Detailed Notes
In the latest season of Building Better Developers, hosts Rob Broadhead and Michael Meloche focus on a transformative idea: cultivating developer leadership habits to advance both personal and professional growth. By building habits around leadership, mentoring, and teaching, developers can create a lasting impact in their teams and organizations.
*Read More*... https://develpreneur.com/the-leadership-leap-habits-that-elevate-developers-to-new-heights/
*Episode Challenge:* Leadership, Mentoring, and Teaching
To help listeners practice these habits, the episode presents a weekly challenge designed to integrate leadership, mentoring, and teaching:
1. Lead a Team Moment: Take initiative on a project or guide your team through a challenge. 2. Mentor a Colleague: Support a teammate by sharing your knowledge and experience in a one-on-one interaction. 3. Teach a Concept: Identify a valuable concept for your team, prepare a brief explanation, and share it through a presentation or documentation.
After completing the challenge, reflect on the impact of your actions: * What went well? * What could you improve next time? * How did this experience benefit your team and personal growth?
By taking on this challenge, you can practice and refine the developer leadership habits that will set you apart in your career.
We invite you to join our community and share your coding journey with us. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just starting, there’s always room to learn and grow together. Contact us at [email protected] with your questions, feedback, or suggestions for future episodes. Together, let’s continue exploring the exciting world of software development.
*Additional Resources* * Know Your Audience For YouTube Growth https://develpreneur.com/know-your-audience-for-youtube-growth/) * Pivoting: How to Embrace Change and Fuel Your Professional Growth (https://develpreneur.com/pivoting-how-to-embrace-change-and-fuel-your-professional-growth/) * Gratitude and Growth: A Thanksgiving Special on Building Better Developers (https://develpreneur.com/gratitude-and-growth-a-thanksgiving-special-on-building-better-developers/) * Giving Back As A Mentor, Coach, and Lead (https://develpreneur.com/giving-back-as-a-mentor-coach-and-lead/)
*Follow-us on:*
* https://develpreneur.com/ * https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZOuFN_LhczvGyT2KSItH_g/featured * https://facebook.com/Develpreneur * https://twitter.com/develpreneur * http://linkedin.com/develpreneur
Transcript Text
[Music] good and we are live but not really we are studio recorded live or something like that so let's go look at because we've had holidays and so forgotten everything that we ever learned about podcasting uh let's see we are talking about we did that one so we're on building better habits and yep let's see what do we want to light knockout so let's see we've talked about security Pomodoro kitchen sink automation uh improving coding skills planning and scheduling breaking things down uh taking breaks meeting prep criticism and code reviews and personal branding all right one let's do uh we'll call it leading or mentoring I like that and then what's another one that I've bumped into lately that's sort of a have we talked about standards yet was that on the list uh I don't think we have yet okay let's do nope cool there's a pair for us so we'll do leading mentoring and coding standards um coding standards will be sort of like setting up your own coding standards and stuff like that we've talked about a little bit but I think doing that and then also maybe how to work with a group in doing that because I'm literally doing that in three different places right now and um the leading mentoring I think is just like exactly that we'll just sort of see where the conversation goes but it's basically something that we need to do it helps us grow it become better in building habits so we'll see if we can build some U some ways to do some mentoring and leading type habits and see where that goes all right well okay hat adjusted good enough I've got some caffeine so we're going to do our little three two one well hello and welcome back we are continuing our season of building better habits we are building better developers we have gotten past our holiday specials I am still here and have some caffeine and all the good stuff that matters along with probably too much turkey in the last few days my name is Rob Broadhead I am one of the founders of one of the founders of develop andur also a founder of RV Consulting also a person that's like getting back on track here a little bit because it was a couple of days off let's talk about Arby Consulting first Arby Consulting is a consulting company we go out and we do what is called Boutique Consulting and we help you do a better job job working with technology whether that is a technology team or software applications even hardware and stuff like that basically we help you get deal with your technology sprawl and get more out of your time invested and find a way to be productive with the technology that is out there today and prepared for tomorrow through integration simplification Automation and all of the shuns that are out there that will help you do better as a business as a business owner and a business leader that being said we can jump into like our good thing bad thing and we're back on our habits so habits I want to hit up first I cannot emphasize enough how much like gamechanging it has been to do a couple of Pomodoro you know 30 minute sets just make that part of every day in the past it was always like I was just going to like P P Pama pador my way through the day and now I don't I'm like I just want to make sure there's a couple in there now part of this may be because my day is often split with I've got you know meeting things and managing things and project managing things and stuff like that but when I get down to coding when I get down to solving problems I'm like I need to get this feature in or something along those lines having two pomodoros a day has really helped me it really helps me with the the things that I need to make sure that I touch at least on a regular basis a daily basis and make some progress on it so while I do with coating it may be something you want to do with something else you're working like your side hustle or something like that very good way to make those things a part of every day and make sure that you advance them shut everything else out go Focus for 25 minutes or whatever your Pomodoro length is and make some progress uh the listing thing is I'm not going to lie I've sort of drifted back off of that as I've got my huge list I do I have sort of gotten to like one or two things that pop to the