Enthusiasm

Mission complete… very tired right now… to be filled later…

One of the purpose of 360 degree feedback is to help coach people on their perception problems. If you sit back and think about top performers, high potentials, or whatever you want to call them, these individuals are generally the model citizen or at least they try to be. Sometimes people have concrete problems like personality flaws, technical or skill gaps, or in most cases in technical people, communication problems (communication is not an engineer’s strong suit).

I feel that I time manage reasonably well, multi-task reasonably well, do have some skill gaps that I’m always improving, and while I do need to continue to hone my personal style and communication skills (as we all need to), in general I don’t have a lot of concrete personality flaws. I have a few minor personality flaws, but they all stem from a concrete “flaw” if you could say it is one is my natural tendency to get hyper focused on something and be OVERLY enthusiastic and sometimes off putting to some people. One’s greatest strength inevitably is their greatest weakness.

But my real problem I continue to struggle with I think is perception. Perception problems are a tricky thing because reality is in the eye of the beholder. I can’t change people’s point of view, but if I understand their point of view I can help influence it, yes? Of course step one is understanding who’s having the perception problem and their point of view. Once I understand people’s point of view, then I can find the source of the perception problem and change something usually indirect that changes how people are perceiving things.

People perceive my intentions, my motives, my actions, my communications, my gestures, etc incorrectly. I’ve been accused of looking “angry” before by a simple eyebrow gesture. I’ve been accused of being intimidating when I was being curious. I’ve been accused of being cocky when I’m simply confident. I’ve been accused of “needing to win” in an argument when I’ve been trying to educate. I’ve been accused of being pontificating when I’m trying to energize people about something. I’ve been accused of being distracted when in reality I’m focused. People who really know me well and those who know me even reasonably well know that I don’t ever intend to come across that way, but rather that I give the perception of such. Perception is not something you can touch or feel, it’s something you have to look at yourself from the outside to figure out.

All of these perception issues stem from the over use of my strongest natural trait, my enthusiasm. I try to temper it as best I can, but I’m an emotional person and when I get excited and passionate about something (which I always do), then my enthusiasm kicks in to high gear. I also tend to lose it when I’m being challenged or pushed into a corner and I’m trying to passionately defend something I feel strongly about.

Since I’m on a self-reflective honesty streak, yes, I get defensive. This is not news to anyone who has read my blog, especially for a long time. It is another bad side effect of being passionate about something you believe in. In some ways I also have some control issues, probably still stemming from … well just read some of my blog posts with the Health tag. I don’t know maybe I’m over that, maybe not.

I need to come up with some techniques to not necessarily CHANGE my nature because one cannot change their nature when it is so extreme as mine. The best I can do is channel my natural tendencies in a more… mutually agreeable fashion. One of the ways I can do that is make sure that whatever cause I’m fighting for, whatever goal I’m passionately pursuing, whatever objective I’m pushing myself to complete, that it’s something that everyone has full buy-in for.

I think my biggest mistake in recent time is getting overly passionate about a cause that not everyone was truly bought in on. Some people said they were bought in on it, but apparently they weren’t and now I’m getting myself into trouble. Makes me wonder if some of the other causes I continue to fight for are really supported by everyone or if I’m fighting other battles that are a lost cause.

Keep in mind that I admit I’m wet behind the ears. On the other hand I do feel I’ve been around the block and am at least well studied on management techniques, HR methodologies, and leadership techniques. I would say I have the most personal experience in leadership and it comes very naturally to me and I while I understand management and HR techniques, it’s not so natural so I tend to stumble. One thing I AM capable of doing most of the time is recognizing the different mechanisms in the system and processes in the organization and realize how they are designed and why they are designed that way.

It’s mid-year review time so I’ve been noodling about a specific technique in performance management that I’ve gone quite a bit into detail on in multiple classes during my time achieving my bachelor’s degree. There are many strategic reasons for a two pronged performance management system such as the one at IHS, one part which has a positive leniency error and one with a negative leniency error. What I mean by that is that every person has a certain amount of leniency or strictness. People are really lenient, really strict, or somewhere in between. Depending on the performance management process, it will either work well for people who are lenient or people who are strict. If you use a two pronged system, it will balance out based on whether the person is super strict or super lenient.

• Strict people are generally focused on RESULTS. So an objective based system is agreeable to managers who are strict. They will grade people really harshly or really well as appropriate based on their results. On the other hand, lenient managers will struggle with an objective based system because they don’t want to give “good” people a “bad” grade. So lenient people will generally put “meets expectations” across the board for all people unless there’s something REALLY out of place.
• Lenient people are generally focused on EFFORT and SOFT SKILLS. So a core competency is agreeable to managers who are lenient. They will grade people really harshly or really well as appropriate based on their efforts and soft skills. On the other hand, strict managers will struggle an effort based system because they are so results oriented. So strict people will generally put “meets expectations” across the board for all people unless there’s something REALLY out of place.

So if you use a two-pronged system it should balance out. The problem occurs when either A. the systems aren’t appropriately balanced or B. managers forcefully “monkey” with the system to make the outcome what they wish. When either of these things occur the checks and balances of leniency is destroyed and people who have leniency short comings are not caught. Now I will step back for a moment and suggest that the two systems might not actually have to be perfectly balanced. For example, if the company was TRULEY results oriented, they would put a heavier weight on the object based side of the system vs the competency side.

What is important is that people not “monkey” with the system. In a two-pronged system, everyone will be uncomfortable with either one side or the other side of the system, but at the end of the day that’s what makes the system work. You need to stick to the rules of the system, grade people the way the system tells you to grade, and the human factor will be counter balanced by the system. I don’t know maybe I’m arguing my own point in circles. Maybe the system is designed so that even if people monkey with it, in the end it ends up being balanced. Who knows…

WCSF, MVP, Themes, Master Pages, Nested Master Pages, CCS, Skins, AJAX, GridView, DetailView, Entity Framework, oh my!

I’ve been working on a good working top-to-bottom example of my new “LakeView” project which is the C# rewrite of the project I manage development of  onto the Environmental Domain architecture.

This version demonstrates a proper implementation of WCSF’s architecture, using Mike’s (see “Hoarked” on my blog roll for his blog) SCF project blueprint, utilizing the MVP presentation pattern, using .Net 3.5 controls including AJAX, business modules for business logic, foundational modules for data access including LINQ queries to the Entity Framework. I’m using ObjectDataSource controls in conjunction with GridView and DetailView controls inside an AJAX update panel. The page itself is EXTREMELY code light aka “dry” with only a few lines of code on it. The ObjectDataSource is doing all the heavy lifting, hooking data events from the DataView and DetailView controls to business logic methods in the presenter.

Furthermore, I’m also have implemented Brian’s latest GUI design which is a 100% full height design which dynamic adds a scroll bar in the middle of the page if there is too much content. I’m not using IFrames or anything gross like that, using the CSS property “overflow: auto” to control the scroll bar and adding an inital fixed height which is being adjusted based on the browser’s viewable space dynamically via JQuery. I have Matt to thank me for that tidbit. I also have multiple Mike’s internally who helped me with the new database schema as well as working through the technology portions.

Still have to work on the master pages a little bit more, implementing a few more complex details like a smooth implementation of the tab selecting, product name and version pulled from the assembly file, bread crumbing, and any other updates Brian thinks of before I’m done with this. Then I can start distributing to the other domain teams and making sure they are using it properly with no code changes. I want this to be one of the key pieces that we share with no project custom alterations so that way when we update it, we update it for one product and roll it out to the other projects.