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I have mixed feelings about this kind of advice: * In a healthy team, you ideally shouldn't need special skills to disagree with someone more powerful than you

I have mixed feelings about this kind of advice: * In a healthy team, you ideally shouldn't need special skills to disagree with someone more powerful than you. * But it's very common for teams to have some degree of egotism and dysfunction, so these are useful skills in practice. * But on the other hand, this article normalizes that egotism and dysfunction; it implies that the less-powerful person is responsible for working around the more-powerful person's ego, instead of the more-powerful person being responsible for keeping their ego in check. So even though it's useful advice for the individuals reading it, it subtly erodes the culture of the industry as a whole. And I want to push back on that. If you're in a position of power, it's your responsibility to make sure that people working with you don't need special skills to disagree with you or with other people on the team!

junofan 4y ago
Good points. The case studies seem great—maybe this advice is better presented that way?
tbrownaw 4y ago
Advising someone is a slightly different skill from taking advice from someone, and those are both slightly different skills from building consensus among equals. Hierarchies have different lines between "things I can change" and "things I can't change" for different positions. Arguing with your boss over something that's in their "things I can't change" bucket is maybe not so useful. > If you're in a position of power, it's your responsibility to make sure that people working with you don't need special skills to disagree with you or with other people on the team! Or alternatively, to make sure they have opportunities to acquire those skills.
- a_puppy 4y ago
  > Or alternatively, to make sure they have opportunities to acquire those skills. I think it depends what level of interpersonal skills we're talking about. If we're talking about baseline interpersonal skills like "being polite" and "understanding the other person's position before disagreeing with it", then I agree it's appropriate to hold the less-powerful person responsible for acquiring those skills. But some of the tips in this article are more advanced, next-level skills that can be difficult to develop. And even with these skills, there's no guarantee of success if the more-powerful person is too egotistical. A failure mode I've seen is that the less-powerful person is actually being polite and reasonable, but the more-powerful person's manager doesn't want to hold them accountable for their egotism, so the manager says the less-powerful person needs to work on their interpersonal skills instead. (Related: https://lethain.com/hard-to-work-with/ https://lethain.com/hard-to-work-with/)
mensetmanusman 4y ago
Like the advice to be careful where you walk in the cities at night.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Spooky23 4y ago
There’s a difference between what should be and what is. Taking your ball and going home isn’t necessarily the right path. Case in point: I was working as a contractor and SME for a big organization where the senior leadership was disconnected from reality for reasons that don’t matter. I don’t give a hoot about the culture. I’m there to do a job, and if I’m successful, my company probably gets more business, and we do something really amazing. If I fail, it costs me money and political/reputation capital. As is often the case, the issue was that perceptions and misunderstanding caused the issue. Once we were able to relate the issue in the right way, most of the disconnect went away. People are people and you need to play to their needs. Many executives are very insecure, for example, and have a bunch of tools at hand to detect and eliminate threats. We’ve evolved to do this… kids will appeal to mom, dad, grandpa in different ways to achieve the same ends.
- a_puppy 4y ago
  Yes, and this all cuts both ways. > There’s a difference between what should be and what is. Yes. For example, ideally less-powerful people should have great interpersonal skills and would always phrase their insights in exactly the way that more-powerful people prefer to hear them. But in reality, they don't always have that level of interpersonal skills. So in order for more-powerful people to hear the important information, they need to be open to hearing it in ways that aren't exactly how they'd prefer to hear it. > Taking your ball and going home isn’t necessarily the right path. Yes. For example, if a manager is offended by how one of their employees raised a disagreement, criticizing that employee isn't necessarily be the right path. A better path might be for the manager to swallow their ego and listen to the concerns that are being raised. > People are people and you need to play to their needs. Yes. For example, less-powerful people are people, and more-powerful people need to play to their needs in order for the team to operate in the most healthy way. To put it a different way: In healthy organizations, people with more power are expected to have better interpersonal skills, and to work well with less-powerful people who have merely average interpersonal skills. But in some organizations, powerful people are egotistic and less-powerful people are expected to work around their egos. These organizations don't function as well; average employees often don't have the special interpersonal skills necessary to work around a boss's ego, and so e.g. good ideas get lost because the boss doesn't want to hear them. If you're unfortunate enough to be an employee in one of those organizations, then the skills in this article are certainly valuable to know. But if you're a person with the power to influence the culture of an organization, you should avoid creating that kind of culture.
ip26 4y ago
People will never be perfect, and being able to work with that is an important skill. Besides, most of this material is basic good communication that can be applied with anyone. The stakes are just higher with your boss than your peer.
eh5q3y34t 4y ago
>But on the other hand, this article normalizes that egotism and dysfunction; ... If the advice is useful then the egotism and dysfunction are already normalized and your conflicted reaction is more about justifying denial than anything productive.
Aeolun 4y ago
> If you're in a position of power, it's your responsibility to make sure that people working with you don't need special skills to disagree with you or with other people on the team! The people that already agree with this don’t need to hear it, and the people that don’t will never listen if you try to tell them (that enormous ego).
usgroup 4y ago
Tbh I read ops advise almost like an endorsement for a self defence course. Bigger, stronger people shouldn’t punch us in the face and take our things — but they sometimes do, so you should learn how to hold your own.
leros 4y ago
My experience is that people in technical jobs (like many people on HN) work on teams where facts and logic dictate how things are done. People are free to speak their minds as long as they say reasonable things. I think this is the case because work like engineering tends to have clear requirements and you can more easily argue about how to meet them. I've worked more and more with non-technical teams, where the end of the goal of the work is not as clear cut. On those teams, people speak up less and authority by title is a lot more important. I think this is because there is not necessarily a right or wrong approach to a lot of the things they work on (or at least they don't see it that way) so arguments are less logical and feel more like ego trips or power struggles. This may not be 100% accurate, but my main point is that technical people probably don't have a clear picture of this power struggle scenario from the pov of non-technical people. It's just a very different work environment.
digital_voodoo 4y ago
I feel you, totally. I also feel the same about many many other subjets, revolving around 'mordern' corporate culture. Take recruitment, for example: if the candidate has the required degrees, experience and skills, recruiters or companies don't need to go through loads of interviews, tests, forms to fill, and so on. Candidates don't need to play guess games, find out what exact word or sysnonym they're expected to say/write, resort to sacrifice to the gods /s, etc. Yet that's where we are right now.