top I'm going back to I'm really trying to uh build a habit of making sure every day that what is the thing that I want to get done what is that you know eating the Frog thing what's the thing that has just been dragging that I want to attack life blows up a lot lately and so that's made it tough but that has caused me to make some progress on those automation is a really good one to you we did the seven days and then automate something I think that is a really good repetitive thing to do simply because it will keep the automation idea in your head for whatever your daily weekly routine is it's helped me I've added a couple things here and there they've not been big things necessarily but they do save some time and they will you know they have there's an advantage to them and honestly as a developer these may end up being tools that I use elsewhere some of them I literally have used these tools elsewhere already to try to like clean some other things up good thing bad thing good thing I have survived Thanksgiving busy time family stuff all of the goodness that's out there but also it's exhausting so gotten through that bad thing is now I'm in the aftershocks of having all of these people over and setting up C like the Christmas decorations and all that cuz we wait till after Thanksgiving so now it looks like my house has been hit by a hurricane or something like that so I got to work on that today somebody who does not have to work on my house at least although he might have to work on his is Mike how you doing and introduce yourself hey everyone my name is Michael MOS I'm one of the founders of develop Aur and I'm also the founder of Envision QA if you're looking to improve the software within your business be it Health Care small businesses e-commerce we help you analyze what you currently have help you identify pain points and figure out those processes that you've kind of moved off to a manual process of getting things done because your systems don't really do what you need them to do so we help you build custom Solutions and we do it in the mindset of test driven development so that we reduce the time it takes to implement software release quality software and make sure that your users or your customers have the best experience with your product uh let's see holidays kind of made things a little crazy for me uh been still trying to work on the Pomodoro Technique I is actually helped me knock some things off my list so I've been I'm still that list driven person that I'm for me has never really not been the case uh I have had the slight problem though of list Creek where I've had way too much on my list to really get done in the time in a timely manner so for good and bad I will say the bad side is I am over prioritizing and underd delivering at the moment and I'm working on tweaking that because of the holidays uh my house is also a bit of a mess because we did throw Christmas decorations yesterday uh we also do that the day after and also I've been working on the automation I've been tweaking some of my automation tools as well as that kitchen sink g i i really spent uh probably way too much time going down rabbit holes putting together some nice uh little feature sets and HTML CSS to kind of play around with some ideas I had for an application so with that being said I'll pass back to you so this episode want to Dive Right into something that's a little bit different from it's may feel similar but it's a little different to when we were talking about personal branding and and some of those kinds of things what I want to talk about really is I the best look at it is like leadership or mentoring and you know Le being a leader or particularly as you get into your career and you move into uh your midlevel and your senior level kind of stuff leading mentoring being a senior a lot of times is making sure that you're passing on some of the information you know now this is actually something that you can do even if you're beginning if you're you can be two or three years into your career and already be at a point where it is useful for you to pass information on which would be potentially leading or mentoring or training somebody on something that you have done this can be as simple as uh let's say you're working at somebody that does a lot of Integrations and it's you basically walking through hey here's how you do the integration the setup the API calls for X whatever it is happen to be could actually be X the formerly known as Twitter or it could be something like a lot of times you're going to see stuff like Integrations with um like make quick books or something with Salesforce or netw Suite depending on what your company is or HubSpot or those kinds of things that are out there or mail Cher all the other fun things and know those are aren't people that have sponsored us but if any of you guys want to we'll mention your name more often in the future so the key to the the thing about this leading and mentoring and training and teaching which is something we've talked about ourselves is that you get a lot out of it it really if if you're going to pass information on to somebody else it actually forces you to review the information for yourself to Think Through okay what is this really to uh to really coales what you have in your head into something that now you can pass on to somebody else and a lot of times because it's it's sort of like picking at the edges of these things a lot of times it forces you to learn it better to not necessarily Master it but definitely become much more comfortable with for example let's say that I am let's just use an integration with um let's say HubSpot let's say I'm writing an application and I'm going to get some information out of HubSpot via an API well the initial things that I did may have just been that I figured out how to connect I figured out you know I grabbed a a token somewhere that I I don't even remember how their API works but let's assume there's some sort of token some sort of authentication information I grabbed that I connected I hit the one end point probably that I needed grabbed the information back and spun through it if I'm going to teach this to somebody else I'm going to actually spend a little more time and talk about all right how do I get how do I generate or get an API key you how do I set up permissions for it how do I where do I go to review the documentation for the API what is the general results for an API as far as like maybe there's maybe I didn't even care about uh eror handling and stuff like that there may be things like that that they're going to do so in doing this like handoff or introduction to somebody else you're going to refine it a little bit and maybe a lot because you're going