Developing an Outward Mindset

(upbeat music) - You're listening to "No Flops Just Stuff" podcast. I'm a weekly podcast for software developers and software architects. This is your host, Michael Carducci. - A lot of what we're gonna be talking about today really applies to leadership. And I feel there is a mistake for lack of a better word that a lot of people make an arena street of it, that they can play leadership with management. And often leadership is seen as a job title, as a position, as something that is bestowed upon you by higher ups rather than the decision that we make every day. So for me personally, I feel like all of these things that in our industry, we refer to as kind of, quote unquote, soft skills. The whole rest of the world just refers to those things as skills. And they're often overlooked, often maligned, but it's been my experience in 20 years in this industry that your technical skills, no matter what your job title is, no matter what your position is. Your technical skills are just your ante. All they do is get you into the game, but that's as far as it takes you. Everything that you accomplish from that point forward becomes a function of everything else that you bring to the table, all these other skills. Honestly, I couldn't agree more with what you just said. That was this week's guest, Paul Wilhelm. My name is Paul Wilhelm. I work for a company called Master Control. They write software that helps other organizations stay FDA compliant. I'm a software development manager here at Master Control. And I'm also an Arbinger Corporate Facilitator for a company called the Arbinger Institute. And what they do is they help organizations become better leaders and develop accountable individuals. So with my job, it helps me develop more accountable engineers and more accountable leaders. Well, leadership in technology is a really nebulous thing because it seems we have an overwhelming tendency on our industry to promote technical talent into leadership positions despite the fact that those are entirely distinct skill sets and distinct fields. And it seems like having great technical chops does not prepare one for a leadership or a management position. Yeah, you know, you're exactly right. When I became a manager, it didn't come with a handbook or anything like that. And I came from QA and then I evolved into a software engineer. And then I became a manager. And I did have a little bit more people skills than a normal engineer would have. But I agree, it's definitely not something that comes naturally to a lot of individuals. And that's why I think it's such an important topic. Having gone through this process, what did your experience look like going from a technical hands-on contributor role into that position? What was your journey like? I've always been kind of a sucker for anything in the self-help genre. So any type of leadership book or self-help book, I really enjoy reading those types of things and internalizing anything I can. People see leadership as something that is assigned to them or, hey, by the way, now you are an engineering manager or now you are a team lead. But when you fully understand, I think, the impact that you can have, it doesn't matter in your personal life or at work as an individual contributor, as an engineer, or even as a VP, it doesn't really matter because the whole purpose of it all is looking for opportunities to help other people be the best selves that they can be. And I think that that kind of is a little bit about what leadership is about, right? And if you're an individual on a team and you're able to make a positive impact on other people and maybe make their job a little bit easier, I think understanding that, understanding the concept that when you're testing a piece of software or when you're writing something, how is that impacting other people around you? How is that impacting the customer? How is that impacting your manager? How is it impacting your team? Understanding that and making adjustments and changes to that can also be summed up as taking lead on something, as leading people to be better, finding solutions to problems, anyone is empowered to do that. Just developing the skill of empathy is super valuable. - Right, I think sometimes we try to change our behavior a certain way, but if we can't change our underlying mindset, then our behavior tends to bounce back to where it was. I mean, I know it's new years and everyone's on their diets, right? But I think a lot of people have said, I'm gonna do this particular diet and I'm gonna change my behavior accordingly, I don't know, whatever, and they change their diet and they change their behavior. But if the underlying mindset hasn't changed, then their behavior will bounce back to the old ways of doing things. And I think leadership in some regard and really our duty is just in life, dealing with other people is to help develop that type of a mindset that reaches a little more outward, takes others into consideration and helping other people develop that as well. - So you hit upon a couple of words just then talking about outward mindset. So let's dive a little more into that. How does one develop an outward mindset or maybe we just start by defining what an outward mindset is? - So good question. You know, I think sometimes we live in this world where we have objectives and challenges and goals and desires and sometimes we can get a little laser-focused on those things. You know, I was working yesterday and some days I'm allowed to work from home and it's pretty awesome Tuesdays and Thursdays usually and my daughter was saying goodbye to me as she went to school in my four year old and she was going off to preschool and she had to say it like five