Emotional Intelligence for Engineers

Key Takeaways

so hello thank you for being here especially so early um i know it's early in the morning and i appreciate you coming waking up and coming to this weird talk at a python conference so emotional intelligence for engineers so i want to address the elephant in the room this is a python conference so who's this lady and why is she here to talk to us about our feelings well i'm glad you asked so i hypothetically so my name is april wenzel and i'm a software engineer and i have been for the past decade i've worked in a number of different uh startups in silicon valley and i've led engineering teams including some using python for some interesting stuff in machine learning to detect autism and kids a few other things with python i'm a big fan of python and as far as why i'm here uh so every talk at this conference is really about how to become a more effective developer and i think that this talk is no different because i truly believe that emotional intelligence is key to becoming the most effective developer that you can be also i know that the python community is a big fan of inclusion especially in recent years and so emotional intelligence is key to creating inclusive environments it's a little more about me i come from san diego i took this picture the day before i left so all this water coming from the sky is very foreign to me but i'm trying to make do other than that i'm very much enjoying your city so i just tried this place the sunflower cafe a recommendation from justin hoover and it was delicious this is all vegan it's a barbecue sandwich and sweet potato casserole just amazing so uh very very happy to be here in your city okay so i want to go over the plan for this talk i'm going to talk about what emotional intelligence is why you should care about it i'm going to focus a lot of time on that because i think it's important and how you develop it so my company is called compassionate coding and i do workshops on emotional intelligence for engineers but before all that i used to be kind of a jerk uh i have detailed my jerk days in this blog post uh which has actually gotten some attention online uh including some attention on reddit where people are not always the most emotionally intelligent in their communication so i got some interesting jerky comments on a post about being a jerk but that's okay because that none of them were as jerky as me so as i am to myself so but anyway in this post i talk about how i used to be very focused on just the technical side i thought okay if i'm perfectly logical and rational because of course i am right i'm a programmer then i don't have to worry about other people's emotions that's their problem they're offended by what i say that's their problem uh i also you know uh so so i was so totally focused on that i have very not emotionally intelligent actively anti-emotionally intelligent so i mentioned this because to all the any of the negative nancies or netties in the audience who are thinking this is a stupid soft talk i assume there probably aren't that many of you because you chose to be here but if you came just to heckle um i encourage it but let's save it to the end so that it's less distracting for everyone else but yes so if you are feeling that skeptical i uh i understand i have deep empathy for you because i also would have made fun of this talk and thought it was silly um so please bear with me so the one exception to the not heckling is i'm trying to avoid using uh guys for mixed gender groups so uh this i would say this is not a picture of guys this photo comes from this great site uh women and women of color and techchat.com where you can access stock photos um women in color tech uh i would also say that this is not a group of guys um also not a group of ladies so i'm going to try to use these terms folks everybody everyone people all and because i'm in south and i'm from texas y'all uh friends and team so if you hear me say guys when i'm referring to a mixed gender group or a group of unknown gender then just raise your hand and uh because i want to get better so thank you for helping me out with that so emotional intelligence what is it i'd like to talk about what it's not so it's not just being fake it's not just being nice it is not ignoring logic and reason this is i thought this is a really cool picture it's supposed to be a rubik's cube it's been destroyed so we're not destroying or forgetting logic and reason it's not sugar coating so this is what i used to think it was uh and that's why i hated it so much because i was like we should just be direct to each other we shouldn't be sugarcoating and it turns out it's not sugar coating so just to be clear it's not that it also doesn't mean being an extrovert or a social butterfly uh i get that sometimes where people think well i'm an introvert i'm an introvert okay and i'm definitely by no means a social butterfly and uh i still think you're able to build emotional intelligence so it's not that it's also not being completely ruled and dominated by you know your emotions um your unbridled bridal emotions uh i posted about giving this talk on linkedin and some linkedin also gets get some interesting trolls but somebody commented and they're like you know yeah emotions are great and all but we don't want to be uh but it's important to you know to keep them in check and i'm like that's what emotional intelligence is about so why would you anyway so it's not being ruled by your emotions emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage emotions which i'm using the word emotion in it so it's not a great definition so to go give more specifics these are some of the examples of aspects of emotional intelligence self-awareness confidence empathy achievement collaboration motivation resilience conflict management a ton of other things but that's the kind of um genre that we're talking about you may know them by the term soft skills this is a term that i hate and i very rarely use the word hate because i think it adds a lot of negativity to the world but i'm using it here because i feel that's this passionately about it i hate the word soft skills why because one softness is has become associated with weakness in our culture so we say things like he's gone soft to me and you know he's gotten weak or something like that i also think it's weirdly associated just with women so in the early 