junofan 4y ago

Good points. The case studies seem great—maybe this advice is better presented that way?

tbrownaw 4y ago

Advising someone is a slightly different skill from taking advice from someone, and those are both slightly different skills from building consensus among equals. Hierarchies have different lines between "things I can change" and "things I can't change" for different positions. Arguing with your boss over something that's in their "things I can't change" bucket is maybe not so useful. > If you're in a position of power, it's your responsibility to make sure that people working with you don't need special skills to disagree with you or with other people on the team! Or alternatively, to make sure they have opportunities to acquire those skills.

a_puppy 4y ago
> Or alternatively, to make sure they have opportunities to acquire those skills. I think it depends what level of interpersonal skills we're talking about. If we're talking about baseline interpersonal skills like "being polite" and "understanding the other person's position before disagreeing with it", then I agree it's appropriate to hold the less-powerful person responsible for acquiring those skills. But some of the tips in this article are more advanced, next-level skills that can be difficult to develop. And even with these skills, there's no guarantee of success if the more-powerful person is too egotistical. A failure mode I've seen is that the less-powerful person is actually being polite and reasonable, but the more-powerful person's manager doesn't want to hold them accountable for their egotism, so the manager says the less-powerful person needs to work on their interpersonal skills instead. (Related: https://lethain.com/hard-to-work-with/ https://lethain.com/hard-to-work-with/)

mensetmanusman 4y ago

Like the advice to be careful where you walk in the cities at night.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Spooky23 4y ago