to think through some of it what are the questions that people are going to ask and if you actually go into some sort of a training session or leading them through stuff they will ask those questions and so now you've got to go answer them and that's going to help you learn it better as well now as a uh a growth a career growth path even if you are a technician even if you're going to be technical all the way never want to manage people or anything like that there still is a value in talking to the people is dealing with other people because if you're just somebody you know some Mage in an ivory Tower then that doesn't really help the rest of the team so you need to make sure that you are learning at least some of these soft skills about how to pass your information on whether that is through a present a whether that is through like we talked about blogs and things like that uh Wiki Pages General documentations how-to readmes and things like that these things are all important in essentially transitioning information to somebody else now a lot of times it's seen as like a leading or a mentoring because you can it's not just like here's a read me and go with it it's helping somebody walk through getting started on whatever it is and this may be as simple as hey I built this really cool component here's how you utilize it so there's a lot of a lot of different ways that you may bump up against this particular habit that we're going to talk about and a lot of different ways that you can uh communicate that across the to whoever it is it needs to be whether it's a person a team or the rest of the world right now I'm going to send it over to just a person and get your feedback and your thoughts on this before we get into our challenge go for it Mike sure thanks Rob so the first thing that came to my mind when you were talking about you know that whole idea of mentoring leading and training was back when Google first came out a lot of people didn't know how to really use search engines or how to identify and find things to do their job so one of the things that just kind of came to my mind was you know how did Google Google you know a lot of people even today still don't know how how to use search engines properly to kind of narrow down their search like their search is very broad they might it's more scattershot than um refine and it's one of those things where it's like you know this is something that as you build these skill sets you learn these things on the job or just over time when you're working with individuals or other uh people and you start seeing that oh they're struggling try to find an answer to a problem or solution it may be as simple as hey write down the steps that you kind of go through to solve the problem like hey how did I go out I have this ticket or this bug what's the first step in my mind that I would do to troubleshoot so sometimes just walking through with Junior developers or any developers even seniors I've had to do this sometimes because there are some problems that we just have never seen or we tackle one way but that's maybe not the best way to do it and I find myself learning as well so not only do I try to help people when I see them struggling or it's like oh hey if you try this or you work through these steps to solve a problem like Google it may help them troubleshoot or be better at problem solving or working tickets but you also need to be in the mindset even with those Junior developers that sometimes they may have seen things or use newer Technologies or tools that might be a better way so sometimes when you're training and mentoring listen to what they say because they may actually teach you something new within this process so it's kind of a two-way street it's not always one way you have to be open up to kind of absorb or take in new information because you know you're not always your way is not always the right way also this is very helpful especially if you're in smaller organizations or even larger organizations if you join a team that has some documentation in place like how to set up environments how to uh you know set up deploy software go through those or if you are on that team you've built the software write that type of documentation because when you bring new people on it's always nice to say hey look at this documentation let me walk through it with you kind of have a checklist and you kind of want to go through those maybe once a quarter maybe once a month depending upon how fast the software is changing but these types of things are very beneficial not just to you but to your teams and organizations as you kind of grow every you everyone grows together you're not just growing yourself um it it's kind of a community effort but as we grow you know I love teaching I constantly it's like oh hey there's this cool new idea like Ai and I'll to teach myself I go through and read documentation but then I try to do a project or write something down in a way that like a Blog where I can go step by step like okay here's how I would set it up here's the steps I need to do to go find some additional information here are some keywords on how to search AI how to use like chat GPT or Claud AI you know what are the specific commands I need to solve this problem this gets back to that whole how do you Google Google you know using the tools there are many simple ways to use them but there's also a lot of advanced ways to use that most General users don't use or know about and these are very kind of very useful things to learn and use when you're kind of walking through that mentoring and teaching of others so you look at this and there's a there's a wide range of stuff that we can do and you're going to probably sitting there going okay well what's your challenge for the week and how are we going to work with this this is what I want to do to challenge you this time and this is going to be an interesting one because I'm thinking about like doing it myself because we challenge ourselves with this and this can sometimes be challenging just to not overuse that word or maybe I did what I want you to do is find a venue of some sort to train to lead to share information now a venue a lot of people are going to think of like oh my gosh I'm going to go like you know to the local Auditorium and do a speech or something it may be you could possibly do that but you don't have to one of the best ways I think for you to go look is look for local user groups or meetups and see if there's somebody that is literally looking for somebody to speak in the next you know little bit next week or the next month and a lot of times they're very open on the topics a lot of places need them so you can do that another place you can find is the internet there