. This is all very subjective, but at a minimum be direct, and polite. There's a lot of confusion here between directness and harshness, and it's missing perspective on lots of elements of human communication.
"One of our valued younger customers had blocked up the toilets with Monster Munch. Now I need that toilet back in play. Let's approach that as a team, shall we? How can we make that happen?"
The challenges ahead are for the team to solve. It should be a team discussion on how to plan and divide the work up.
There is always boring work involved, but posing it to the team and being straightforward “hey this isn’t the most exciting thing, but we need to get it done” usually gets a volunteer.
The more empowered the team feels when work is planned out, the less pushback you tend to get.
My engineer mind interprets it literally every time :)
Usually I don't mind taking out the trash... but occasionally I don't really want to. I have to always translate this to "She wants me to take out the trash".
Of course, you only got into the situation where you're supposed to take out the trash with some fancy realtime scheduler because the impulse to spend 6 hours automating a 15 second task was too strong to resist....
There’s a funny comedy bit about the passive-aggressive phrasing “we need to <take out the trash, clean up the yard, etc>”. “Is that a _he_ need, or a _she_ need?” Who’s we in this scenario?
The more trust and respect there is among a group of people, the more direct they can be with each other, without coming off as harsh.
There is a lot of implicit communication in a relationship with deep trust and respect at its core. You can say less, very directly, and usually get what you want, without offending anyone.
Also the problem with formulaic wording, as prescribed in the blog, is that it promotes overthinking about the wrong thing. You overthink the particular phrasing and intonation, rather than thinking about how to improve your relationship with others which would yield substantially more positive results. And when you hesitate from overthinking, people can sense that you're not being authentic or genuine.
This is a terrible article that rambles on for far too long without offering an actually polite way to tell/request someone to do something.
These are the best approaches:
1. "Please take out the trash."
2. "The trash needs to be taken out. Can you do it?"
3. (If there are several people around). "The trash needs to be taken out. Who can do it?"
Extra consideration:
I'm assuming this refers to a context where there's a prior agreement in place that A can tell B what to do (e.g. a business, where B signs a contract stating that he has sold X hours/day to the organisation). It usually should be unnecessary to bark out orders or to beat around the bush -- both are insulting: if B is a functioning adult they accept that they work for an organisation and so need to complete certain tasks.
However, direct instructions are rarely necessary for knowledge workers or highly-skilled professionals. Unless things have broken down horribly, they're aware that the success of the business they work for will contribute to their own career success.
E.g., instead of "you will write unit tests today" or "would you mind terribly writing unit tests today?", A would do best saying something like "we're introducing too many regressions when we change things, we need a better testing strategy -- let's discuss our approach to unit testing" and then let the team weigh in with their own ideas so they have ownership over whatever is decided.
> "they're aware that the success of the business they work for will contribute to their own career success."
If this was commonly true, then it wouldn't also be commonly true to feel best served by switching companies every 2 years. Other than simply continuing to be employed, but even that's tenuous and often volatile.
> "Unless things have broken down horribly"
It's a lucky individual who's never experienced this in their career.
#3 is actually unlikely to be effective due to the well-studied bystander effect (everyone stands around hoping someone else will help). Asking a concrete person is much more likely to get it done.
Yeah the there is an abstraction level. Even “take out the trash” is an abstraction. A lot of this minutiae can be handled with coding standards, policies, automated checks and so on. It gets “bossy” when say you need someone to do something out of the ordinary. Take support calls when they usually don’t. That is where emotional intelligence needs to kick in. Depending on culture and context it could be anything from “You are on the phones Frank” to “Sorry guys we don’t normally ask this but…”
Not only is "take out the trash" an abstraction, it's actually the wrong abstraction. Wrong abstractions are the mirror image of "technically correct": they're the worst kind of wrong.
"Take out the trash" is a well known, predictable, and well defined solution to a well known, well defined, and expected issue. If I were your manager, I'm sure you wouldn't mind me saying to you "@quickthrower2, I'd like you to lead the retro next week," would you? I don't want to put words in your mouth or anything, but if you're anything like 97.3% of people I've worked with, that's not going to faze you in the slightest, provided you feel like you have the skills to do the task. It's a checkbox.
Contrast that with "@quickthrower2, you need to reticulate the splines on this project." If "reticulating the splines" is a nontrivial task that doesn't have a well defined solution, that's going to land entirely differently than something like leading a retro. They're totally different scenarios, totally different contexts, totally different expected results.
