There are times when in your workplace you might feel not good enough or find yourself being subject of an impostor syndrom. There are probably also times when you find youself feeling superior, underappreciated and sometimes just angry at everyone’s incompetence. That is compeletly fine and that happens to everyone. It’s important to know that your work doesn’t define you as a person.
own your feelings
I come from an IT environment in a relatively big organization where there is an incentive in working closely together. Cooperating with your peers allows to prevent errors and might allow for faster delivery of a project. Someone probably already walked a path that you are taking now, communication is a time-saver.
Having said that, I know working with others is tough - you might have different ideas, background (also - knowledge) and communication styles. All those factors adds up and might end up creating conflicts and misunderstandings. However hard it might be, it’s important to distance ourselves from all those situations - anchor on an objective and facts and remember you move towards same goal. Your emotions are important - own them, analyse them but make sure not to be hostile when addressing the other person. Work should not be emotionless pit, though - there is time for celebration, happinnes, anxiety and sadness, there shouldn’t be place for anger and antipathy.
There are situation that drives emotions up, especially negative emotions. Code reviews, 1-to-1s or really anything related to receiving or giving feedback. Someone took arbitrary decision leaving you concerned and fearful. Unstructured and/or ad-hoc meetings that could’ve been an e-mail - exhaustion deeply affects our mood. Depending on which side of those situations you are, your feelings will be different, obviously. How to react? I don’t think there are universal guidelines, I can only share what I try to do in some of those situations when they happen to me. But before that, let’s look at what common type of behaviors people might present in a workplace.
behavior types
None of those below are personality traits. It’s rather situational behavior - any of us can act like one when the scene trigger our machanisms. As in any problem-solving case, you must first understand the story itself and select the best tool for a job. Whenever you can, introspect and try to find why are you a “complainer” now and why were you “next-timer” on the other meeting.
control freaks (guilty!)
those are the ones that cannot let go, they must supervise & micromanage everything and everyone; nothing is good enough until they did it themselves.
- if you are a control freak - always make sure that you share all your knowledge, ideas & concepts with person who is responsible for a given task; they will appreciate input and result of their work might look a lot closer than what had in mind if you didn’t share - delegating and letting go will become easier and easier. Letting go feels good, trust me
- working with a control freak - keep them updated constantly (really, every time you make a decision, do and update, plan a task) and ask for their opinion on EVERYTHING (they are called control freaks for a reason…) - it will build a long lasting trust, they will gain faith in your competences, stop being critical and demand less and less updates. Also - document all decisions they make (or manipulate you to make) so whenever something goes wrong it’s their responsibility, not yours
know-it-all
anything they do is gold standard; they never make mistakes, have best ideas and usually (but not only) come from the position of power (seniors, leads, managers). It’s never about their knowledge, it’s about their approach - however experienced you might be, there is always something new you can learn and someone with a better idea
- if you are a know-it-all - I assume might not know that but maybe you have heard some feedback that it’s hard to work with you or that you undermine others’ confidence & underappreciate their ideas. One thing you can do is trying the appreciation excercise: think about your coworkers and write down (not just think) what do you appreciated about them today - people being reliable make you trust them more. Second routine is to write about what I learned today & from where (maybe even from colleague!). Those two are a good start to being more open. Not everyone might be as smart or experienced as you but you also were at their place not so long ago
- working with know-it-all - be as smart, learn, read and then you will be able to challenge anything; if that doesn’t sound like your cup of tea - document all decisions that person took and ask around people with similar profile how they would approach it, get feedback from multiple sources. Regularly check outcome of those decision and document whenever there was an issue or an error - it will be a lot easier to shift know-it-all’s perspective when there’s a solid proof.
gatekeeper
the only person that knows something (and intends to keep it that way); whenever anyone wants to help, they quickly do it themselves to not involve third-party
- working with gatekeeper - situation like this requires direct manager or delivery lead; what you, as an individual contributor or observer, can do is to just report that issue to the manager, director or anyone with decision-making power. Asking knowledge keeper directly to learn about a system/process/task they do might result in brushing off or even confrontational approach - I’d leave it to a manager, Product Owner or Scrum Master
complainer
tries to kill the vibe, doesn’t care about subject
- if you are a complainer - I really don’t know, it’s always good to try therapy
- working with a complainer - constantly hearing “this is wrong” or “this could’ve been better” is a downer but sometimes it makes sense - the real hassle is when it doesn’t. You implemented all change requests, you followed all standards, chose the proposed approach but still something is “wrong”. Those situation is when impostor syndrom kicks in, especially when you are learning. Always get a second opinion from as well experienced colleague and ask for a detailed list of what’s actually expected. Organize co-working to show your reasoning and challenge it live. Be appreciative of all the learning you get but be assertive if there’s something that doesn’t resonate with you. Off-topic discussions in social area, kitchen or lunch - I’d recommend just ignore all the negative stuff or if you can - oppose it. “I don’t think it’s as bad as you see it, cause…”.
next-timer
“let it slip this time, next time I’ll remember to do that”. Person (usually still learning) that put an effort already and doesn’t want to change a thing this time, that’s too much of hassle
- if you are a next-timer - just listen to your peers, take the opportunity to learn and broaden you horizons, even if it requires you to revisit the project and re-do some stuff
- working with a next-timer - you just need to be assertive (whole team needs to be on the same page) and keep strict code of what is allowed and disallowed; do not make exceptions for anyone and anything, even if it will result in big longer delivery time
distance & appreciation
We spend 1/3 of our life working - let’s make it a good time. Maybe sometimes we can just say “fuck it” and if there is no security risk, just accept that code even if it’s not perfect. Maybe we can accept other approach or something that is not up to our standards and let it slip from time to time. Get a bit further, look at the work from a distance and just go with the flow.
What really helps in dealing with rough situations at work is appreciation. Appreciate people regularly for what they do good and they will be a lot less confrontational whenever you bring a bad feedback. That’s all of us crave - being seen and especially being seen as a doing good.