is so much out there as far as you may find some slack user groups you may find uh news groups there's a lot of different just any kind of discussion type boards there especially if they are topic specific so for example let's say you're a Java programmer There Are Places out there like I think Java Ranch is still out there and some of those kinds of sites where people are regularly putting questions out there you can even go to like your you know your slash dots and some of those kinds of places there's a lot of places that people are just asking questions like how do I do this and this is a perfect opportunity for you to say hey here's how you do it particularly if you use one of the sites where it's a a community kind of thing and people sort of rate your you know they'll plus or minus your solution and a lot of times they'll give you more information about like oh yeah your solution is good except for you didn't do this or breaks in this case or things like that that really do help refine a solution so that is your challenge for the week is to post at least one place or to do something schedule something where you're going to actually train people now if you don't want to if you want to do it in person then the alternative to that would be listen as you're going through your work week if you're in an office area or if you're on slack or whatever communication is amongst your co-workers and and within the next week put together something if people are asking about like hey can we do this or what's this about or how would this work or there's something that everybody uses that nobody really knows real well for example if you've got devop stuff I know I've been a lot of organizations where somebody set up a really complex bunch of like jenking stuff years ago and now nobody really knows how to do it so spend a little bit of time and just do a little write up of like hey here's some features that may be useful to yourself and to others as well because this actually is a bonus it's going to push you to learn something but it's also going to push you a little bit to learn it enough to teach somebody else so basically every day for your habit is just spend five minutes thinking through where are some places where I could potentially help and then maybe go like do a quick search or something like that you don't have to go very deep in it but by the end of the week the big challenge is the full challenge is present in in some way form or fashion whether it's in written form or something else and then would really love to hear what you present like you know just a sort of a title or summary like what did you find where did you go how did you go present this and you know just I don't need to write it but I would love to hear just a sentence or two about your experience with this because these are the kinds of things that I think we can really feed back into the community with is it's like hey here's a place where there is a you people are dying for knowledge of this kind and you know these are or these are great ways to share knowledge and do it quickly and easily and things like that because I would love to hear your experience as always one of the best ways to do that is to shoot us an email at info developer or.com we also have a contact us out on form out on developer or.com you can leave us comments and feedback whether you're checking out the YouTube developing or C Channel whether you're wherever you're listening to podcast if you're listening to this as a podcast just we're happy to get feedback however you get it we've got a Facebook page we got at develop adur at uh at Twitter or X whatever you want to call it someday we'll eventually just call it X but it's still the place in formally known as Twitter but we'd love to get your feedback and just sort of see where you're going with this now where we are going with this is we are still going to be like chugging through this this season uh we will not finish up before the end of the year so we'll have a couple more episodes we'll have a couple holiday specials and we'll come back in which will probably be very helpful as we're wrapping up getting to the end of a year and stepping in a new year to have a bunch of things that you can work with to build better habits because a lot of people there's this thing called resolutions at the beginning of the year A lot of people do those if you can do that and build a habit instead of just a resolution that you you know forget about 3 days later you will find that it will make a huge Improvement on you becoming and building a better developer within yourself that being said go out there and build yourself a better day have yourself a great day a great week and we will talk to you next time bonus material so one additional thing that kind of came to my mind when you were given the challenge was given that we're in the holidays and there's a lot of cooking going on and involved so you could even take a non-technical approach to this especially if you have kids spend some time in the kitchen and maybe go through like teach them how to make Christmas cookies or how to make banana bread recipes are a very wonderful way it's a very structured process of kind of taking something like directions on something and actually Implement them and actually make something so whereas code you kind of yes you can see wonderful websites things of that nature sometimes the code we write is in visible you really don't see it so it's hard to really show that we did something but if you're teaching someone and you're training someone it's a very easy way to goes okay so here's what we're going to do here's the steps we're going to do and we actually have an end product that we can actually enjoy we can eat and consume this holiday wow all right I'm going to go like bonus that that just gave me a great idea uh because it is holiday season and stuff like that and you guys because you're you know special you get to you put up with seeing our ugly mugs we're going to throw you a slightly different challenge or at least a variation you can do find a game that you like to play and teach somebody else how to play it now this could be as simple as a you know a a battleship or Tiddly Winks or something like that or something more complicated like some you know massive tabletop game or roll playing game or some card games can get really complicated really fast but this is perfect to do actually in a group too let's teach somebody you know grab a group at your family gathering and say hey let's all play you know uker or let's all play you know Texas no hold them or whatever it happens to be it's like you can pick stuff you know it's card game or board game whatever it is because that again is the same