> My personal favorite, combo of 2 listed, would he "I need X to happen"
I had a boss who spoke like this: He was too afraid to communicate directly, so everything was implied.
Instead of saying "I'm assigning X task to you" we'd have to play a game where he'd say "X is really important and it needs to be done". Then you had to ask 20 questions to extract the actual ask from him:
"Okay great, should I do it"
"If you want, that would be great"
"Cool, I can do it. Is it the highest priority or can it wait?"
"Well it's very important, but I don't want to interfere with your other work."
"I'm working on task A with tasks B and C next in the queue. Where should I prioritize it?"
"Well it's very important. The stakeholders want it done soon."
"Okay, how soon? Is there a deadline?"
"I don't like to put deadlines on people, but they're very adamant that it gets done soon. It would be good if it was done soon"
And so on, until I had spent 15 minutes extracting enough clues about what he wanted. He thought he was being extra nice by never giving anything resembling an order, but it just created confusion for everyone and disappointment when we didn't perfectly read his mind.
Subjective it must be, if my boss talked like that it would give me flashbacks to entitled customers I had working in food service.
Edit: to expand, the “I need” language has an implicit imperative. Since it is implicit, the listener/employee needs to internalize the command, and internalize the idea that the bosses “needs” are the employees “wants”. Maybe I’m psychologizing too much, but I haven’t ever met someone who talked like that who I could get along with. A baby cries when it needs something, mommy responds. As adults we should handle our own needs by turning them into actions to fulfill them ourselves or requests to have others fulfill them.
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But more seriously:
Ensure people know what and why something is important, ideally by arriving at that conclusion jointly and as part of an overarching plan that everyone can feel involved in - thus requests shouldn't be a surprise, they aren't coming from you so much as from the plan (nebulous though it may be).
Don't try to maintain 'superiority' by withholding information.
Show consideration for other pressures that somebody might be under.
Listen when they say no.
Close the loop so that good results get back to the person who did the thing.
Handle bad results in the same way that the NTSB deals with plane crashes - find the flaws in the system instead of somebody to blame.
Be ready to help out others as they have helped out you.
The "nice" corner of the chart simply screams hypocrisy to me. Like they want to say or mean "do this" but they try to couch it in some passive aggressive pleasantry. No thank you. I prefer clear communication.
It's a hard time for people like us to be in tech (particularly startups and small companies), because the culture of extreme passive aggressive is widespread and prevalent. Many people, most people, view direct requests as rudeness or condescension, even though the net result is exactly the same.
The worst part of it to me though, is that it can be hard sometimes to figure out what the person means. If they could just say what they mean, it would be so much easier. But no, instead we have to imply and hint our way to what we want lest we be taken as rude, and this requires the receiver to exercise some part of mind reading. Most of the time it actually works fine, but there are sometimes important and consequential moments when it doesn't work fine and there is miscommunication, sometimes with disastrous results. And completely unnecessary, if the person could have just said what they meant instead of trying to hint it. It doesn't need to be this way people.
If person says no or asks why I can elaborate or hear them out why and maybe I will do it on my own or delegate to another person.
That sentence seems clear on what needs to be done and that it needs to be done, there is no “could, maybe” on the “do it” part and still gives other person control over the situation.
For reasonable request and from boss position I don’t see how would it backfire.
For unreasonable request or unreasonable person on receiving end - I guess there is no good way anyway :)
What's wrong with a nice, "Please foo?"
But I think your suggestions mirror my experience in actually getting the person to do the thing. The other benefit is that the same steps, more or less, work well when managing up as well as down.
Sometimes, that's fine. After all, I would assume no rational human is going to "command" someone to do a thing if they don't think they want that thing done. Personally, I've found that pointing people in a general direction ends up yielding far superior results. Empower your team, and they'll surprise you, usually in a good way.
And as a boss, you need to learn to delegate and first thing about delegation is that the other person must know clearly something was delegated to them.
Playing games around delegation only makes for worse experience. Creates noise, uncertainty and unnecessary failure.
In the end, if I am hired and paid for 8h of my time, I expect my boss to tell me what she needs me to do within those 8h.
Now, there are different ways to delegate. You can tell them "I need you to" 20 times a day pointing to small things or they can tell them "I need you to" on the first day of their job and then shut up about it.
One of my first questions to my new bosses is literally "what do you need me to do", unless they have already told me. This is to avoid any confusion about what I am supposed to be doing.
