Recognition – Weekly Article Dump

Recognition – Weekly Article Dump

Not all of the articles this week touch on recognition, and to be honest, I didn’t pick it as a theme for the articles either. Recognition is more a topic of discussion that’s come up over the last week at Magnet Forensics, where I work. Being a team lead and part of the management team at Magnet, I’m often part of conversations about motivation. Providing recognition is an excellent way to motivate your staff and shows that you truly appreciate them. We’ve been trying to get better at recognizing staff for doing an awesome job–especially because we have so many awesome people working with us. It’s pretty obvious with our Profit Hot 50 placement that we’ve got some kick-ass people.

Recognition, whether it’s one-on-one or in a public setting, has a huge impact. I don’t even mean recognition in the form of compensation (e.g. bonus or salary raise). Just giving someone recognition for the awesome work they’ve done–plain and simple. It’s a great way to let someone know that their hard work and commitment isn’t going unnoticed. Sure, if they’re developing products, making sales, or acquiring leads there are certain metrics that indicate they’re doing a great job, but recognition is that additional feedback you can provide to really drive the point home. It motivates people and often has a bigger impact than providing compensation.

I want to make a conscious effort to try and recognize some of my colleagues on Dev Leader, going forward, when the opportunity presents itself. I’m always learning from the people I work with and there’s always something great I can say about them. Why not give them a public acknowledgement?

I also have a little surprise coming from a friend and colleague of mine, Tayfun Uzun, early next week, so keep your eyes open for that!

Articles

• Job Titles and Responsibilities: Last week I wrote about my thoughts on the true role of job titles. As soon as you start to look at your job title as something that defines your limits, you’re on the wrong path. Your job title should define what you’re responsible for, but it’s by no means supposed to put limits on what you can do. Check it out and let me know what you think! Do you feel like job titles should keep people to only a certain set of tasks? Do you feel like having set responsibilities is useful at all?
• How Strong Is Your Bench: Having a successful company is all about having the right people on board. Sylvia Hewlett writes about what it means to have a rock solid roster within your company. Some of the things include avoiding hiring clones of people exactly like yourself and instead trying to diversify the skill sets within your company. Absolutely true!
• 8 Steps for Engineering Leaders to Keep the Peace: There seems to be a natural tendency for engineers or people implementing components of a product to push back on product managers or people who decide how a product/service should be. Steven Sinofsky discusses the importance of being an effective engineering leader and ensuring proper communication between engineering leaders and people like PMs or founders. Open and transparent communication is key and helps remind the other party that you do in fact have the same end-goal.
• Top Tips To Being a Great Mentor: In this article, James Caan provides four key points for being a better mentor. Patience, honesty, positivity, and focus are the four pillars that James describes. Patience and honesty, in my opinion, are the most important but I certainly agree with all four!
• Leading a Customer-Centric Transformation: Hopefully it’s not surprising, but customers are what your business should be geared toward. As a result, it makes sense that leading customer-centric employees would be beneficial. Don Peppers outlines six things to focus on to make this transformation necessary. It ties in with my post on avoiding organizational silos.
• The Dark Side Of Software Development That No One Talks About: Don’t be scared that this article mentions software development if you’re not a programmer! It touches on some great points about having a career in software development, so even if you’re not a developer yourself, it sheds some light on some more broad issues. John Sonmez writes about why software developers seem like jerks sometimes and what you can do about it. It seems to boil down to intelligence being a deciding factor for how well you program, so lording your intelligence over other people makes you superior. And because our own intelligence is something we all hold personally, we can get defensive about it pretty easily. John suggests that part of the solution is trying to simplify aspects of software development.
• How to Win Loyalty From Other People: To be a successful leader, the people you lead need to be loyal to you. Deepak Chopra writes about seven suggestions for building up loyalty and among them “abstaining from disloyalty” is one of my favourites. If you act differently behind people’s backs compared to when you’re leading them, it may come back to bite you later. It’s also crucial to pay attention to each individual’s personal differences to ensure they feel understood.
• Strategies for Dealing with Randomness in Business: Don Peppers twice on the list this week! Things in life and business aren’t always predictable for us. It’s just how things are. Are you properly set up to deal with uncertainty in your business though? Remain agile!
• 10 Quotes All Entrepreneurs Should Memorize: How about some quotes to motivate you? Joel Peterson lists 10 great quotes for entrepreneurs, but I think they carry over to anyone working in a startup. Don’t be afraid to fail and keep moving forward to improve!
• The Two Biggest Distractions – And What to Do About Them: Distractions are ever-increasing in the workplace, but have you ever considered the differences between the different types of distractions? Daniel Goleman discusses two very different types of distractions: sensory and emotional. I hadn’t really noticed it, but often we find ourselves consciously trying to avoid sensory distractions. If our phone lights up or we get an email notification, we either give in or we make an effort to try and reduce the effect of these distractions. But an emotional distraction is much worse. If something tweaks your emotions the wrong way at work, it often has a bigger impact and it’s usually unexpected.

My take away point for this week regarding recognition: Do it early and do it often. Remember to follow Dev Leader on social media outlets to get these updates through the week!

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Nick Cosentino Principal Software Engineering Manager

Principal Software Engineering Manager at Microsoft. Views are my own.

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