times until finally I kind of got out of my world and looked up at her and it's like, oh yeah, hey, have a great day, right? And I was focusing a little bit more on my objectives and my, you know, what I was dealing with in that moment. And I think I would define that as an inward mindset. And I think that the Arbanger Institute or those books would define that as well as an inward mindset. Outward mindset doesn't mean you're necessarily focused on other people's challenges and objectives and goals. But I think it's more you understand what those are so that you can better adapt to any changes. You understand your impact that you're actually having on other people and with that understanding, maybe something that you're doing changes. So in a way, you're focused on the collective goal, the collective challenge instead of just your challenge and your goal. - What you've described is pretty simple in concept, but from my own experience, that can be very difficult in execution, particularly to execute consistently. So how do you develop that skill? How do you strengthen that? - Yeah, that's a good point because I used to joke that I had to reread these books, you know, like any self-help book and it's not just necessarily the Arbanger books, right? But any book or any motivation only lasts so long. It's kind of like the behavior I was talking about. If someone is listening to this thinking, oh man, I'm going to start being more outward. That's a great place to start because already just by thinking of that, you're automatically being more outward, you're trying to take others into consideration, right? But with me and maybe people will be super successful with that, but with me, I would consistently bounce back. And I still do. I still bounce back to the old ways of doing things. But really what it starts with is I think there's some self-awareness tools that really come in handy. And, you know, some of those are just understanding why mindset even matters, ways that we betray ourselves, ways that we lie to ourselves, maybe the understanding that we're kind of looking through lenses with our perceptions of things. I think a lot of that just helps change our mindset and realize, wow, what I see is true and, quote, real is really just my interpretation of factual events that are going on around me. So whether that's something at work, you know, a boss comes down to you and he's checking on you or she's checking on you three times a day and you think, man, my manager is such a micromanager. Well, the truth of it all is, you know, you could ask yourself, what evidence do you have that your manager is a micromanager? Well, the truth behind it all is that they just check on you three times a day. Doesn't necessarily mean that they're a micromanager, right? So I think having some of those self-awareness tools really help, you know, there's a self-awareness tool called collusion that helps you understand that the things that you don't want to have happen and other people, you're actually creating that exact thing. So you're creating something that you don't want to have happen and it's causing you to react a certain way, which in turn actually helps create even more of what you don't want to have happen in someone else. And I think that understanding those can help lead to some of the mindset change that we were talking about earlier. Well, let's probe a little deeper into this because, you know, I'd love to give our listeners a few actionable things. Like, for example, what is something that they can do today? - So, you know, something that you can do today is maybe think about the people that you interact with. Think of someone that you really struggle with and kind of have that person in your head and write a list down, everything that they do of everything that they do that just bugs you, that drives you crazy. And as you write that list down, just brain dump everything. Preferably, you would even pause this podcast and just do a brain dump because the next thing I think could maybe be a spoiler and could alter what you're doing. But, you know, brain dump everything that you're doing and then at the end of that, look at your list and ask yourself, is this a fact or is this my interpretation of fact? And a lot of times when you look at that list, you realize how much of that stuff is actually just your interpretation of fact. And then take it one step further and just say, you know, change everything to just be the facts. And then look at that and say, how am I interpreting that inwardly? You know, when I'm focused on my challenge and my goals, how am I interpreting that? What chances are it's an inward thought because you're looking at these things that bother you? And then take it one step further and ask yourself, okay, if I were to understand, you know, maybe what are some of this other person's challenges? What are their goals? What are they trying to accomplish here? And write those things down and then ask yourself, how would I perceive what they're doing with that in mind? With this positive story. And let's take a simple example if I can, you know, someone cuts you off on the road. And immediately your mind wants to go to this inward style of maybe it's I deserve or maybe it's I'm better than that person, right? Some people, it's even goes to kind of like a less than state, you know, but dive deep into that and be like, wow, man, that guy's such a jerk, why would they cut me off? But you don't know, right? That person could be while we're making up fairy tale stories, they could be rushing to the hospital to see their mother one last time, right? How unlikely is that probably not likely? But I guess it's just pointing out that what the fact is that the person merged, how