Hey, everyone, and welcome to Developer Tea. My name is Jonathan Cottrell, and in today's episode, I answer listener Brett's question about being led into failure. We don't have a formal sponsor today, but I wanted to talk to you for a second about spec. There are other shows that if you like Developer Tea, you are going to absolutely enjoy. For example, the new show, Orthogonal, is about finance for freelancers. Go and check out the other shows on spec.fm, and if you're interested in getting your message in front of thousands of designers and developers who are constantly looking to make themselves better, these people are driven to make themselves better. That's the kind of people that you're going to be putting your message in front of. If you are interested in getting your message in front of those kinds of people, go to spec.fm slash. You can learn more about how to sponsor Developer Tea, as well as our other shows on spec. Brett wrote an email and asked me, Hello, Jonathan. I have a question for you. You almost touched on this in your episode on Working on Saturdays. This was an episode I did this week. What do you do when you are put in a situation to fail? It could be something like not having a technical person being your manager, and they're not understanding how to do it. They're not understanding how long it takes to actually develop something. Another example I can think of is when a sales rep makes promises that are impossible to keep. In those situations, I have typically jumped ship. I was curious if you had any tips or suggestions in case I find myself in that situation again. Thanks, Brett. Brett, I like this question because it opens up a bigger conversation about what it means to be a great developer as it relates to how we interact with our boss, how we interact with our clients, which is really the primary topic of this show, how to be a great developer. When you are put in a situation to fail, you have a lot of competing priorities. You have a lot of competing ideologies and wishes and desires and drives that you're trying to sort through. For example, most people who are put in a situation to fail have someone who has put them there, like a boss or a client. I'll be using the term boss, but really I mean anyone who has significant, input into the direction of a given decision or project you're working on as a developer. Like, for example, a project manager or a sales rep, like Brett said. And you're motivated to please that boss or that client or that sales rep because pleasing your boss or your client or your coworkers is often kind of a prerequisite for being successful, right? And you may end up getting a promotion if your job actually entails you making your boss happy. Which? Pretty much anybody with a boss hopes to make their boss happy. But on the other hand, you know that true success doesn't mean pleasing your boss. True success doesn't just mean your boss telling you you did a good job. It means generating real value and actually accomplishing the overall goals of a given project. Brett, this is why you asked this question. Because if the answer were simple, you'd just go straight for it, right? The answer is not simple. It has a lot of competing factors. Kind of sitting in front of you to choose from. So another interpretation of this question that Brett is asking might sound like this. How do I tell my boss or client that their plan is headed for disaster while staying on their good side? And the answer to this question, quite simply, is not simple. But hopefully I can bring some good advice to the table on the subject. Here's the thing. One of the most valuable pieces of advice you will ever hear for your career is to put yourself in your leader's shoes. Think from their perspective. How do you, as the boss now, that's where your brain is, you're thinking from the boss's perspective, how do you as the boss, or how do you as the product owner or the client, how do you want the people working for you to act? What kind of decisions do you want them to make? Most reasonable clients and most reasonable bosses want real success. They don't want to follow down a bad path. They don't want to follow a bad plan to ultimately fail. They're seeking success. However, it's also incredibly important to remember that your boss, your client, is a human. And when you are wrong or when you have a bad idea, how do you want to be told that your idea is bad? Would you prefer for the person telling you to be abrasive and harsh and demeaning or prescriptive? I don't think anyone particularly enjoys being on the receiving end of those kinds of attitudes. Your boss and your client are certainly included in that. No one wants to be pointed out as incompetent or wrong, right? Nobody likes that feeling. It's a very difficult thing for our pride to be proven wrong in front of our peers. So your job as an employee or as a consultant is to empower those you serve. Empower. Empower them with the knowledge and the direction they need to uncover the correct path. So I'm going to give you some quick guidelines to help ensure that you are empowering your clients and empowering your boss in the face of potential failure. Guideline number one for today. Guideline number one is recognize that your boss's goals are to succeed. This is really simple. This is a mentality change for most of you who are facing this. You may be kind of in that. Accidental presupposition that your boss is seeking failure. Your boss is not seeking out failure. Your client doesn't want to drive their product into the ground. They're also not out to make you look bad. They aren't out to make your job miserable. One in a thousand cases, maybe somebody has it out for you, but by and large, people are not out to try to hurt you. Your boss is looking to succeed at what they're trying to do. It's important to start. From this perspective so that you can align yourself with your boss instead of going to war with them. This is such an important mindset shift. And a lot of people go into work thinking that they are basically fighting their boss. They're at odds with their boss. And the problem is that's always going to end in some kind of bad situation, some kind of negative situation where, you know, you're trying to get away from work all the time. You're not invested. You don't appreciate the work. You're not trying to make the work succeed. Instead, you're trying to do something to spite your boss. Those are toxic attitudes, right? So get in line to push the goals forward. Now, I don't want to downplay the idea that some people do experience abuse in the workplace. This is very real. And I don't want to, you know, make light of that. So you have to recognize that. And talk to someone. If you feel like you're experiencing that, go and talk to someone. If you have an HR coordinator at your workplace, go and talk to that HR coordinator. This is not going to be something that people at smaller companies typically have, though. But you may have someone