thing and games are actually one of the biggest ones because it's always like people are going to say well what are the rules around this you're like oh I need to go look at the rules and that's things like Classics like Uno like people have different rules so you have to actually talk through it so that's a bonus challenge for you guys now I'm going to go consume a little bit more caffeine so we can do some more of this we will be back next episode as always please give us fre feedback we'd love to hear it especially again I can't emphasize enough we're getting the end of a year going be starting a new year now this last year we made major changes and did a lot of Shifting around how the podcast went we not have as big a change but we would love to have your feedback to see where you would like to see us change adding information deleting stuff all of those things are on the table because we're doing this to serve you and we want to make sure that we provide you the best entertainment edutainment as there is out there uh so that you guys will keep coming back and find it you know we'll respect the time that you're giving to us thank you so much for doing that go out there and have a good one and we will talk to you next time [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
good
and we are
live but not really we are studio
recorded live or something like
that so let's go look at because we've
had holidays and so forgotten everything
that we ever
learned about
podcasting uh let's see we are talking
about we did that one so we're on
building better habits and yep let's see
what do we want to light
knockout so let's see we've talked about
security Pomodoro kitchen sink
automation uh improving coding skills
planning and scheduling breaking things
down uh taking breaks meeting prep
criticism and code reviews and personal
branding all right one let's
do uh we'll call it leading or mentoring
I like
that and
then what's another one that I've bumped
into lately that's sort of
a have we talked about standards yet was
that on the list uh I don't think we
have yet okay let's
do nope cool
there's a pair for us so we'll do
leading mentoring and coding
standards um coding standards will be
sort of like setting up your own coding
standards and stuff like that we've
talked about a little bit but I think
doing that and then also maybe how to
work with a group in doing that because
I'm literally doing that in three
different places right now and um the
leading mentoring I think is just
like exactly that we'll just sort of see
where the conversation goes but it's
basically something that we need to do
it helps us grow it become better in
building habits so we'll see if we can
build some U some ways to do some
mentoring and leading type habits and
see where that
goes all right well okay hat adjusted
good enough I've got some caffeine so
we're going to do our little three two
one well hello and welcome back we are
continuing our season of building better
habits we are building better developers
we have gotten past our holiday specials
I am still here and have some caffeine
and all the good stuff that matters
along with probably too much turkey in
the last few days my name is Rob
Broadhead I am one of the founders of
one of the founders of develop andur
also a founder of RV Consulting also a
person that's like getting back on track
here a little bit because it was a
couple of days
off let's talk about Arby Consulting
first Arby Consulting is a consulting
company we go out and we do what is
called Boutique Consulting and we help
you do a better job job working with
technology whether that is a technology
team or software applications even
hardware and stuff like that basically
we help you get deal with your
technology sprawl and get more out of
your time invested and find a way to be
productive with the technology that is
out there today and prepared for
tomorrow through integration
simplification Automation and all of the
shuns that are out there that will help
you do better as a business as a
business owner and a business leader
that being said we can jump into like
our good thing bad thing and we're back
on our habits so habits I want to hit up
first I cannot emphasize enough how much
like gamechanging it has been to do a
couple of Pomodoro you know 30 minute
sets just make that part of every day in
the past it was always like I was just
going to like P P Pama pador my way
through the day and now I don't I'm like
I just want to make sure there's a
couple in there now part of this may be
because my day is often split with I've
got you know meeting things and managing
things and project managing things and
stuff like that but when I get down to
coding when I get down to solving
problems I'm like I need to get this
feature in or something along those
lines having two pomodoros a day has
really helped me it really helps me with
the the things that I need to make sure
that I touch at least on a regular basis
a daily basis and make some progress on
it so while I do with coating it may be
something you want to do with something
else you're working like your side
hustle or something like that very good
way to make those things a part of every
day and make sure that you advance them
shut everything else out go Focus for 25
minutes or whatever your Pomodoro length
is and make some progress uh the listing
thing is I'm not going to lie I've sort
of drifted back off of that as I've got
my huge list I do I have sort of gotten
to like one or two things that pop to
the top I'm going back to I'm really
trying to uh build a habit of making
sure every day that what is the thing
that I want to get done what is that you
know eating the Frog thing what's the
thing that has just been dragging that I
want to attack life blows up a lot
lately and so that's made it tough but
that has caused me to make some progress
on those automation is a really good one
to you we did the seven days and then
automate something I think that is a
really good repetitive thing to do
simply because it will keep the
automation idea in your head for
whatever your daily weekly routine is
it's helped me I've added a couple
things here and there they've not been
big things necessarily but they do save
some time and they will you know they
have there's an advantage to them and
honestly as a developer these may end up
being tools that I use elsewhere some of
them I literally have used these tools
elsewhere already to try to like clean
some other things up good thing bad
thing good thing I have survived
Thanksgiving busy time family stuff all
of the goodness that's out there but
also it's exhausting so gotten through
that bad thing is now I'm in the
aftershocks of having all of these
people over and setting up C like the