90s there were these commercials um come see the softer side of sears and it was when sears introduced in addition to the hardware that they were selling accessories and clothing for women and it's not that soft skills being associated with women is bad because women are bad but rather because it's a limited view and i think soft skills are for emotional intelligence really is for everyone not just women not just people um you know who identify with their femininity it's really for everyone just to illustrate this i had i this example was gifted to me by the universe because when i was on my way to another uh conference where i was giving this talk i stepped onto an airport shuttle and they were talking about uh the super bowl and they were talking about doug peterson who i guess is the coach of the eagles and since they won i'd have to slide in if they'd lost i would've taken it out but they said doug peterson really has emotional intelligence he recognized that word that that term i was so excited he recognizes that football is not just a tactical game but a psychological game and i was just like yes if emotional intelligence is associated with football then how can we possibly call it a soft skill so soft skill so please stop calling them soft skills please please please please also don't call them people skills because people skills has become uh the punch line of jokes so this is from the movie office space and the people who have come to do layoffs ask him ask this guy what his job is i use guy but um he is a man so it's okay no hands um so they ask him what he does and he mentions that he takes requirements from the customer and takes them to the engineers and he he it's this and they they actually confused and he says i have people skills and so it's you know people skills it's easy to make fun of because it's become kind of cliche and trait so instead i recommend that we use this term catalytic skills now this comes from uh a talk that i saw by daniel goldman he was giving a talk at google and you can watch it on youtube at this link and he says he calls them catalytic skills because they help us catalyze our technical skills meaning they help us acquire new technical skills and apply them more effectively so so i think i would love it if we ditch the term soft skills altogether call them catalytic skills okay so why should you care about any of this so let's talk about why software projects fail so this data this is a subset of reasons that project software projects fail they uh the application developer developers alliance surveyed 850 software developers not a huge group but whatever somewhere to start from and here's some of the reasons that they gave so the ones in blue you'll see changing or poorly documented requirements poor team organizational management developer churn or loss of key talent these are all things that would benefit from emotional intelligence then way on the end not insignificant but less than the others you have immature dev tools and application platforms but i feel like a lot of the discourse in tech is around how to optimize the dev tools and application platforms and really that's not not why software projects are failing i mean some of them are that's one reason but largely it's it's more on the human side that our projects are failing and you can read more in that study there um another study so they in 1994 but still highly relevant we still haven't fixed it there's this paper that came out the essential competencies of software engineers and there's a very tiny table that's not important to you all right now but um you can access the paper there and again i'm going to put these slides up so you can see all of this better but the top three competencies that they listed are that uh exceptional software engineers are team oriented they seek help and they help others wow okay so those are all aspects of emotional intelligence another reason you should care so it seems like every week there's a new article about burnout and tech i've also written one which is accessible there and i think that's because burnout really happens when we're not able to control our responses to situations and when we feel kind of powerless and emotional intelligence can really help with that so i know we like to think i certainly used to think that i came to work and i shut off my emotions i'm completely rational completely logical you know i'm just debating issues using you know pure reason and it's just not true so i hate to break it to you but you are not a robot you're not none of you you're a human being and every single human being has emotions every single one apple ceo tim cook in a commencement address last year said i'm not worried about artificial intelligence giving computers the ability to think like humans i'm more concerned about people thinking like computers so even if we could think like robots it wouldn't be a good idea because we're humans and we need to to care about each other so as a software engineer here are some of the things that you do on a daily basis potentially that could benefit from emotional intelligence giving effective feedback and code reviews naming variables is really benefits from empathy designing apis also benefits from empathy which is an aspect of emotional intelligence negotiating with designers or product managers rallying support for a new tool quick story there i was at a company and we were using a remote uh conferencing tool called succoco and uh the quality was really bad and it was just it was always crashing because of how big our team was so some of us suggested we use zoom and we did this we prepared this very logical document um the spreadsheet comparing the pros and cons and we you know tried to rally support and everyone was so emotional about it and it turned out that it wasn't because of the pros and cons you know that they weren't convincing because the people who liked zapoco so much felt that it helped them feel more belong they it contributed to their sense of belonging on the team because it had this like these little um office pictures of little offices like a virtual office and for some reason they had they had grown emotionally attached to this tool and so their response was so emotional because of that so it was hard so we we needed to elevate the conversation from just a purely rational level to really address it on a human level so even rallying support for