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All this nice and softy stuff comes after you have the very basic business of managing team done. To be nice to your team you need to have a reason to have a team and then you need to have a team or at least collection of people who are assigned as your resources for you to delegate work to.
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There is a pyramid of needs on both employer and employee side.
The employee needs to be paid first. Then treated nicely. Given the choice of being paid and treated nicely I would chose being treated nicely but that's just because I can go somewhere else to be paid and also have savings to not have to worry about it for a long time. If you don't have savings and don't have somewhere else to get paid, you care less about being treated nicely.
Likewise, the employer needs work to be done first. Whether they care for their workforce or not, work is more important because if the work isn't taken care of then there is no chance they can take care for the team anyway. At least not long term.
When a specific task absolutely needs to be done, the boss asks for volunteers, delegates, or does it themselves in that order.
The era of militarist corporations dictating downward, monopolizing information like it's some fucking government intelligence agency, and employees bending the knee to inflated egos upward is over.
Bosses now are organizational and individual employee facilitators of said employees getting shit done and improvements thereof.
Laying out what milestones need to get done and helpful bits to get there without micromanaging. Checking in and asking questions if there are any blocking items is okay.
Open-mindedness, dispassionate failure analysis, and 360 feedback are important to maintain professionalism and growth.
An issue can run the gambit from "it's the system" to person X is not doing their job inline with the basic expectations. Subpar managers will always try and blame the system over individual accountability even when the problem is blatantly obvious because if the person is the problem then that necessitates an uncomfortable social interaction. Best to understand the facts of a given problem and not jump to any conclusions about it must be the "system". There has to be some individual responsibility in the work place.
Can you say more about this? I use this phrase (or slight variations) all the time in both work and personal contexts. I had no idea it could be abrasive.
In those cases I strongly prefer to use and hear, "Will you please..."
There's something in it that feels like I don't exist. It's just an announcement of what the King or Queen wants. I'm not worthy of consideration in the request.
Better to say that it is the thing that has 'needs' - e.g. 'the rubbish needs to be taken out [before the dustbin people get here]'
> Handle bad results in the same way that the NTSB deals with plane crashes - find the flaws in the system instead of somebody to blame.
Definitely. I'd like to see a lot more of that, but the default often seems to be blame.
I recall a system at a place I worked where the stakeholders (native or skilled non-native English speakers) would produce requirements by holding meetings with the developer (much less skilled non-native speaker), dictate what they wanted, and have the developer take notes (which the stakeholders would not check) then immediately implement the software. When the resulting software was built incorrectly they would blame the developer for incompetence, and hold another meeting.
When your kids are young, it matters much less and in some cases not at all. But especially as they get older, and can start to exercise reason, you should always, always explain why you are making a decision or a rule. Even if the why is "because I get too hot and I like the thermostat being low" being honest is not only going to get more compliance, but it will build trust, and your kids will learn from your example.
It really is good general life success advice.
This is a lesson I learned and it now bothers me to no end if it ever happens to me. When decisions are made behind closed doors and then commands rain down from above then I feel rage.
One thing I often say to people who I am responsible to lead is that they don't always have to agree but they need to understand. It is impossible for people to understand if information is kept from them. Even worse is if you try to fake compliance through faux-understanding using disinformation or by selectively editing information.
Another thing I do is plainly recognize when someone is being asked to do something they won't like. Understanding works here, but so does some empathy. You can both understand why the unpleasant task is required to achieve the goal and acknowledge the fact that the person tasked with the duty has a right to their feelings.
As often happens on HN, a comment worth more than the article. A concise and deep set of rules!
Of course, "establish mutual trust" is a whole megillah unto itself. But if it exists, "take out the trash" is not bossy. If it doesn't exist, "could we take out the trash?" is incredibly rude.
If your staff knows your character and that you will stand up for them and back their needs in the work place, the phrasing is secondary. The most important thing for me is to see the individual before directing them, and that takes time, empathy but also for them to see that I'm worthy of listening to (the criteria differ here).
If you're not considering your language and phrasing as a leader.. then you're not doing it right. Self reflection and adjustment is a huge part of leading.
Do you know why you feel this way? How does it make you feel when somebody says that? Does this stay true even for a significant other?
Meta: I upvoted because this is a legitimate perspective and one I think that needs to be shared. For the down voters, why would you down vote this? Is there a reason besides that you disagree? Down voting something just because you disagree is silly.
And when you’re at the point where you’re trying to figure out the “right way to say things” you’ve already, utterly, failed.