Christmas decorations and all that cuz
we wait till after Thanksgiving so now
it looks like my house has been hit by a
hurricane or something like that so I
got to work on that today
somebody who does not have to work on my
house at least although he might have to
work on his is Mike how you doing and
introduce yourself hey everyone my name
is Michael MOS I'm one of the founders
of develop Aur and I'm also the founder
of Envision QA if you're looking to
improve the software within your
business be it Health Care small
businesses e-commerce we help you
analyze what you currently have help you
identify pain points and figure out
those processes that you've kind of
moved off to a manual process of getting
things done because your systems don't
really do what you need them to do so we
help you build custom Solutions and we
do it in the mindset of test driven
development so that we reduce the time
it takes to implement software release
quality software and make sure that your
users or your customers have the best
experience with your product uh let's
see holidays kind of made things a
little crazy for me uh been still trying
to work on the Pomodoro Technique I is
actually helped me knock some things off
my list so I've been I'm still that list
driven person that I'm for me has never
really not been the case uh I have had
the slight problem though of list Creek
where I've had way too much on my list
to really get done in the time in a
timely manner so for good and bad I will
say the bad side is I am over
prioritizing and underd delivering at
the moment and I'm working on tweaking
that because of the holidays uh my house
is also a bit of a mess because we did
throw Christmas decorations yesterday uh
we also do that the day after and also
I've been working on the automation I've
been tweaking some of my automation
tools as well as that kitchen sink g i i
really spent uh probably way too much
time going down rabbit holes putting
together some nice uh little feature
sets and HTML CSS to kind of play around
with some ideas I had for an application
so with that being said I'll pass back
to you so this episode want to Dive
Right into something that's a little bit
different from it's may feel similar but
it's a little different to when we were
talking about personal branding and and
some of those kinds of things what I
want to talk about really is I the best
look at it is like leadership or
mentoring and you know Le being a leader
or particularly as you get into your
career and you move into uh your
midlevel and your senior level kind of
stuff leading mentoring being a senior a
lot of times is making sure that you're
passing on some of the information you
know now this is actually something that
you can do even if you're beginning if
you're you can be two or three years
into your career and already be at a
point where it is useful for you to pass
information on which would be
potentially leading or mentoring or
training somebody on something that you
have done this can be as simple as uh
let's say you're working at somebody
that does a lot of
Integrations and it's you basically
walking through hey here's how you do
the integration the setup the API calls
for X whatever it is happen to be could
actually be X the formerly known as
Twitter or it could be something like a
lot of times you're going to see stuff
like Integrations with um like make
quick books or something with Salesforce
or netw Suite depending on what your
company is or HubSpot or those kinds of
things that are out there or mail Cher
all the other fun things and know those
are aren't people that have sponsored us
but if any of you guys want to we'll
mention your name more often in the
future
so the key to the the thing about this
leading and mentoring and training and
teaching which is something we've talked
about ourselves is that you get a lot
out of it it really if if you're going
to pass information on to somebody else
it actually forces you to review the
information for yourself to Think
Through okay what is this really to uh
to really coales what you have in your
head into something that now you can
pass on to somebody else and a lot of
times
because it's it's sort of like picking
at the edges of these things a lot of
times it forces you to learn it better
to not necessarily Master it but
definitely become much more comfortable
with
for example let's say that I am let's
just use an integration with um let's
say HubSpot let's say I'm writing an
application and I'm going to get some
information out of HubSpot via an API
well the initial things that I did may
have just been that I figured out how to
connect I figured out you know I grabbed
a a token somewhere that I I don't even
remember how their API works but let's
assume there's some sort of token some
sort of authentication information I
grabbed that I connected
I hit the one end point probably that I
needed grabbed the information back and
spun through
it if I'm going to teach this to
somebody else I'm going to actually
spend a little more time and talk about
all right how do I get how do I generate
or get an API key you how do I set up
permissions for it how do I where do I
go to review the documentation for the
API what is the general results for an
API as far as like maybe there's maybe I
didn't even care about uh eror handling
and stuff like that there may be things
like that that they're going to do so in
doing this like handoff or introduction
to somebody else you're going to refine
it a little bit and maybe a lot because
you're going to think through some of it
what are the questions that people are
going to ask and if you actually go into
some sort of a training session or
leading them through stuff they will ask
those questions and so now you've got to
go answer them and that's going to help
you learn it better as well now as a uh
a growth a career growth path even if
you are a technician even if you're
going to be technical all the way never
want to manage people or anything like
that there still is a value in talking
to the people is dealing with other
people because if you're just somebody
you know some Mage in an ivory Tower
then that doesn't really help the rest
of the team so you need to make sure
that you are learning at least some of
these soft skills about how to pass your
information on whether that is through a
present a whether that is through like
we talked about blogs and things like
that uh Wiki Pages General
documentations how-to readmes and things
like
that these things are all important in
essentially transitioning information to
somebody else now a lot of times it's
seen as like a leading or a mentoring
because you can it's not just like
here's a read me and go with it it's
helping somebody walk through getting
started on whatever it is and this may
