People skills and emotional intelligence

[Old Greg]

Do you use them in your job? I am working with 2 new BAs that have both successfully pissed off their customers and the programme manager. I actually spent an hour and half this morning being moaned at by one of them, and did the whole agony uncle bit.

Here is suity's guide to successfully keeping someone on side

1) Never call them a bastid.
2) Do not shout.
3) Do not slag them off to the rest of the team (it will get back to them, I promise)
4) If you feel people are being unreasonable, tell them firmly. Do not under any circumstances tell them the way they are running the project is wrong and you will in time sort out their mistaken ways.
5) Don't bluff. If you don't know, ask.
6) Don't get offended when people tell you to stop bluffing.

Is it really that hard?

Actually, you cannot go around just punching people in the office. It's bound to get out and then you'll be in trouble with HR.

The normal protocol is to punch somebody and then threaten to kill them, their family, their families family and all of their friends.

This normally stops them from going to HR.

Amateur.

Beat the HR Director to a bloody pulp and kidnap his kids. Then who cares what anyone else does?

And threaten to burn their house to the ground and piss on their ashes surely?

Don't forget the dog, you get more mileage out of threatening animals.

So yes, we do use both people skills and emotional intelligence, thank you very much.

[Bwana]

<deleted>

[Cliphead]

The title of this thread contains the names of two excellent books I read in recent years...

1) "People Skills" by Robert Bolton, Ph.D.

2) "Emotional Intelligence" by Daniel Goleman

Both are really excellent books. I learned a lot from them and enjoyed reading them. I'd like to practice the techniques covered in "People Skills", but working in IT does not really provide much opportunity for that. I have been considereing doing some kind of voluntary part-time work that might provide suitable opportunities, but haven't yet decided on what I should do.

Cheers,
Bwana

Try your skills in a pub.

HTH

[doodab]

Today I screamed bulltulip at the PM on my project, so loud I lost my voice for a bit, after he had suggested that I don't tell him when things are going wrong.

I said sorry afterwards, then after we all had a chat I gave him a list of reasons why what he had said was bulltulip (i.e. 10 times I told you so and you ignored me) and everyone agreed with me.

Then I went back to the office and told them I am leaving at the end of March.

[MarillionFan]

Today I screamed bulltulip at the PM on my project, so loud I lost my voice for a bit, after he had suggested that I don't tell him when things are going wrong.

I said sorry afterwards, then after we all had a chat I gave him a list of reasons why what he had said was bulltulip (i.e. 10 times I told you so and you ignored me) and everyone agreed with me.

Then I went back to the office and told them I am leaving at the end of March.

Good man. Don't take any tulip. Remember to kill him and bury his body when you leave.

[MaryPoppins]

Today I screamed bulltulip at the PM on my project, so loud I lost my voice for a bit

I'm really, really laughing

[doodab]

Good man. Don't take any tulip. Remember to kill him and bury his body when you leave.

I don't need to. He's burying himself at the moment.

[d000hg]

People skills and emotional intelligence

I think you, MF, Sas & Churchill should form a quorum on this important issue, team up with malvolio and get your seminal work** submitted to PCG.

**a load of

[Old Greg]

Today I screamed bulltulip at the PM on my project, so loud I lost my voice for a bit, after he had suggested that I don't tell him when things are going wrong.

I said sorry afterwards, then after we all had a chat I gave him a list of reasons why what he had said was bulltulip (i.e. 10 times I told you so and you ignored me) and everyone agreed with me.

Then I went back to the office and told them I am leaving at the end of March.

As we're talking about people skills and emotional intelligence, you need to work on your passive aggression. Just agree politely with his suggestion. Next time things are going wrong, sit there in silence. When he asks why you're not speaking, tell him that he asked you not to say when things are going wrong. Similarly, send blank reports.

[doodab]

As we're talking about people skills and emotional intelligence, you need to work on your passive aggression. Just agree politely with his suggestion. Next time things are going wrong, sit there in silence. When he asks why you're not speaking, tell him that he asked you not to say when things are going wrong. Similarly, send blank reports.

Nah, he suggested that during some recent problems I hadn't told him that things were going wrong. So I shouted at him, then listed the three times I had informed him of the issues in the particular example he chose, several pieces of technical advice he had decided to ignore that got us into our current, unrelated, predicament, a few past occasions when he had done the same thing, gave some other examples of situations where his being simply too busy to respond to attempts at communication had resulted in problems or delays, and added some reasons why what he was now proposing would guarantee we had a zero percent chance of hitting our target.

Anyway today we had a meeting about something else and at the end he offered me some "feedback" which I had a choice of listening to or not, I accepted and he gave me some valid and well judged constructive criticism regarding the things he thinks are weak points and "would ask me to improve if I were to lead part of the team in the future", the main one being that he feels I have no overview or structure to the way I manage the various subprojects that make up my remit, or at least if I do he has no view of it. We will probably have another meeting to go through the way I do things and find a way that he can have a bit more visibility. Just as soon as I have got it all out of my head into something resembling a plan.

He also gave me some very positive feedback about my strong points, which outweigh the weak ones sufficiently that he is rather unhappy I am leaving, which was already on the cards and not just because of what happened yesterday.