Influencing-Others.md

Influencing Others

• Building a Delivery Team - by Bill DeRusha. Takeaway: How to leverage communication and tools like team charters and retrospectives to form a new team effectively and guide it to deliver on time, even on a tight schedule.

• Communication Training Tomorrow! (no, not really) - by Jen Bunk. Takeaway: Commmunication trainings, and communication skills, aren't enough to fix cultural issues. You need to go deeper and explore where your systems are failing.

• Driving Change: Why Are Your Ideas Being Rejected? - by Bartosz Ocytko. Takeaway: A very thorough examination of the many different reasons why you might not be getting across, with guidance on determining which problems are important; how to get organizational support; bringing solutions instead of problems; timing, and what to do if despite your efforts change still doesn't come.

• 11 Top Tips for a Successful Technical Presentation - by Scott Hanselman. Takeaway: detail-oriented tips ranging from font type/size to being mindful of your distracting personal habits.

• Escaping E-mail Hell - by Julie Zhuo. Takeaway: Tips for communicating more succinctly in emails to reduce workload and also increase the chances that others will read them. Also includes this nugget: "Forwarding a huge thread with nothing more than 'Thoughts?' at the start is the e-mail equivalent of a flaming bag of dog poop on your doorstep."

• Etsy's Charter of Mindful Communication - by Lara Hogan and Etsy's Culture & Engagement team. Takeaway: When engaging with someone, keep it REAL—"Reflect on the dynamics in the room; Elevate the conversation; Assume best intentions; Listen to learn."

• 42 Things Non-Front-Liners Misunderstand - by John Cutler. Takeaway: "It is unfair to expect people who haven’t worked on the front lines in software development to just get it. Just as, I’m guessing, it is hard for developers and UXers to grok sales and marketing, being a CEO, and working in HR. Assuming malice is a big mistake. We all want great outcomes for our respective businesses, but have a hard time bridging the divide."

• The Heartbeat Interview with Amy Gallo (video) - by Claire Lew. Takeaway: A chat about how leaders can become friendly and human with their teams, set boundaries and be friendly. Being human at work builds empathy and care.

• High Agency (Twitter thread) - by Shreyas Doshi. Takeaway: a 20-tweet breakdown of High Agency, "a prerequisite for making a profound impact in one's life & work."

• How to Blast Through Silo Mentality to Create a Culture of Experimentation - by Lindsay Kwan. Takeaway: Align your stakeholders on a vision for experimentation; get buy-in from stakeholders and leaders; clarify your experimentation protocol; get strategic with cross-functional teams; communicate.

• How to Have Impact - by Vishal Kapur. Takeaway: "Some aspects of the impact generation process are in your control, and some aren’t. The world (i.e. the "environment") isn’t in your control. Neither are the outcomes you get from trying things – remember the intention/impact gap. However, generating ideas, making things, taking risks, and the people you choose to work with are."

• How to Improve Emotional Intelligence - by Darius Foroux. Takeaway: Identify, interpret, manage your emotions. "When you can identify your own emotions, you will also get better at identifying other people’s emotions." This can positively impact your leadership abilities.

• How to Influence Culture When You’re Not the CEO - by Claire Lew. Takeaway: Model what you’d like to be true of your team; speak up with improvement ideas through the prism of team instead of individual/personal; give space, grace, and gratitude to leaders.

• How To Lead When You Have No Authority - by Matt Russell. Takeaway: “Leadership is a choice you make rather than a place you sit. In other words, leadership comes from influence and not from your position. For this reason, even when you’re not in front, you’re still leading those around you.”

• How to Make Your Engineering Team More Effective - by Edmond Lau. Takeaway: Gather input as to what’s hard or frustrating; explicitly design how to align someone’s growth goals with what creates value; give and request frequent and honest feedback; leverage your strengths to level up the team; reduce sources of complexity, and create more opportunities for collaboration.

• How to Win Hearts & Minds - Lessons Learned from Electoral Politics (video) - by K. Gray & C. Young. Takeaway: This GOTO Amsterdam talk connnects methods used in political campaigns to their useful application in a tech organization, so that you can connect with teams and influence them. You have to blend facts with emotional resonance.

• The Indispensable Document for the Modern Manager - by First Round. Takeaway: "To grow the company and as a leader, every manager at a startup needs to scale herself. At the end of the day, writing a user guide is an exercise in self-awareness. What teams want from their leaders more than anything else is predictability and authenticity. This leads to trust. With trust, you can be unstoppable. Give yourself a leg up and take the time to self-reflect, write and revise a user guide. If your founding team and early hires are friends or past colleagues — this is especially critical."

• It’s Not Them, It’s You - by David Oates. Takeaway: "You’re in your first role as a leader and you’re not getting the results you expect — what do you do? Start by assuming it’s not them, it’s you."