be as simple as hey I built this really
cool component here's how you utilize it
so there's a lot of a lot of different
ways that you may bump up against this
particular habit that we're going to
talk about and a lot of different ways
that you can uh communicate that across
the to whoever it is it needs to be
whether it's a person a team or the rest
of the world right now I'm going to send
it over to just a person and get your
feedback and your thoughts on this
before we get into our challenge go for
it Mike
sure thanks Rob so the first thing that
came to my mind when you were talking
about you know that whole idea of
mentoring leading and training was back
when Google first came out a lot of
people didn't know how to really use
search engines or how to identify and
find things to do their job so one of
the things that just kind of came to my
mind was you know how did Google
Google you know a lot of people even
today still don't know how how to use
search engines properly to kind of
narrow down their search like their
search is very broad they might it's
more scattershot than um
refine and it's one of those things
where it's like you know this is
something that as you build these skill
sets you learn these things on the job
or just over
time when you're working with
individuals or other uh people and you
start seeing that oh they're struggling
try to find an answer to a problem or
solution it may be as simple as hey
write down the steps that you kind of go
through to solve the problem like hey
how did I go out I have this ticket or
this bug what's the first step in my
mind that I would do to troubleshoot so
sometimes just walking through with
Junior developers or any developers even
seniors I've had to do this sometimes
because there are some problems that we
just have never seen or we tackle one
way but that's maybe not the best way to
do it and I find myself learning as well
so not only do I try to help people when
I see them struggling or it's like oh
hey if you try this or you work through
these steps to solve a problem like
Google it may help them troubleshoot or
be better at problem solving or working
tickets but you also need to be in the
mindset even with those Junior
developers that sometimes they may have
seen things or use newer Technologies or
tools that might be a better way so
sometimes when you're training and
mentoring listen to what they say
because they may actually teach you
something new within this process so
it's kind of a two-way street it's not
always one way you have to be open up to
kind of absorb or take in new
information because you know you're not
always your way is not always the right
way also this is very helpful especially
if you're in smaller organizations or
even larger organizations if you join a
team that has some documentation in
place like how to set up environments
how to uh you know set up deploy
software go through those or if you are
on that team you've built the software
write that type of documentation because
when you bring new people on it's always
nice to say hey look at this
documentation let me walk through it
with you kind of have a checklist and
you kind of want to go through those
maybe once a quarter maybe once a month
depending upon how fast the software is
changing but these types of things are
very beneficial not just to you but to
your teams and organizations as you kind
of
grow every you everyone grows together
you're not just growing yourself um it
it's kind of a community effort but as
we grow you know I love teaching I
constantly it's like oh hey there's this
cool new idea like Ai and I'll to teach
myself I go through and read
documentation but then I try to do a
project or write something down in a way
that like a Blog where I can go step by
step like okay here's how I would set it
up here's the steps I need to do to go
find some additional information here
are some keywords on how to search AI
how to use like chat GPT or Claud AI you
know what are the specific commands I
need to solve this problem this gets
back to that whole how do you Google
Google you know using the tools there
are many simple ways to use them but
there's also a lot of advanced ways to
use that most General users don't use or
know about and these are
very kind of very useful things to learn
and use when you're kind of walking
through that mentoring and teaching of
others so you look at this and there's a
there's a wide range of stuff that we
can do and you're going to probably
sitting there going okay well what's
your challenge for the week and how are
we going to work with
this this is what I want to do to
challenge you this time and this is
going to be an interesting one because
I'm thinking about like doing it myself
because we challenge ourselves with this
and this can sometimes be challenging
just to not overuse that word or maybe I
did what I want you to do is
find a venue of some sort to train to
lead to share information now a venue a
lot of people are going to think of like
oh my gosh I'm going to go like you know
to the local Auditorium and do a speech
or something it may be you could
possibly do that but you don't have to
one of the best ways I think for you to
go look is look for local user groups or
meetups and see if there's somebody that
is literally looking for somebody to
speak in the next you know little bit
next week or the next month and a lot of
times they're very open on the topics a
lot of places need them so you can do
that another place you can find is the
internet there is so much out there as
far as you may find some slack user
groups you may find uh news groups
there's a lot of different just any kind
of discussion type boards there
especially if they are topic specific so
for example let's say you're a Java
programmer There Are Places out there
like I think Java Ranch is still out
there and some of those kinds of sites
where people are regularly putting
questions out there you can even go to
like your you know your slash dots and
some of those kinds of places there's a
lot of places that people are just
asking questions like how do I do this
and this is a perfect opportunity for
you to say hey here's how you do it
particularly if you use one of the sites
where it's a a community kind of thing
and people sort of rate your you know
they'll plus or minus your solution and
a lot of times they'll give you more
information about like oh yeah your
solution is good except for you didn't
do this or breaks in this case or things
like that that really do help refine a
solution so that is your challenge for
the week is to post at least one place
or to do something schedule something
where you're going to actually train
people now if you don't want to if you
want to do it in person then the