a neutral new framework can benefit from emotional intelligence also being able to motivate yourself to learn new skills interviewing candidates uh definitely a big one here to be able to put people at ease and to not rule out people unfairly through your interview style and also to mentor new hires i would also suggest that the agile manifesto is a way of layering emotional intelligence onto software development so i went through all of the principles of the agile manifesto and called out which elements of emotional intelligence each one addresses so here's just one example so one of the principles is we welcome changing requirements even latent development agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage in this you can see empathy surveys service orientation adaptability optimism and initiative which are all aspects of emotional intelligence so jerry weinberg wrote this great book the psychology of computer programming in the early 70s and he said it is possible to be too smart for programming if the person is not smart enough to use his intelligence to modify his social behavior and methods of conversation which i thought is a nice quote and it was the 70s which is why it uses his but um i wanted to present it with fidelity so there it is okay there are also some personal benefits many personal benefits to growing emotional intelligence it helps reduce your stress improves your productivity helps you with better relationships increases your happiness and i know citation needed so please visit the greater good science center at uc berkeley's website because they have tons of research backed studies on this so that's why i have new citation for each one you can do your research you take my word for it or you can decide i've decided that i don't necessarily need absolute proof of something working before i'm willing to experiment it if it has you know a low investment so i've also seen these in my own life okay so assuming now that you're at least somewhat interested in developing your emotional intelligence let's talk about how to do it so i like to use a metaphor that's not unfamiliar to people in tech so hopefully most of you are familiar with the idea of being on call i saw over the past day there's been like a lot of discussion on twitter people are debating on call i haven't really been following it but apparently you know most people understand this idea of being on call but just to make it clear so if you if your site goes down or if there's something there's some kind of problem on your app or your website somebody will get a notification probably not on an actual device like this anymore but uh that's you know you're on call so being a human it's kind of like being on call all the time and you're distressing emotions are like alerts and similar similarly to how uh when you don't deal with an alert properly uh on your system it's similar to when you do that as a human disaster strikes so what does it look like if you don't handle your emotional alerts properly well daniel goldman says out of control emotions can make smart people stupid and what he means by that or some examples you might if you're over if you're very emotional about something what you might do is send an email that you later regret i may or may not have done this in the past you may send a slack message that isn't particularly kind uh you may you know yell at somebody and say something that you regret you also just may be so distracted by how angry you are that you're not productive so this is why it's helpful to be able to manage your distressing emotions and this is just one aspect of emotional intelligence but i feel like it illustrates the bigger picture here so that's the one we're going to focus on so i'd like to present to you an emotional incident run book so similar to how when there's an alert on your system sometimes you'll have some kind of run book you might call it a playbook and it's a list of things that you can do to help troubleshoot the site so maybe it's you know where to look in the logs to see if something's broken or you know who to contact about this or that or what to look for in the database or whatever it may be to troubleshoot so i'm going to do that but for your emotional incidents so here's the process i'd like to present which is slowing down tending to your needs offering empathy and proceeding calmly these are the steps you can take whenever you find yourself in the middle of an emotional incident the uh it spells out stop which is nice uh easy to remember so we'll go through each one in turn the first one is slow down which is a bit ironic because i'm a fast talker and i'm saying slow down but it's very important so i took a meditation class a few years ago and the instructor was talking about how our anxious mind is kind of like a jar of water that's full of sediment that's been shaken up and all of our anxious thoughts are like the sediment and that meditation or just slowing down in an informal way allows the sediment or the anxious thoughts to settle so that we have clarity um in the jar meaning you can see through the water but also metaphorically in your mind you have more clarity about your situation that's why it's so important true story i dropped that meditation class after the second class because i thought it was moving too slowly and i thought i could just read this and get this done faster so i had a lot to learn but i think i've made some progress since then so the next one was tending to your needs so what are needs what do we even mean by this so here are uh some examples of needs they come from a book called non-violent communication by marshall rosenberg highly recommend this book so we have basic needs like shelter rest food safety we also have needs like autonomy creativity meaning love respect trust closeness community fun laughter beauty order peace uh some of those times we have spiritual needs these are examples of needs that we we could be experiencing and they definitely affect our emotional responses so the empathy piece is trying to understand what the other person is feeling valuing and needing so you slow down you understand your needs you tend to them if you can first you understand what the other person's feeling and then you proceed calmly with what you've decided based on all that information so i'd like to walk through an example just because that really helps and this may be difficult