The Bright Side of Coworkers

This is Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Noor podcast. We will accomplish our goals through sharing experience, improving tech skills, increasing business knowledge, and embracing life. Let's dive into the next episode. Well, hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season. We are looking at the bright side. We are looking at the positives for those things that pretty much annoy us on a regular basis. Those things that make work, work and not the joy that we would like for it to be. We've covered a lot of different topics. This episode, this may be the mother of all nuances at work. This episode, we're going to talk about coworkers. Yes, you're brothers in arms, those people that are sitting there in the foxholes with you, but we all know that they can be very annoying at times. We've touched on this in multiple other topics. Coworkers, there are some benefits that we're going to talk about, but they can disrupt us, they can interrupt us. Sometimes they bring personal issues and bad politics and all the kinds of other stuff that can make it a chore to get through the day. This may be our peers, maybe our boss or bosses, or people that work for us. I'm just throwing the whole lump of people that we deal with at work that are federal employees, not customers. I think we could probably spend a pretty decent amount of time building a list of negatives. Let's jump right into some positives. The first one is that they are what you would call fellow travelers. These are brothers in arms or sisters in arms if you want to be non-gendery or however you want to look at it. People in arms that have gone through experiences with you, that go through experiences with you. While they have these shared experiences, they're shared things that you have done, there are also things that they've done that are completely different from your background, from what you have experienced. That gives you the idea of two heads are better than one, or three or four or five. That doesn't mean that you want to pull your coworkers for every decision you make or anything close to that. When you find yourself in a difficult situation, you have a problem that you're trying to solve, your coworkers are the people that are there theoretically. I think in most cases, realistically, those are people that are there to help you through it. Even if it's somebody that is a rival, there is still some shared goals that you have in most cases. It may be as simple as the company succeeding. Your employer needs to succeed in order for you to progress and in order for your other coworkers to progress. If you're not going to get that raise, you're not going to get that bonus if your company falls apart. Actually, if your company goes out of business, you and all your coworkers are laid off. There's definitely some amount of your destinies are intertwined or linked because they're coworkers. Because of that, there are some of the tasks that we need to do. It is as beneficial to them as it is to us for us to succeed. That's when you get people pulling in the same direction. You become better than you would be by yourself. Think about a tug of war. If it's just you on one side, it's going to be difficult. When you start adding other people that are pulling in the same direction, then you can accomplish more. That actually dovetails perfectly in to our second positive. When you have coworkers, you have the ability to do things that you cannot on your own. This could be through sheer numbers. It may be that you're a coder and you can only crank out so much code on a regular basis, on a day-to-day basis. Pick a time period. Over the period of a year, there's only so much you can do. If you have another coworker that's a coder, then there's a certain amount of code they can produce. Now you can theoretically, hopefully, produce your amount of code plus their amount of code on an annual basis, which means you can get more done. You can get closer to your goals or achieve more goals by that raw coding. I think that's a very almost pessimistic way to look at things. I think a lot of times, when we do it right, definitely, and I think more often probably than not, the sum of the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Our ability as a team to accomplish things is often going to be better than our ability as individuals to accomplish things. If I can write 10 lines of code a day, and somebody else can write 10 lines of code a then a lot of times you'll find that we'll probably combine and be able to knock out 25 or 30 lines of code or something like that. I'm making those numbers up, so I have no idea what the real percentage of improvement is. I'm not even sure if it's something that we could quantify, that we could actually sit down and do some sort of research and prove the benefit, the enhancement of having those coworkers. But there's just so much that we get in that, that is the second set of eyes or third or fourth where our point of view may block us from something. Their point of view may allow us to get to a solution much faster. This is something actually that I learned early on as official in soccer games or football, however you want to call it. You've got people on a field and you've got things going on and as a referee, as a game official you have a line of sight. If something goes on that is not in your line of sight, that is blocked, then it might as well have not happened. If you're a referee and there's a foul that occurs, but there's a player that blocks your sight from that foul, you're going to miss it. But now think about, hopefully I can paint you a little bit of a picture here. Now think about another person standing somewhere else, probably not next to you, almost definitely not next to you. Probably particularly in a position