There’s a difference between what should be and what is. Taking your ball and going home isn’t necessarily the right path. Case in point: I was working as a contractor and SME for a big organization where the senior leadership was disconnected from reality for reasons that don’t matter. I don’t give a hoot about the culture. I’m there to do a job, and if I’m successful, my company probably gets more business, and we do something really amazing. If I fail, it costs me money and political/reputation capital. As is often the case, the issue was that perceptions and misunderstanding caused the issue. Once we were able to relate the issue in the right way, most of the disconnect went away. People are people and you need to play to their needs. Many executives are very insecure, for example, and have a bunch of tools at hand to detect and eliminate threats. We’ve evolved to do this… kids will appeal to mom, dad, grandpa in different ways to achieve the same ends.

a_puppy 4y ago
Yes, and this all cuts both ways. > There’s a difference between what should be and what is. Yes. For example, ideally less-powerful people should have great interpersonal skills and would always phrase their insights in exactly the way that more-powerful people prefer to hear them. But in reality, they don't always have that level of interpersonal skills. So in order for more-powerful people to hear the important information, they need to be open to hearing it in ways that aren't exactly how they'd prefer to hear it. > Taking your ball and going home isn’t necessarily the right path. Yes. For example, if a manager is offended by how one of their employees raised a disagreement, criticizing that employee isn't necessarily be the right path. A better path might be for the manager to swallow their ego and listen to the concerns that are being raised. > People are people and you need to play to their needs. Yes. For example, less-powerful people are people, and more-powerful people need to play to their needs in order for the team to operate in the most healthy way. To put it a different way: In healthy organizations, people with more power are expected to have better interpersonal skills, and to work well with less-powerful people who have merely average interpersonal skills. But in some organizations, powerful people are egotistic and less-powerful people are expected to work around their egos. These organizations don't function as well; average employees often don't have the special interpersonal skills necessary to work around a boss's ego, and so e.g. good ideas get lost because the boss doesn't want to hear them. If you're unfortunate enough to be an employee in one of those organizations, then the skills in this article are certainly valuable to know. But if you're a person with the power to influence the culture of an organization, you should avoid creating that kind of culture.

ip26 4y ago

People will never be perfect, and being able to work with that is an important skill. Besides, most of this material is basic good communication that can be applied with anyone. The stakes are just higher with your boss than your peer.

eh5q3y34t 4y ago

>But on the other hand, this article normalizes that egotism and dysfunction; ... If the advice is useful then the egotism and dysfunction are already normalized and your conflicted reaction is more about justifying denial than anything productive.

Aeolun 4y ago

> If you're in a position of power, it's your responsibility to make sure that people working with you don't need special skills to disagree with you or with other people on the team! The people that already agree with this don’t need to hear it, and the people that don’t will never listen if you try to tell them (that enormous ego).

usgroup 4y ago

Tbh I read ops advise almost like an endorsement for a self defence course. Bigger, stronger people shouldn’t punch us in the face and take our things — but they sometimes do, so you should learn how to hold your own.

leros 4y ago

My experience is that people in technical jobs (like many people on HN) work on teams where facts and logic dictate how things are done. People are free to speak their minds as long as they say reasonable things. I think this is the case because work like engineering tends to have clear requirements and you can more easily argue about how to meet them. I've worked more and more with non-technical teams, where the end of the goal of the work is not as clear cut. On those teams, people speak up less and authority by title is a lot more important. I think this is because there is not necessarily a right or wrong approach to a lot of the things they work on (or at least they don't see it that way) so arguments are less logical and feel more like ego trips or power struggles. This may not be 100% accurate, but my main point is that technical people probably don't have a clear picture of this power struggle scenario from the pov of non-technical people. It's just a very different work environment.

digital_voodoo 4y ago

I feel you, totally. I also feel the same about many many other subjets, revolving around 'mordern' corporate culture. Take recruitment, for example: if the candidate has the required degrees, experience and skills, recruiters or companies don't need to go through loads of interviews, tests, forms to fill, and so on. Candidates don't need to play guess games, find out what exact word or sysnonym they're expected to say/write, resort to sacrifice to the gods /s, etc. Yet that's where we are right now.