to read so i'm going to to read it out um it's actually difficult for me to read on here so maybe a little closer but yeah so here's an example of an exchange between two developers and please um imagine them as whatever gender you would like i tried to use names that are commonly used for multiple genders so uh the first one says alex i saw that you set the points on a story by yourself again we're supposed to vote as a team now they're discussing an issue tracker where you set points on a story like in an agile software development the other developer says i never agreed to that the story was just a quick task what does it matter we have a process in place and we're supposed to stick to it you always do that bring up process we waste so much time talking about process i just want to get things done and you're always being reckless and breaking things we have processes in place for a reason if you can't stick to them maybe you shouldn't be on the team yeah maybe i shouldn't whoa okay that escalated quickly so this is what happens when we don't apply emotional intelligence we think we're having a perfectly rationable rational debate about process and this and that but you can tell people's emotions are definitely involved here even if what they're saying um you know may just be could be potentially just rational so let's walk through the steps so slow down so the first is you know just because you see something that bothers you don't just immediately jump in and try to you know criticize someone or tell them why they're wrong right so let's take a step back and try to unwind this a bit okay so morgan sees that alex has set the story points without consulting the team okay so what is it likely that morgan values in this situation i would say that morgan values order organization structure process why does this person value these things well i would imagine it's because morgan would like to develop deliver value to the customers in an organized and productive efficient way so what is alex value in this situation it seems to me like alex values moving quickly uh not getting weighed down by excessive process and why would alex value that well probably because alex would like to deliver value to the customer efficiently and productively so really if you take the time to slow down you realize hey we're both on the same team and probably our end goal is actually the same so although we may have some different values in between we don't need to have this really hostile exchange okay so slowed down looked at the needs so let's proceed calmly so let's see how this conversation could go so morgan instead says alex when i saw that you set the points on a story without consulting anyone i felt concerned because i need to trust that we share responsibility as a team can you explain what happened alex says the story was just a quick one-point task what does it matter morgan says it seems like you value moving quickly and feel that process sometimes gets in the way is that right alex says well yeah i don't want to talk about process i just want to get things done morgan says i also want to get things done it's also important to me that i feel a sense of order would you be willing to send a quick note to the team when you point a story on your own so that we at least we know and then alex says yeah i guess i can do that so what you'll see in this example is i didn't create a magical world where both people are are applying these techniques in this situation pretty much only morgan is applying these techniques but it can still work so uh you know and you can reach a solution where because you remember what the end goal is you can come to something that both people can agree with so i know if you're like me when i was first learning about this what a waste of time to have to do this in every conversation well one you don't have to do it in every conversation because sometimes you build up rapport with people so that you don't need to you're unlikely to have uh an emotional incident every single time but when you do feel yourself getting emotional like when you feel your heart starting to beat faster your fight or flight mechanisms are kicking in that's really when you know that you need to slow down and work through these steps so i've given you kind of a starter guide to this emotional incident run book but like i said it's a much bigger picture here with emotional intelligence and you'll start to notice patterns the things that you value so much that trigger you um and trigger that emotional response so for example some people value um fairness right so if something at work happens that seems unfair which is one of the most common complaints in the workplace then you may feel yourself getting emotional so it's really about just being able to communicate those needs in a productive way and it really takes practice a lot of practice i can tell you somebody who's had to make this transition but it's so worth it and the whole time i think it's important to keep in mind a growth mindset which means let's not say i'm not a people person or i'm an introvert or i'm an engineer i'm not a manager so why do i have to care about people but instead think hey these skills can help me be more effective in my job so i'm going to work to develop them over time and i'm going to be patient with myself as i'm learning this so to this point i would like to at least do a little bit of exercise a little exercise with you um to give you an example with this don't worry no one's going to have to say anything and or talk to anyone so that'll that always hurts me when i'm when i'm in a session so don't worry none of that it's all gonna happen in here so think about a time when you lost control of your emotions so when you yelled at somebody or you wrote an angry email we all we all do it you know you at least in your head really have gotten angry at somebody i guarantee it if not again you can heckle me at the end about this okay so think of an incident and if you're having trouble recalling something i would say an easy one is getting stuck in traffic everyone gets so annoyed in traffic right because someone cuts you off or someone's not going fast enough someone's doing something differently so just i'm gonna pause for a few seconds and just let you think and try to try to come call to mind an incident and again you're not gonna have to tell anyone about this so it doesn't matter if it's