would you even change that to a fact, merged in front of you quickly, causing you to have to slam on your brakes, right? Now, understanding that they have some goals and some challenges, seeing them as a person instead of some sort of object or irrelevancy can help you maybe understand and deal with that situation in a different way. Because we all carry these lenses around with us of, hey, I deserve to be treated a certain way and you didn't do that. But that's usually where we stop. And so I'd say after you've written down your list and you looked at the kind of the inward thoughts that you have about that person, come up with some ways that you could see them with a better understanding of what their challenges and goals are. And even better than that, go talk to the person, go sit down with them and say, what are some of your challenges? How do I make life worse for you? How do I make things a little more complicated for you? I don't care if this is your manager, your peer, your child, your spouse, it doesn't matter. How do I make things worse for you? What are some areas I can improve on? And then come up with a plan to adapt your strategies or the way that you accomplish things or the way that you accomplish your challenges and goals and adapt that in a way that helps them. Does that make sense? That makes total sense. In fact, that reminds me very much of David Foster Wallace's commencement speech that he gave several years ago. Is this water? Yes. This is water, absolutely. I mean, what you're describing is exactly what he was articulating in that speech about. Our default is that inward. Now, I think he phrased it differently, but our default state was, you know, this is all about me and what this person is doing is inconveniencing me and all of this. I think he described it as true education is deciding how you're going to perceive, I guess again, to borrow some language from outward mindset, which lens you're going to view these things. Exactly, yeah. And I mean, it's this understanding that, wow, to me, I'm the main character in the Paul Wilhelm movie, but to Michael, you're the main character, right? I'm an extra understanding that people are people that they're all struggling with things. It's exactly that video, and that is a great video that this is water. Well, I'm either going to either drop that in here or at least link to a video that somebody made, but it's not exceptionally long. And, you know, even if it's 10 minutes, it might be one of the most valuable things you spend 10 minutes looking at today, again, to the folks listening. Yeah, and that really summarizes an outward mindset. And I think outward mindset is, you know, we all call these very similar things. And, but it's wrapping that with some tools that you can walk away with, some ways that you can implement those changes. Besides standing there and saying to yourself, this is water, this is water, this is water, right? It's actual tools that you can use. And some papers you can fill out and some things you can do to see, wow, I'm actually having a hugely negative impact on this other person and making their life a lot more difficult. When we're viewing people and we're kind of blind to their life, kind of blind to what they're experiencing and their challenges, they call that being in the box. And so what you've written down is you've kind of stripped anything else away from it on. You've just written down these facts. And then step three is write down. Now here's the place you can write down your perceptions. You're in the box perceptions, your perceptions that you have not understanding their challenges and goals. And maybe that's as simple as you write down something here like my boss is a micromanager or my teammate is an idiot. They are a horrible developer, right? This is where you may write down those types of things because it's an in the box interpretation of a fact if that makes any sense at all. And then the last step is now take a moment and try to think about them as a person. Try to guess, I mean, ideally you could talk to them, right? But try to just even guess what are their challenges, what are their goals, what are their frustrations, what are their problems that they're dealing with. And then rewrite these interpretations of your facts, write down some alternative interpretations that could be taken if you're seeing them, they call that outward, right, out of the box. Understanding what they have to deal with, rewrite down some of these interpretations. And my guess is that you're not gonna be writing down things like they're a jerk. Because now you've had this core understanding or at least have taken into consideration what their challenges are, does that make sense? - The second piece gets a little more difficult for a lot of people I found that honest and open communication, that conversation where I can talk about those areas where I'm struggling or what is really going on in my world. And they can talk about what's really going on in their world. And this is an area of great discomfort for folks because that requires a level of vulnerability. And that's unfortunately a rare trait in a lot of teams that I've participated in or that I've observed. It's not a natural state for us. So how do we encourage that vulnerability in communication in our teams? 