Good tech leaders influence, guide, and grow people. They are honest and authentic.
The management style I have seen work the best is when people act in a real, genuine and sincere ways that are true to who they are as individuals and avoid manipulative behavior. They can still be hard chargers. They can still be abrasive. But they generally have a great degree of self-honesty and consideration to others to go along with their ambition.
Spending oceans of time trying to figure out the right turn of phrase is a terrible idea. It’s focusing more on how things look rather than putting the focus on how things are and how things should be.
Obviously there are oceans of management styles. But I can say that the smooth talking, super considered people who are focused on how exactly to say things rather than bigger picture leadership ideals are typically to worst, most manipulative people I have ever worked with.
Ding ding ding! You win the prize.
The way I always put this to people is that "if dictating worked, there'd be a lot more dictators in the world."
> Good tech leaders influence, guide, and grow people. They are honest and authentic.
> The management style I have seen work the best is when people act in a real, genuine and sincere ways that are true to who they are as individuals and avoid manipulative behavior. They can still be hard chargers. They can still be abrasive. But they generally have a great degree of self-honesty and consideration to others to go along with their ambition.
The best managers I've ever had never told me to do anything. At my last position (from which I was unfortunately laid off a few months ago) as a senior staff engineer at a ~100 person startup with a ~30 person engineering org, my manager, the CTO, raised this to an art form. I joked with our other senior staff engineer (whom I hired) that our manager never said anything but "Figure it out." Once, after an eng all hands meeting, I Slacked my colleague and said "Well, if that wasn't peak $CTO-NAME, I don't know what is. I'm pretty sure what I just heard was the 25 minute version of 'figure it out.'"
"Figure it out" is a great message when you have a talented group of engineers working with you. They're experts at what they do, otherwise they wouldn't have gotten hired. "Figure it out" gives them room to get shit done, and it also goes a long way toward validating any concerns they might express. It's almost magical, really.
I worked there for almost a year, and I what I just wrote here for all of you is the absolute most valuable thing I learned in all that time. As a leader, telling smart, curious, and deeply technical people to "figure it out" will get you everything you ever dreamed of and more.
The only problem is that if you're not careful, you can end up talking too much, which leads to the other half of the lesson: shut the fuck up. Literally just stop talking, and leave some space in the conversation that you're not filling up with words. It's best if you can stop talking right as you've sketched out the barest outlines of a big idea, or told a good story, or you've just got something that's conceptually interesting to drop in the other person's lap.
Once you do that, "figure it out" + interesting idea + "shut the fuck up" is just like weaponized nerd sniping.
Eventually the situation got escalated up the chain and the director came to our site to look into the situation. I was hopeful that that would lead to some improvements but when he was introduced to the team and gave a little speech it basically boiled down to "back in my day engineers would get their hands dirty and figure things out, maybe as a company we've become too lazy and expect other teams to fix things for us" - i.e. "you guys need to stop being lazy and figure it out yourselves". We were pissed. Fortunately the management chain was able to get him to understand the situation and he assigned one of the main devops guys to work with us to make sure our needs were met going forward. He never even apologized to us, I think he just decided it would be better to disappear and let things settle (we worked in a satellite city and he was at the main office so this was the only time many of us had ever interacted with him).
Thank you for sharing this anecdote. It has helped me understand the management style I prefer.
Ive owned several businesses and probably hired about 100 people in my life. Ive never commanded a single one.
These are voluntary relationships. I’m paying for their services. I don’t command the waitress to bring me a drink, and she doesn’t command me to pay her.
Why would I ever issue a command? Either you’re choosing to work with me, in which case you want to provide me with your service, or we’re not working together.
Agreed. Compare:
We’re going to sail on the high seas and discover new lands!
vs
Cut down that tree for wood and build a ship.
The first statement permits the response 'no'. It is clearly an order, with room for agency on the other side.
The second statement doesn't permit a response. To disagree you have to say 'you are wrong'. The statement leaves no room for free will. It assumes the authority of the command to be overwhelming. Or perhaps it is a threat.
I don't mind direct commands from a boss. But a boss that tells me what I will do, might likely find himself wrong.
“You will be joining the oncall rotation” -> Quite friendly
The second one reads as a news report: like I, the reader of the oncall rotation, am sharing the news that your name has come up. (If I was the sole controller of the oncall rotation it might come across a bit differently, as an actual command).
I like the contrast of these two!
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Those turns of phrases are more inspiring than they are commanding.