about work personal life whatever but think about a time when you feel that maybe you said something you regret or you did something a little bit um that was clearly motivated by out of control emotions okay so let's take a few seconds okay so hopefully you have one in mind if not you can use the the car one because that one probably works and if you don't drive you could think about um when you've had to wait in a really long line perhaps at the dmv or somewhere else you could be at the dmv if you don't even if you don't drive i guess but or like maybe in line at an amusement park or something okay so then keeping in mind that incident that you thought of what would have happened if maybe you'd slowed down okay think about what were your needs in that moment so let's see in the traffic example so when i'm stuck in traffic and i actually get more upset when somebody's like tailgating me because i just i've been rear-ended before and so i kind of have a sphere around that so when somebody is tailgating me what i feel is fear i feel fear i feel annoyance because i'm like don't they know that there's a certain following distance that we learned when we took the driver's test and they're supposed to be following that and i actually drive quickly so it's surprising to me when it when it happens but anyway so that's what i'm valuing so then you know i could just say oh what a jerk right but that's not what we're gonna do here so we're gonna think okay offer empathy why is this person tailgating me what are they feeling valuing and needing well i suspect that they are trying to get somewhere quickly maybe they're in a rush because of something you know distressing happening in their life maybe it's just trying to get home to see their family for some reason they're in a hurry maybe they have a bad day and they feel powerless and this is you know tailgating me is how they're trying to assert their dominance i don't know what it is but i can i can think about these possibilities to help build empathy then i can proceed calmly so what are my options yeah i could just like slam my pricks right but i try to avoid that um i do sometimes tap but not in an annoying way like but more and just like you know i'm scared way but uh but again i can't control how it's uh how it's interpreted but maybe i can change lanes maybe i could get off i could actually get off the the highway take an exit and then maybe you know try again and hope for the best but there are things i could do but what i'm not going to do is get angry and i'm not going to you know try to get behind them and then honk or you know flash my brides or something i'm gonna do something calmly so in your situation see you know what were you needing you know what were you needing and what was the other person needing and if no one else was involved you can just focus more on what you were needing or what um yeah how you were reacting to your to your situation so again let's take a few seconds for you using like i used that example but to try to help but um since i was talking that whole time it would have been hard for you to do both parts so i'm going to pause again trying to think about what you were needing in that distressing moment that you thought of and what anyone else involved in that situation was needing okay so again you don't have to share but you can just think think of that and i would try to do that on a daily basis and again it takes time because there's so much annoying stuff that happens in life there are going to be people who have totally different values from you that do really things that just really irritate you because of your values and so you know just try to remember on a daily basis to try this remember to stop and implement these steps the last time i gave this talk i step three was empathize so it's spelled step and i realized that didn't really make sense and i was like wait a second i'm going to change it to offer empathy and stop so i'm pretty happy with this gotta say okay so yes emotional intelligence helps you become more effective as an individual yes it can help build more effective teams but i think there's a bigger picture here i think the problems we're facing in tech all relate to this lack of concern for human beings and by problems we're facing in tech i i mean yes the lack of inclusion and diversity yes the fact that there's a lot of unethical choices made in tech yes the fact that we're building products that can be addictive and that can be hurtful to society and i think all of that relates to a lack of concern for human beings so i think that's the bigger picture here i think karen armstrong says it well she writes if it is not tempered by compassion and empathy reason can lead men and women into a moral void and i would say that's what happened in tech right now because we've been so obsessed with just the technical side the logic the reason we really let compassion and empathy go by the wayside and because of that we've really created a moral void in tech so this is a meditation garden that's near me where i live in encinitas and i like i didn't take this picture because i thought it would be like not cool to break out my phone at a meditation garden so i got this from their website but i go there in a beautiful view of the ocean and they have this little booklet and i read this quote and it really spoke to me so i wanted to share it with you when people speak of political social or international problems they often do not realize that these conditions are nothing more than the accumulated thoughts and actions of millions of individuals and the only way to change world conditions is to change ourselves so i really think the even bigger picture is this is not just about tech applying these skills of emotional intelligence can be so important and can be so powerful to create a more peaceful world where we actually care enough about each other to understand where we're coming from i think we can make a really big difference here so with that thank you very much i did take this picture also near me so this one i can take credit for here's my newsletter is it passionatecoding.com it's also my website blog posts stuff like that i'm going to be having a course on uh how to avoid burnout and tag coming out soon um so please sign up if you're interested in any of that or just getting free resources or staying in touch or whatever thank you very much [Applause]