that you trust that's close to you that you believe is going to offer you positive advice. You know, a counselor is a good idea. Those are the kinds of people that you can reach out to and determine, you know, am I actually being abused in the workplace? And that's something that you need to get out of immediately. If that is the case. So don't get in line with your boss if they are truly abusing you. But for the most part, the average case, your boss isn't trying to make you fail. They aren't trying to abuse you. They aren't trying to make your job miserable. They have some kind of goal that they're trying to achieve. And if you align with your boss, you're going to help them succeed more. And ultimately, in the long run, if your boss succeeds and they see you as a part of that success, then the long term prognosis. For your career is much better than if you just did what they asked you to do. So number one, recognize that your boss's goals are to succeed. Number two, choose leading over demanding. Choose leading over demanding. A good developer leads other people to success rather than demanding from them what they think will result in success. Let's think about that for a second. A good developer leads other people to success rather than demanding for them to. Do things that they think will result in success. The idea of leadership is incredibly complex. And we started talking a little bit about it on the show in the past few weeks. But you don't have to be in a position of leadership to lead. In other words, you can lead your boss. You can lead the people that you're working for. That's why they hired you. Leading doesn't mean being in power or having control over someone else. It means empowering someone else. And helping them. Helping them find success. So how does this actually practically play out? We've talked about leading. We've talked about finding success. What does this actually mean in a day-to-day job? Well, instead of starting from the perspective of listing all the problems with your boss's plan, consider playing the endless question game. The what-if game. Open new thoughts and possibilities. This is often also called the Socratic method. Ask questions to lead your boss towards the success. So, let's start with the Socratic method. Let's start with the Socratic method. If you know a particular problem is going to occur, then help your boss learn about that problem. You don't have to lay out every single detail. Instead, talk with them and have a normal conversation where they experience a moment of epiphany. You see, it doesn't really matter if you tell someone what you see. If you see failure down the road, it doesn't really help for you to tell your boss what you see. If you see failure down the road, it doesn't really matter for you to tell your boss what you see. It does help for you to show your boss what you see. And there's a subtle difference there. Telling your boss what you see, they have to visualize it for themselves. They have to interpolate that. They have to run it through all the filters that they already have, all their beliefs. But if instead you reveal something for them to see for themselves, in other words, they have found it out for themselves. That is how you... Lead people. That's how you convince people. That's how you can help people avoid failure that you see in the looming distance. Another example of leading rather than demanding is often used when working with a project manager or a sales rep. Instead of simply saying, this is impossible and you over-promised, you may approach the conversation of what is possible within that time frame, or perhaps talk about how what they want is possible. If there is more resources, if there's more money involved. And if you adopt the attitude of a teacher, in other words, if you offer to walk through in more detail so that you can ensure that the delivery will go well, that is the kind of attitude that is going to help that project manager see what's happening. See kind of the light of the path, right? That you have already walked down. Number three is incredibly important and also perhaps one of the most... Difficult points that I've ever made on the show. And that is, remember your own potential for fault. In other words, stay humble about what you think you know. It may look like you are headed straight for failure when in fact you're not. It may look like to you, because you've seen failure in the past and you've seen some of the things that lead up to failure, it may look like you are headed straight for failure when in fact... You're not. The truth is, two people with opposing opinions both think that the other has a less likely chance of being right. One of them is wrong. In other words, even though all indications are pointing to failure, you are still human and susceptible to being incorrect. Be willing to learn even from the failure of others. Don't be so sold on your ideas that you think... Everyone around you is more likely than you are to fail. Any information you present then, anytime you come and talk to your boss, anytime you talk to your client, any information you present should be subject to a healthy dose of skepticism. All in all, if you want your boss to be happy just for today, well then it's your decision if you want to follow them into failure. But if you want to collaborate with your boss and succeed together, which ultimately is more likely to lead to success in the long run for your career, start by thinking from your boss's perspective, or from your client's perspective, and lead them with humility rather than demanding through the lens of your own pride. Thank you so much for listening to Developer Tea today. Again, make sure you check out the Spec Network of Podcasts on spec.fm. We also have a few blogs, some really interesting content coming out from the Spec family. Of course, you can also connect with us on the Spec Slack community by going to spec.fm. I'm in there, and so are all the other hosts and writers for Spec. Just a quick shout out, I will be speaking at CSS Summit, and you don't have to go anywhere to attend this conference. It's a virtual conference online. Go and check it out. I'll put a link in the show notes, csssummit.com. In my talk, I'll be talking about the business case for good. CSS. Really, it's not just CSS. It's going to be the business case for writing good code, writing clean code from the start, rather than just doing the minimum necessary. So definitely want to check that out, csssummit.com. I have some really exciting content coming up in future episodes of Developer Tea, and it's easy to miss out on this show because we deliver it three times a week. If you don't want to miss out on a future episode, make sure you subscribe, and whatever podcasting app you are listening to right now, it takes just one click typically, and you will get those episodes delivered straight to your device. Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, enjoy your tea. Bye. Bye. Bye.