where your field of vision and what you can see in their field of vision are added in such a way that you combined have the greatest possible field of vision you can get. Probably you could think about it as what if you've got two people standing side to side facing the same direction. Their field of vision is going to be not much more than a single person's field of vision. But now if they go back to back, then you've doubled the field of vision essentially and maybe more so because there may be, even from that positioning, there may be some benefits that you get that you otherwise wouldn't. Probably not, but think about that. And that's, yeah, so now you've got all of these things that you're going to be able to see that you otherwise would not. You can't see something behind you, but if you've got somebody with their back to yours, they're going to be able to help you out there. And that same thing translates to an amazing amount of problems is that our point of view paints our reality, our ability to solve a problem. When you have a coworker or coworkers, then you have all of these other points of view. And to some extent, it almost is the more you have, the more coworkers you have, the more points of view you have, the more likely you're going to have somebody that has a point of view that gets you the shortest route to the solution. And now that's not always the case that that's going to occur or that's going to be communicated or that there is necessarily a shortest route to a solution. But I think in almost every case, there is a mindset or a point of view that can effectively block you from a solution. And until you move, until you adjust, until you have a slightly different point of view, you're blocked. It's very similar to writer's block. People sit down and they want to write a story or an article and they just can't come up with something. And I think it very much is a mental block. There's something about their state of mind, their point of view, whatever it is, or maybe a combination of all of those that stops them from getting something done. But if you've got somebody else there to essentially serve as your muse, to prompt you to move out of your point of view or your mental state, then sometimes that can free you up and suddenly you're off and running. And so instead of sitting there spinning your wheels, staring at the wall, trying to think something for who knows how much lost time. Now you've got thoughts coming, sometimes fast and furious, and you're ready to go get that thing done or maybe things that you otherwise would not have accomplished. There's things called blue sky or green fields or things like that that are sessions that are essentially brainstorming sessions. And this is a perfect example of that. I don't know how many I've been in, but it is amazing how many times we have had, even with three or four people, that there's a way that the ideas or the sort of just the random thoughts start playing on each other. And so where you may be thinking about one thing and you've got a coworker that's in a very different place with what they're thinking about, the discussion of your ideas, the combination of your ideas suddenly points you into a direction that neither of those original thoughts would have taken you in. So you can get, I really think that in a lot of cases there are things that you can accomplish with your coworkers that you never could individually. Sometimes it takes the right combination of thoughts and that combination means there has to be more than one. So that's a big positive. You can do more than you can do individually and you can accomplish things that you may not ever have been able to without that combination of your coworkers. Now back to the idea of fellow travelers or brothers in arms or however you want to refer to it. I think there is a, and now sitting here, coming through the sort of it, depending on how you look at it, who knows how it's historically going to be, but towards I guess the tail end of the COVID issue of 2020 and people being locked down and particularly it's been interesting seeing a lot of people that are not used to remote work. I've been doing this for a long time, how they have dealt with being in a remote situation. And I think a lot of people now realize the emotional support essentially that we get from our coworkers. It's not just the social interactions, although that is something that is very valuable even to introverts. Introversion is not necessarily about not wanting to deal with people at all. It's just not wanting to deal with people in numbers and also having times where you don't want to deal with people at all. And extroverts, even more so, they refresh themselves, they rejuvenate themselves. They enjoy, are energized by conversations and having people around. If you don't have coworkers, you probably don't have people around. Now you may, you can be like a salesman and you're dealing with customers all the time. You could be a one person company basically and so you're dealing with your customers. But the conversations you can have with customers, the sharing life's experiences and travels, that doesn't come with customers because there's always your vendor, their customer. When it's coworkers, there's that shared goals that I think really help with those conversations and really help you, they can carry you through some difficult situations. You have somebody else that you can, maybe it's a shoulder cry on or somebody you can vent to or somebody you can lean on, how do you look at it? But coworkers do provide that. Even if we don't think we need an emotional support, they are there. And so they provide us a way to get through the tough times. Sometimes it's a cheerleading kind of thing that helps boost our morale. And I think one of the biggest things you get from your