The Power of Conversation

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. Hello and welcome back. We are in the midst of a series of interviews in this season and partially just to keep things so that I have sort of a Monday start to an interview. I'm going to throw in an extra little bonus episode. The focus on this one is I want to talk a little bit about the power of conversation. This is something that may be a bigger challenge as we are currently in a, I would say a shift because I think this is going to stick to have more remote work, have more situations where we are not in face-to-face conversation, where we're doing Zoom meetings and we're doing emails and we're doing these things that are in a sense restrictive to conversation. You can have, as I have through these interviews, you can have great conversations through Zoom or whatever your medium is that you prefer to do your conversation, your remote meetings. But it's just, it's not always the same, particularly because you have, in a lot of cases, it's not a one-to-one Zoom. It's a meeting. You've got multiple people and yes, you're going to have some conversations, but you miss out when you're working remote, when you're not in an office. You miss out on office conversations. Some of those may not be that big a deal. If you aren't up with the latest, what happened on The Survivor, if that's even still a TV show that's running, that was on last night, it's not a big deal. But I do think that we gain a lot in our career and our professional life from having conversations with others that are not entirely about our profession, but about those that are involved in the conversation, about their experiences and what they're going through and what their challenges are. We've seen that in this, where we've talked to some people that have very different focus, very different career. They may have zero intersections with their strengths and skills and the ones that I have. We can be, in some cases, very different. Some cases across an ocean, doesn't really matter. There's still a huge amount of information you can get from having conversations. One of the things that is out there, and you can always shoot me an email if you want to learn more about it. I think there's multiple things like this, but one that I've joined months ago now is called Lunch Club. What you do is you sign up and basically, depending on how often you want to do it, I do it roughly once a week. You have a lunch conversation with somebody and it's just somebody else in the system. It does match you somewhat on interests and things like that. Those conversations have been very wide ranging, very broad selection of people. Some in the United States where I'm at, I've talked to people in Canada, I've talked to people in Russia, people in Africa, just covered now multiple continents. It is amazing, no matter how different the two of us may seem in that conversation, how much I can learn from those conversations and I think how much they get out of it as well. The similarities and understanding where there are similarities and where there are differences are invaluable in our experience and being able to understand and really delve into problems and find solutions. The broader your experience, the more or less tools you have in your tool chest, the more likely it is that you're going to find a solution and not only a solution but one that will be, if not a best fit, a better fit, a very good fit. With this, I want to recommend, and that's going to end up being the challenge, spoiler alert, I want to recommend that you find opportunities to have conversations. If you're an introvert, which is not uncommon in the tech world, you're going to have to work with that a little bit, but you may be able to find ways that you can do maybe like chats or something. The key is to not be in a meeting or this is not a networking thing where you get in and you talk to a bunch of people and you swap business cards. This is one-to-one. This is having personal conversations with people and don't be afraid to ask them about, hey, what do you do? What's that like? What are your challenges? What do you love about your job? What do you hate about your job? What's cool about your company? What's cool about your industry? If you can have those kinds of conversations, you will have tons and tons of notes in your notebooks. Just as I think you probably have seen as I have through these conversations, there is a huge amount of information that comes from just talking to somebody about their day-to-day routine, about how they got to where they are. The story of their journey from wherever you start, childhood to becoming the professional that they are, or maybe even from the start of their career to now mid-career or late career can provide us an incredible amount of insight. Part of this is, yes, it's a little bit of a light bulb going on in my head that I realize that I get far more out of an interview format and talking to people as opposed to doing research and then presenting a topic. There's so much more than I get with a little bit of research still to learn about a person, maybe a little bit about the industry so I can at least have an idea of what I don't know, so I know what kinds of questions to ask. And also maybe some things that are going to be leading questions to get them to start talking about what they've done and how they got there. But the key is not that this is for content. The key in this is that it's for you to learn. When you go out and you have a conversation, you're going to gain from that. I'm going to get nothing out of it. I'm not going to be part of that conversation. If you turn around and record it, start a podcast or blog about it, all right, yes, you can share it. But generally speaking, you're going to get the most out of that. And so this is helping you help yourself. Find opportunities to have these conversations. You can look up this lunch group. You can probably just Google things along those lines. And it does fall back into to some extent sort of mastermind groups and things of that nature because those are invaluable, but those are also different because those are people that get to know you. And so they have a perspective. They do have a deeper understanding of you and you're going to have a deeper understanding of them. But you can't have a mastermind group of a thousand people or even a hundred people or even probably a dozen people is going to be pushing it. There's circles that we have of friends and acquaintances and things like that. And there's only so many, I will call them deep relationships that we are capable of. If you're a guy, it's one. If you're a girl, it's probably a few more. If you don't mind a little gender related humor there. But still, there's just a limit to how many people we can know, you know, get to know deeply. But that doesn't mean that there aren't people that we can have very little knowledge of and still gain a huge amount from having a genuine conversation. One where we say, hey, how's it going? What's life like? What's your story? And then share your story. And in doing so, I think you will find that where you think there are a lot of differences, there are not. And maybe where you think there are similarities, there may not be. Because this is, you know, it's one thing to talk to somebody that's in a completely different career, different line of business, but also even within your own