• Just Because You Said It, Doesn't Make It So - by Jeff Weiner. Takeaway: "We all need to be wary of avoiding the Ron Burgundy syndrome: On the surface, looking and sounding the part, but without providing the right discipline, focus, and ongoing context, appearing as nothing more than a talking head." Includes lessons for communicating more effectively.

• Leadership Is Not About Your Good Intentions - by Johnathan Nightingale. Takeaway: "If you want to be a leader, own it. Like you would anywhere else in your life. Work harder to understand the context. Develop better strategies for anticipating future failure and avoiding it. The stuff you expect junior folks to do."

• Leading by Speaking (video) - by Lara Hogan. Takeaway: "In our work, we each have moments of saying some prepared words under a spotlight - whether it’s during team standups, giving a presentation to a client, or pitching your promotion to your boss - and yet we all have different fears about those moments. In this talk, we’ll walk through the spectrum of public speaking fears and learn tactics to address them, so you can feel confident and equipped to step into the spotlight."

• Making Engineering Team Communication Clearer, Faster, Better - by First Round. Takeaway: Using a technical design review system with design documents can help teams communicate effectively and clearly. The article links to a design doc template by Google, and a completed example.

• Management and False Certainty - by Abe Winter. Takeaway: "Even healthy people can APPEAR to have ... bad traits when you’re not holding up your end by fighting for your beliefs, i.e. your skills and organizational knowledge, i.e. your spider-sense."

• Master the Art of Influence — Persuasion as a Skill and Habit - by FirstRound. Takeaway: "To persuade someone, you need to speak as much as you can to System I [of the brain]— the child, the interns — who want to believe you (because it just makes so much darn sense, what’s not to love?). Trouble is, most tech operators express themselves with complexity, nuance, facts and figures. That’s their default, and it doesn’t appeal to people’s unconscious processor."

• Meeting Resistance and Moving Forward - by Linda Rising. Takeaway: A keynote talk featuring tips for handling naysayers and skeptics.

• Never Split the Difference Cheat-Sheet - by Yan-David Erlich. Takeaway: a detailed, six-page summary of Chris Voss' Never Split the Difference, the 2016 book about negotiation. Includes blog post.

• 9 Tips: How IT Leaders Can Build Better Relationships - by Carla Rudder. Takeaway: Be a partner, be transparent, be truthful, be in constant communication, be OK with being wrong, be in the moment, be engaged, be a team player, be candid.

• The Patient Change Agent - by John Cutler. Takeaway: "At a minimum, ask someone: Can you describe [to] an elephant in the room that I will quickly encounter, will think is totally fixable, but will be wrong? Why is the status quo difficult to change?"

• Prattfalls: Better Communication - by Roy Rapoport. Takeaway: "Communication only exists as a mutation of someone else’s internal state; focus entirely on what mutation you’re trying to accomplish; be thoughtful about how to accomplish that mutation; validate THAT mutation occurred."

• Public Speaking Resources - by VM Brasseur. Takeaway: A collection of resources on speaker training/tips, technical conferences, proposing talks and more.

• The Science of Speaking is the Art of Being Heard - by First Round. Takeaway: "Communication is not just about what you say, it’s about the reaction it causes in the listener. Often we think delivering a message is enough without checking to see if it was actually received. This can be made more efficient with attention to meta models. Lastly, communication is making sure there’s enough shared context for the person to act on what's next."

• Stop Asking Your Employees This One Question — It’s Hurting Them - by Claire Lew. Takeaway: The question is, "How can I help you?" This is lazy, puts pressure on the employee, and is vague. Instead, "[p]oint out your own potential flaw, instead of waiting for your employee to point it out. Offer a critique of your own actions, instead waiting to see if it’s something your employee brings up."

• Uniquely HR - by Gary Ford. Takeaway: Influence is the power to affect someone/something without directly forcing them. It’s about establishing credibility, finding common ground, and connecting emotionally. A systemic approach to influencing.

• Use Coaching Techniques to Help People Make Their Own Decisions (video) - by Meredith Noble. Takeaway: A talk about how to use the GROW coaching technique "to structure conversations and help people make their own decisions; ask questions that encourage people to consider new approaches; embrace the coaching mindset, and and let go of the urge to play expert."

• Wait But Why’s Tim Urban on Parsing and Transmitting Complex Ideas - by FirstRound Capital. Takeaway: "The first step is to identify what type of complexity you are attempting to unravel...Let’s call them: complexity as gathering, complexity as dusting and complexity as pattern-matching (or pattern-resisting)...[then P]inpoint where on a 1-10 scale the recipient of your explanation falls."

• Yes! And - by Tom Critchlow. Takeaway: "[I]n this theatre of human work it’s crucial to speak up. Spending time on the performance is not wasted - in fact quite the opposite. Without performance work gets sidelined, ignored or worse[.]"