The challenges ahead are for the team to solve. It should be a team discussion on how to plan and divide the work up.
There is always boring work involved, but posing it to the team and being straightforward “hey this isn’t the most exciting thing, but we need to get it done” usually gets a volunteer.
The more empowered the team feels when work is planned out, the less pushback you tend to get.
"Do you want to take out the trash?"
My engineer mind interprets it literally every time :)
Usually I don't mind taking out the trash... but occasionally I don't really want to. I have to always translate this to "She wants me to take out the trash".
It's as if you are forcing your spouse to somehow smell a janky web page.
/garfield
There is a lot of implicit communication in a relationship with deep trust and respect at its core. You can say less, very directly, and usually get what you want, without offending anyone.
One anti-pattern I've seen is the "big fish in tiny bowl" syndrome where a certain person evolves over the years into an overpaid, arrogant asshole.
These are the best approaches:
1. "Please take out the trash."
2. "The trash needs to be taken out. Can you do it?"
3. (If there are several people around). "The trash needs to be taken out. Who can do it?"
Extra consideration:
I'm assuming this refers to a context where there's a prior agreement in place that A can tell B what to do (e.g. a business, where B signs a contract stating that he has sold X hours/day to the organisation). It usually should be unnecessary to bark out orders or to beat around the bush -- both are insulting: if B is a functioning adult they accept that they work for an organisation and so need to complete certain tasks.
However, direct instructions are rarely necessary for knowledge workers or highly-skilled professionals. Unless things have broken down horribly, they're aware that the success of the business they work for will contribute to their own career success.
E.g., instead of "you will write unit tests today" or "would you mind terribly writing unit tests today?", A would do best saying something like "we're introducing too many regressions when we change things, we need a better testing strategy -- let's discuss our approach to unit testing" and then let the team weigh in with their own ideas so they have ownership over whatever is decided.
If this was commonly true, then it wouldn't also be commonly true to feel best served by switching companies every 2 years. Other than simply continuing to be employed, but even that's tenuous and often volatile.
> "Unless things have broken down horribly"
It's a lucky individual who's never experienced this in their career.
In real life, many people really do jump in to help when they know help is needed.
See to me that gives me flashbacks to Target, and that disconnected robot voice on the radios:
“Second request, 15 seconds remaining. Who is responding?”
"Take out the trash" is a well known, predictable, and well defined solution to a well known, well defined, and expected issue. If I were your manager, I'm sure you wouldn't mind me saying to you "@quickthrower2, I'd like you to lead the retro next week," would you? I don't want to put words in your mouth or anything, but if you're anything like 97.3% of people I've worked with, that's not going to faze you in the slightest, provided you feel like you have the skills to do the task. It's a checkbox.
Contrast that with "@quickthrower2, you need to reticulate the splines on this project." If "reticulating the splines" is a nontrivial task that doesn't have a well defined solution, that's going to land entirely differently than something like leading a retro. They're totally different scenarios, totally different contexts, totally different expected results.
Source: How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk - https://www.amazon.com/How-Talk-Kids-Will-Listen/dp/14516638...
My personal favorite, combo of 2 listed, would he "I need X to happen"
I had a boss who spoke like this: He was too afraid to communicate directly, so everything was implied.
Instead of saying "I'm assigning X task to you" we'd have to play a game where he'd say "X is really important and it needs to be done". Then you had to ask 20 questions to extract the actual ask from him:
"Okay great, should I do it"
"If you want, that would be great"
"Cool, I can do it. Is it the highest priority or can it wait?"
"Well it's very important, but I don't want to interfere with your other work."
"I'm working on task A with tasks B and C next in the queue. Where should I prioritize it?"
"Well it's very important. The stakeholders want it done soon."
"Okay, how soon? Is there a deadline?"
"I don't like to put deadlines on people, but they're very adamant that it gets done soon. It would be good if it was done soon"
And so on, until I had spent 15 minutes extracting enough clues about what he wanted. He thought he was being extra nice by never giving anything resembling an order, but it just created confusion for everyone and disappointment when we didn't perfectly read his mind.
Edit: to expand, the “I need” language has an implicit imperative. Since it is implicit, the listener/employee needs to internalize the command, and internalize the idea that the bosses “needs” are the employees “wants”. Maybe I’m psychologizing too much, but I haven’t ever met someone who talked like that who I could get along with. A baby cries when it needs something, mommy responds. As adults we should handle our own needs by turning them into actions to fulfill them ourselves or requests to have others fulfill them.