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> What I’ve found effective in these cases is to lead with constructive energy directed towards a positive outcome. Even if you can’t get your peer’s performanc

> What I’ve found effective in these cases is to lead with constructive energy directed towards a positive outcome. Even if you can’t get your peer’s performance addressed directly, you can often overcome your peer’s bad performance by generating excitement in the direction you want to go. Enough excitement will give the resolution avoidant manager a way to solve their problem without actually engaging with the situation that they’re unwilling to address. The author arrives at a valuable conclusion in a somewhat roundabout way: The real solution to most problems, including low performing peers, is to step up and lead with a positive example. Years ago I would have agreed that the authors' dismissal of "hard to work with" is unfair and inaccurate. None of us wants to believe that we are the one who is hard to work with. Everybody else is wrong! I'm not the problem, it's my coworkers who aren't doing exactly what I want them to do! Yet as a manager, I've learned that the realities of hiring and managing people are very different than my overly idealistic standards when I was a junior IC. In retrospect, my ideas that it was my manager's job to ruthlessly punish or remove anyone I didn't feel was performing up to par or that I shouldn't be forced to navigate difficult social situations were unreasonable. > It’s a truism that you always want to hire folks with very high standards, but I’ve seen a staggering number of folks fail in an organization primarily because they want to hold others to a higher standard than their organization’s management is willing to enforce. Having high aspirations for yourself is great. Helping raise the bar through leading by example and mentoring your peers is great. Running to your manager every time you feel dissatisfied with someone else's performance and arriving with only complaints is, however, not great. No team is perfect. Hiring is hard. Nobody starts out as a superstar. People learn and grow at different rates. If you want to contribute, lead by example and help people out when they fall behind. As a manager I'm actually well aware of who's delivering and who's struggling, but we don't fire people the second they fall behind. We also notice who's helping the team reach the next level and who's simply in it for themselves. If your only solution to every problem is to run to your manager and demand that they do something because a peer didn't do exactly what you wanted or expected, I'm first going to ask what you did to help move the situation forward on your own. The first question is usually "How did it go when you talked to them about?" The first answer of the difficult to work with people is "Well... I didn't talk to them about it".

deckard1 5y ago
> Nobody starts out as a superstar. The superstar is a dictator with a strong halo effect. Think of any superstar developer and look into how they achieved that status. It's almost a certainty they were left alone to their own devices for great lengths of time. Which neatly coincides with... > We also notice who's helping the team reach the next level and who's simply in it for themselves. Capitalism relies on a contradictory stance: that the best employees are actually socialists that believe they are capitalists. Which is to say that a company wants employees that believe in the greater good (i.e. the team) but the employees need to feel like they are participants in capitalism through their efforts at their job. Otherwise they will realize they are simply being screwed (and probably demand real socialism, or a seat at the big boy table of capital). Adam Smith's self-interest is an inconvenience for the company. We even talk about such people with disdainful language such as "ladder climbers" or "sociopaths". We feel cheated when we see someone get a promotion by not playing by the established rules of the commune. Which is pretty much how all promotions happen. Similarly, few people get hired by going in the front door. Businesses abhor competition. They get the government to rig their markets and carry their losses. They desire monopoly. So you have the socialist employee aspiring to be a participant in capitalism while the capitalist corporation aspires to socialism. But let's cut to the chase: what this entire topic is fundamentally about is how to make your labor more predictable. More uniform. More interchangeable. And, ultimately, replaceable. Because, if labor was treated less like cattle and more like creative, responsible, independent adults we would not be having this discussion. The discussion we are having now is about how to babysit. That's literally why management exists. To manage. Human resources. Managers don't want employees messing up the production schedule and HR doesn't want employees messing up their legal standing. In addition, managers concern themselves with threats to their job. Corporations want labor that is stupid enough to play along but smart enough to get their job done within the specified parameters. The illusion falls apart once labor realizes it and is powerless to change it (manifested as burnout, apathy, or rebellion). Then the stick comes out. The absolute worst managers I've had were in the service industry. There, the stick comes out faster because it's much harder to convince someone they are getting a fair deal making $6 an hour. We, in the IT heavens high above Metropolis, don't often feel that type of oppression. But the dynamic is the same.
- 5y ago

deckard1 5y ago

> Nobody starts out as a superstar. The superstar is a dictator with a strong halo effect. Think of any superstar developer and look into how they achieved that status. It's almost a certainty they were left alone to their own devices for great lengths of time. Which neatly coincides with... > We also notice who's helping the team reach the next level and who's simply in it for themselves. Capitalism relies on a contradictory stance: that the best employees are actually socialists that believe they are capitalists. Which is to say that a company wants employees that believe in the greater good (i.e. the team) but the employees need to feel like they are participants in capitalism through their efforts at their job. Otherwise they will realize they are simply being screwed (and probably demand real socialism, or a seat at the big boy table of capital). Adam Smith's self-interest is an inconvenience for the company. We even talk about such people with disdainful language such as "ladder climbers" or "sociopaths". We feel cheated when we see someone get a promotion by not playing by the established rules of the commune. Which is pretty much how all promotions happen. Similarly, few people get hired by going in the front door. Businesses abhor competition. They get the government to rig their markets and carry their losses. They desire monopoly. So you have the socialist employee aspiring to be a participant in capitalism while the capitalist corporation aspires to socialism. But let's cut to the chase: what this entire topic is fundamentally about is how to make your labor more predictable. More uniform. More interchangeable. And, ultimately, replaceable. Because, if labor was treated less like cattle and more like creative, responsible, independent adults we would not be having this discussion. The discussion we are having now is about how to babysit. That's literally why management exists. To manage. Human resources. Managers don't want employees messing up the production schedule and HR doesn't want employees messing up their legal standing. In addition, managers concern themselves with threats to their job. Corporations want labor that is stupid enough to play along but smart enough to get their job done within the specified parameters. The illusion falls apart once labor realizes it and is powerless to change it (manifested as burnout, apathy, or rebellion). Then the stick comes out. The absolute worst managers I've had were in the service industry. There, the stick comes out faster because it's much harder to convince someone they are getting a fair deal making $6 an hour. We, in the IT heavens high above Metropolis, don't often feel that type of oppression. But the dynamic is the same.

5y ago