coworkers is the ability to share victories. It's nice to have somebody else that's there when you're going through the dark times. Somebody that can carry you through if need be or you can limp on it, use each other to limp your way through a bad situation. But on the other side, the flip side of that, the highs as opposed to the lows, it is much more satisfying and much more enjoyable to have a victory that you share with others. It's just one person. We have this whole idea, I think, of being bragging or something like that. People will look at it almost as you saying, look what I did. Well, it's different. It takes that. There's not a stigma as much from a team doing it. So there's a difference between saying, look what I did and look what we did. And I think that in a lot of us, that almost stigma that comes from individual success, we're free from that when we have a group or a team success. And so our coworkers actually give us the opportunity to really freely enjoy success, enjoy victories. And it's also something that you get almost like an echo chamber of talking about, oh yeah, we got this done and we got that done. And think about it again from sports, since it's such a visible and easy analogy here. It's one thing if you see a golfer and they may have pumped their fist or jump up and down a little bit. But even then, they're usually going to look to like, they're caddy or there's going to be somebody that they want to share that moment with. But then look at a professional football team or NBA basketball team or something like that, especially when they win. They've got the champagne bottles that they're squirting all over the place and they're high high-fiving everybody and they're jumping back and forth. And a lot of the stuff is they'll be sitting there like, oh yeah, it was so great when you scored that goal or you made that save or that moment that we knew we were going to win. Yeah, they get to relive it. And it is something they get to relive. It's not just their memory. They get to see that moment through the eyes of somebody else. It goes back to that point of view. But not only is a point of view important in solving problems, point of views can actually allow you to more thoroughly experience life in general. Not to get too philosophical, but I mean, think about that. That's why there are people that there definitely are people that are in their deathbed that are single, that never had, maybe they didn't have really a family or didn't have as big a family as they wanted. And they'll say that that was a regret, a regret. Where there's the other side, there's people that have had a very full life with a lot of family and friends and all these people to share those moments with. And so that gives us something that makes the lowest lows not as low and the highest highs maybe even a little bit higher. So co-workers are sometimes a pain in the rear, but also they give us some of these things that are cannot be quantified, but are truly incredibly valuable. I mean, almost invaluable. They may be priceless because we have somebody that's got shared experiences with us that we can use as a sounding board that we can lean on for their point of view and actually get to experience something from somebody else's point of view and thus get a deeper, fuller experience. So co-workers not only are they a positive, I think they are close as you can come to a requirement to really enjoy success. That being said, we get to the challenge of the week. The challenge this week is when was the last time you had a positive word or some sort of affirmation for your co-workers, whether it's your boss, whether it's people that work for you, whether it's peers, when did you just say, you know what, thanks for hanging out, thanks for working with me on this one. And if you can't think of what it was, go do it now. And if you can think of what it was, go do it now anyways. I think this is one of those cases and this is a perfect season for it as we talk about positives. Maybe there's just not enough, actually it's not a maybe, there's just not enough affirmations in the world, particularly the modern world where we've got all of this internet trolls and flame wars and politics are as divided as it seems as possible and you've got a 24-7 cycle where it's just, you know, the world is bad and it's these people's fault and all this other stuff. There's so many ways for us to get sucked into anger and depression and just not appreciating other people. So let's change that course a little bit today and show some appreciation. It doesn't take much. It's free and I think you'll be very happy with the results. So let me kick it off by saying thanks. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being a part of this group, for the feedback, for those that you have sent feedback and for just spending some time sharing it with me and listening to an old guy rant occasionally about some things that aren't that bad in our technical jobs. However you do it and hopefully it jumpstarts with your affirmation for somebody else to lead you to a great day, a great week and then of course we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Developer Noor podcast. For more episodes like this one you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon and other podcast venues or visit our site at developernoor.com. Just a step forward a day is still progress. So let's keep moving forward together. Hi, this is Rob from Building Better Developers. The Developer Noor podcast. We're excited to be on Alexa now. You can enable us by simply saying Alexa enable Building Better Developers and we will be there ready for you every time you want to listen to your now favorite podcast. Whether we are your favorite podcast or not we would love to hear from you so please leave a review on Amazon.