line of business, your coworkers sometimes. Go have a lunch or hang out with somebody, you know, go drinks after work or whatever it is that your social thing that you do. And spend all the time one on one just talking to somebody say, hey, I just want to get to know a little bit more about you. I want to hear your story. And I think in most cases, some people are going to be wary, we'll say, of that or may not be comfortable with that. And that's okay. Because for everybody that's not comfortable and sort of turns you down, essentially, or ends up being very closed and doesn't provide you much, you're going to stumble across somebody that is just a fountain of knowledge and they just start and all you have to do is sit back and listen. And those are worth it. It's worth it to spend your time to invest in learning about other people, because they will give you a huge amount of knowledge. A lot of times, particularly if you sort of focus on, you know, what are your successes, what are your failures, things like that, you can, in a sense, you can gain from their experience. You can hear what they went through. And then you didn't have to go through it. But you still can learn some of the key things that they learned out of it. And you may even learn things that they didn't learn. In that conversation, there may be things that you say, hey, did you consider this? Maybe the last person you talked to had a slightly different approach, slightly different solution. And now you've got a couple of solutions that you can work with. And also you're helping them. You're saying, hey, next time you run into this, here's something else you consider. It may even work better than the solution that you came up with. It's also a great idea. It's a great way to get ideas. It's amazing how many times I've talked to somebody and they've come up with something that's a little, I'll say outside of the box, or that's just a little different or maybe a slight variation on a theme. And suddenly there's an aha moment where I say that, wow, that's something that I can make use of, whether as a solution, whether as a communication tool, a marketing tool, we've seen in a lot of the brand related discussions we've had. And even it's maybe even variations or nuances related to some of the things I'm already doing. When you think of the various approaches that people have, there's a lot of magic numbers essentially that will show up. Some people, they need 12 bullet points or 10 bullet points or their number is five or three or they've got one word or whatever it is. And then seeing those, I think exposure to those different ideas will help us figure out where are we most comfortable? What is it that works for us? And in part of that, we can get it without actually having to try it out if we have a good conversation with somebody. And so you don't have to be a podcaster. You don't have to be an interviewer. You don't have to be some sort of journalist or something like that to effectively interview other people, to have discussions with them, talk to them, learn about them, learn from them. And hopefully you're able to also along the way, pay it forward a bit and maybe provide some of your experiences and some of the things that you have learned to that person so that they can benefit from your experience. I often will talk about my experiences often being sort of a cautionary tale that there I've got plenty of mistakes that I can point to and say, okay, that was a mistake. That was a mistake. Don't do this. Don't do that. And while that may not always be what somebody needs, sometimes you got to give them a solution and not just shoot down a lot of options. But sometimes it helps to also say, hey, here's some things that I know don't work. Here's an area that's probably going to work. So let's focus over here as opposed to this other area or these areas where we know success is not as likely. Sometimes it is. It's just about reducing options almost as much as finding an actual solution. So don't be afraid to share. Don't be afraid to reach out. Who knows? Maybe you'll become known as that guy or that gal that is easy to talk to, that is a cool person to go out to lunch with or hang out with them after work or sit next to them while you're on the softball field or whatever it is. And maybe it will help you if you are an introvert or if you're shy or some of those other things, maybe it will help you break out a little bit. It may be a little uncomfortable. We talked about uncomfortable conversations in this most recent interview, and maybe a lot of your conversations are uncomfortable. But I think as you test these things out, you will find ways that you can be comfortable. And again, I don't want to say you have to have it doesn't have to be face to face. It helps a lot because you can read emotion. You can see the impact that telling the story has on the speaker far more than you can through a text or an email. And even actually if it's a video meeting, they're just you know, now it is. I think we've spent enough time in the last year or two in video meetings and introducing ourselves to people through a Zoom call as opposed to face to face. And there's still there are differences there. There are just things that you get out of being in the same room with somebody. But that doesn't mean that's the best route for you. You may be more comfortable in something else. So don't be afraid to try it out. Just because what works for you is not the commonly accepted, we'll say in quotes, best thing to do doesn't mean that that's not the best thing for you to try. So give it a shot. And that brings us to the challenge of the day is in the next week, have a conversation with somebody. I challenge you to just find somebody that you maybe don't know as much. Could be a co-worker, could be a teammate if you're into sports, it could be a neighbor, whoever somebody that you sort of know. It may be not sort of maybe that you know their name and you've waved hi to them a couple times or something like that. And say, hey, let's go have a coffee. Let's go have lunch. Hey, I just want to spend 15 minutes talking to you and just get to know you better. I see you a bunch. Hey, here's an opportunity that I'd like to take advantage of. Or you could even say, hey, I was challenged this week to go have a conversation with somebody different and I feel like I don't know you as much as I could. And so I would like to have a conversation with you and get to know you a little better. Find out what makes you tick. I want to hear your story. And you will probably find that the reception is more often going to be warmer than you expect it to be. That being said, we'll let you get to it and hopefully you have your own aha moment or moments in the week ahead. But as always, go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and 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. One more thing before you go. Developer Noor podcast and site are a labor of love. We enjoy whatever we do trying to help developers become better. If you've gotten some value out of this and you'd like to help us, be great if you go out to developernoor.com slash donate and donate whatever feels good for you. If you get a lot of value, a lot. If you don't get a lot of value, even a little would be awesome. In any case, we will thank you and maybe I'll make you feel just a little bit warmer as well. Now you can go back and have yourself a great day.