alternative to that would be listen as
you're going through your work week if
you're in an office area or if you're on
slack or whatever communication is
amongst your co-workers and
and within the next week put together
something if people are asking about
like hey can we do this or what's this
about or how would this work or there's
something that everybody uses that
nobody really knows real well for
example if you've got devop stuff I know
I've been a lot of organizations where
somebody set up a really complex bunch
of like jenking stuff years ago and now
nobody really knows how to do it so
spend a little bit of time and just do a
little write up of like hey here's some
features that may be useful to yourself
and to others as well because this
actually is a bonus it's going to push
you to learn something but it's also
going to push you a little bit to learn
it enough to teach somebody else so
basically every day for your habit is
just spend five minutes thinking through
where are some places where I could
potentially help and then maybe go like
do a quick search or something like that
you don't have to go very deep in it but
by the end of the week the big challenge
is the full challenge is present in in
some way form or fashion whether it's in
written form or something else and then
would really love to hear what you
present like you know just a sort of a
title or summary like what did you find
where did you go how did you go present
this and you know just I don't need to
write it but I would love to hear just a
sentence or two about your experience
with this because these are the kinds of
things that I think we can really feed
back into the community with is it's
like hey here's a place where there is a
you people are dying for knowledge of
this kind and you know these are or
these are great ways to share knowledge
and do it quickly and easily and things
like that because I would love to hear
your experience as always one of the
best ways to do that is to shoot us an
email at info developer or.com we also
have a contact us out on form out on
developer or.com you can leave us
comments and feedback whether you're
checking out the YouTube developing or C
Channel whether you're wherever you're
listening to podcast if you're listening
to this as a
podcast just we're happy to get feedback
however you get it we've got a Facebook
page we got at develop adur at uh at
Twitter or X whatever you want to call
it someday we'll eventually just call it
X but it's still the place in formally
known as
Twitter but we'd love to get your
feedback and just sort of see where
you're going with this now where we are
going with this is we are still going to
be like chugging through this this
season uh we will not finish up before
the end of the year so we'll have a
couple more episodes we'll have a couple
holiday specials and we'll come back in
which will probably be very helpful as
we're wrapping up getting to the end of
a year and stepping in a new year to
have a bunch of things that you can work
with to build better habits because a
lot of people there's this thing called
resolutions at the beginning of the year
A lot of people do those if you can do
that and build a habit instead of just a
resolution that you you know forget
about 3 days later you will find that it
will make a huge Improvement on you
becoming and building a better developer
within yourself that being said go out
there and build yourself a better day
have yourself a great day a great week
and we will talk to you next time bonus
material so one additional thing that
kind of came to my mind when you were
given the challenge was given that we're
in the holidays and there's a lot of
cooking going on and involved so you
could even take a non-technical approach
to this especially if you have kids
spend some time in the kitchen and maybe
go through like teach them how to make
Christmas cookies or how to make banana
bread recipes are a very wonderful way
it's a very structured process of kind
of taking something like directions on
something and actually Implement them
and actually make something so whereas
code you kind of yes you can see
wonderful websites things of that nature
sometimes the code we write is in
visible you really don't see it so it's
hard to really show that we did
something but if you're teaching someone
and you're training someone it's a very
easy way to goes okay so here's what
we're going to do here's the steps we're
going to do and we actually have an end
product that we can actually enjoy we
can eat and consume this
holiday wow all right I'm going to go
like bonus that that just gave me a
great idea uh because it is holiday
season and stuff like that and you guys
because you're you know special you get
to you put up with seeing our ugly mugs
we're going to throw you a slightly
different challenge or at least a
variation you can do find a game that
you like to play and teach somebody else
how to play it now this could be as
simple as a you know a a battleship or
Tiddly Winks or something like that or
something more complicated like some you
know massive tabletop game or roll
playing game or some card games can get
really complicated really fast but this
is perfect to do actually in a group too
let's teach somebody you know grab a
group at your family gathering and say
hey let's all play you know uker or
let's all play you know Texas no hold
them or whatever it happens to be it's
like you can pick stuff you know it's
card game or board game whatever it is
because that again is the same thing and
games are actually one of the biggest
ones because it's always like people are
going to say well what are the rules
around this you're like oh I need to go
look at the rules and that's things like
Classics like Uno like people have
different rules so you have to actually
talk through it so that's a bonus
challenge for you
guys now I'm going to go consume a
little bit more caffeine so we can do
some more of this we will be back next
episode as always please give us fre
feedback we'd love to hear it especially
again I can't emphasize enough we're
getting the end of a year going be
starting a new year now this last year
we made major changes and did a lot of
Shifting around how the podcast went we
not have as big a change but we would
love to have your feedback to see where
you would like to see us change adding
information deleting stuff all of those
things are on the table because we're
doing this to serve you and we want to
make sure that we provide you the best
entertainment edutainment as there is
out there uh so that you guys will keep
coming back and find it you know we'll
respect the time that you're giving to
us thank you so much for doing that go
out there and have a good one and we
will talk to you next time
[Music]