'Cause I feel like vulnerability has a negative, it's a pejorative almost. It, for a lot of people, vulnerability is a synonym for weakness. What are your thoughts on this? - So, and I like Brené Brown's. I've listened to our audio book, which is actually just a series of her lectures. But I agree, vulnerability does seem weak. And even sometimes saying, oh, I have an outward mindset that can seem soft, but you can do anything with, you can be outward with soft skills or you can do hard behaviors with an outward mindset, right? When you could even lay someone off with an outward mindset or give someone really difficult to hear feedback, understanding that they are a person, right? I think this kind of what it says, but I mean, being vulnerable is really a tough thing. And it's a difficult thing for anyone to open up to someone else, right? But talking about our mindset and being outward, all we're trying to do, we can't force someone to open up, but we can hopefully encourage them to open up. We can create an environment where they can feel comfortable to open up. And unfortunately, that requires us, not even necessarily being vulnerable ourselves, but I think as we take others into consideration, other people will open up. And I think that when we see them opening up to us it naturally encourages us to also be open. You know, I know that I've been in times when I've been in meetings or whatever, or talked to someone where they say, hey, this makes me feel this way or I kind of feel like you're not seeing the big picture there. And that encourages me to say more of the, well, I am feeling this way or I think this as well. And but being the first person to kind of turn our chair around and open up to someone is a difficult thing. And I think a lot of that comes because we don't know, hey, if I make this change, is that person going to change, right? But I think being outward would kind of say, focus less on whether you're making other people change. There are ways, and I think even the book cover some, some, you know, that's a thing called the influence pyramid, right? But there are ways to encourage others to change, but it's focusing less on other people and more on, I guess, focusing less on forcing them to change. And more on what things you can change about yourself that can help make their life better. But you know, vulnerability is not in my mind a soft thing. I've never known a developer to come to me and say, hey, I don't know how to do this. Can you show me? One could argue they're being pretty vulnerable, but I've never once saw them as being weak or equated that to being weak. And I'd hope that everyone feels the same way about that. Well, that's certainly my feeling on the topic. These are just core skills that I believe everybody needs to develop and polish and it's not easy. It's not easy, especially in environments where historically there hasn't been a lot of trust. And I think that's why in the book, the five dysfunctions of a team, trust is the foundation of a well-functioning team. And trust is difficult. I can't make you trust me, but I can ask you to trust me. You know, what are some of your thoughts? What are some of your experiences there? I think if you were to go to someone and say, I 100% agree by the way, I think if you were to go to someone and say, hey, I realized and I've just been thinking about this. And I just want to have, and at first of all, an attitude of how can I help? That goes a long way. Just removing yourself and your knowledge and anything. There's no criteria that you should be the best engineer in the room or anything like that. Just remove yourself from that and you just go to someone and say, I realized that something I've done has made things more difficult for you. And I want to, and here's some steps I have to make to change that and to hopefully make it better. I need to accomplish this. But with you in mind, maybe I can do this differently or I can notify you at this point in the process. I don't see, that could be defined as vulnerable. But can you imagine, I mean, you're talking about trust, imagine how a person would react to that. You know, think of that person, maybe the person people wrote down earlier in the podcast or whatever, but think about how are they likely to respond to that? And usually it's going to be very positive. And it's going to build that trust in them for you, right? Because automatically they're like, wow, this person is really taking things into consideration. They really have that attitude of, what can I do to just help things overall? It doesn't matter what hat I'm wearing. I just want to help things go right. I think that goes a long way. I know we're running a little short on time here, but the second thing I want to ask you is just this entire conversation that we've had. Who is really going to benefit from this? And like, is it people in particular roles or whatever and how is this going to potentially impact their career? You know, that's a good question. I think naturally, and we kind of hit on this at the beginning of the podcast. Naturally, people think, oh, this must be a leadership thing. But if you have an impact on somebody else, and I would argue every single person does, if you have the internet and you're able to even listen to a podcast, you have an impact on somebody else, then you can benefit from this material. You can benefit from reading the books. I think if you come to a future conferences, I'd love to be able to teach some of these things and talk about some of these other tools, even deeper. But anyone can benefit from these things. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. These are things, actually. Honestly, I teach to my children. My oldest is 10. My youngest is four. And we do a monthly date, and it allows me to just sit down and have one of those conversations that just says, hey, what am I doing that's working? What ways do I make your life more difficult? And from that, I can make adjustments to that, right? And they do. They open up, and they tell me, people already know the ways that you're failing them. And so coming up with ideas, telling them, hey, I know I'm not perfect, and I know that I make things difficult. Can you add to this list of things that I've identified? People are open to help other people just naturally. I think it's their natural state to be in. And so really, if you interact with anyone else, then you can benefit from this. How can you ask somebody in what ways am I negatively impacting you? No good question. I don't know that you can ask them this. I mean, you can, like some people, like my children, right? I can ask them just fine. And I'm already in a position, though, where maybe they see me as like, wow, that's my dad. He's the boss of the house or whatever. But a lot of ways that something that's worked for me isn't necessarily that, because it creates this-- it can kind of mess with their mind. Like, I don't even know, like, let me think about this. But instead, approaching it as, hey, I've identified these ways that I feel like I'm making your life more difficult. I want to change some things to maybe do this. Would that be helpful to you? And how often can we meet? And I can report back in and talk to you about this and see. I mean, you say it's helpful today, but let's give it a week. And maybe I can check back and see, is it actually helpful? Or is it making it worse at that second conversation? I think you're a lot more-- there are a lot more willing to open up. You could actually ask, then, OK, what am I doing that's making your life more difficult? And I think that they would probably have some ideas at that point. Or even in the first meeting with them, talk, say, I've identified this list. And if you have anything else, I'd love to hear about it. Because maybe they'll show you some blind spots. So the last question I have is, how do you listen to that objectively? Because it's a whole lot easier to be objective about somebody else I found than it is to be objective about myself. And a lot of times, again, my default state, if I ask for that feedback, whatever it is, and anything is critical, it's difficult to not one internalize that, but to not get defensive. Right. Getting feedback is seriously the best and the worst, right? It's like I know with me, when I'm getting feedback, my heart is racing. And sometimes I disagree. And I find myself in this state of wanting to be seen a certain way. And so I need to justify my behavior. And one of the things even Arbanger talks about is this self-detrayal type of thing. But it's difficult to hear those types of things. I 100% agree. And I think it's just understanding that, hey, I feel like blood is pumping into my brain right now. My heart is beating fast. I feel this need to justify all these things that they're saying. Understanding that's just a physical emotion. I don't know why that necessarily comes up. I don't know why that happens. But it's just something physical that's happening inside our bodies. And once we recognize that, you can identify with it and just say, look, that's going to go away. Give it a minute. And that will pass. My heart's going to slow back down again. It's not going to be this speed. And at the end of all that, I have some knowledge that I can take that could maybe be useful. If you can just hold off on reacting just as long as they're telling you those things, I think you'll step away and realize, oh, maybe there is something I can change there. But hit me up on LinkedIn with any questions that you have, Paul Wilhelm. And I'd be happy to talk to you guys. Go to arbanger.com. If you want to learn more about that organization and the stuff that they have, they have some really great things. They even have a conference, an annual conference that they host that teaches people more stuff about that. I-- videos, YouTube, a ton of stuff is available, a lot of resources. But I'd be happy to help anyone that's interested in finding out more. Well, Paul, thank you so much for your time and generosity. Thank you, Michael. Once again, a huge thank you to Paul Wilhelm for taking the time to join us and share his experience on leadership. Speaking of leadership, if this is something an area of your career that you want to work on and foster and grow and develop, it would be worth attending this year the Tech Leaders Summit. That's going to be in December in sunny Clearwater, Florida. And you can learn all about that at techleadersummit.io. Also, we have a couple other events this year. I want to bring to your attention. We have our newest event that we're hosting in May in Chicago, Illinois. And that is the machine learning fest. So if you want to grow your skills in AI and machine learning, definitely check that out. It's not one to miss. And right around the same time, we have the Front End Fest, which is a conference entirely focused on modern web technologies and cutting-edge technologies. Not just the latest frameworks, but emerging technologies around web assembly, web performance, progressive web apps, definitely an awesome place to be if you're in that space. And one more event that I want to tell you about is our flagship event. And that is Uber Cub. Over 150 in-depth, technically rich 90-minute sessions. Almost 50 full day or half day hands-on workshops. This is definitely the ultimate event if you want to level up your skill set. You can learn about that at ubercomp, u-b-e-r-c-o-n-f dot com. And you can check out all of our tour dates as we bring world-class conferences all across the country at nofluffgistuff.com. The great music that you're listening to here on the outro is "I've Got Ears On You" by Osteaguy. Hope to see you on the road soon. For every out there, thanks for listening, and stay subscribed. [MUSIC PLAYING] You'll be on the road soon. I've got Ears On You. So you feel all right. [MUSIC PLAYING]