You can read my Operation Joy post for this week over in Discord
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Oh my goodness, Scrappy is beyond adorable! I am so sorry to hear the news of his poor health. Your outlook is truly inspiring, and I hope you can enjoy every minute you have together–I know he will. 
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This week’s assignment: Do something nice for others, gratuitously.
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This week Cenk and Ana were talking about evaluating feedback.
One thing that’s also useful is to reframe feedback. I don’t mean changing the words, but taking a deep breath and take what’s helpful out of it.
When I was starting out in my job, I was asked to do something. I got it the User Interface (UI) looking the way it was supposed to with some fake data, so I could make sure it looked okay. And I had some questions before I did the next step and talked with one of the most senior developers at work.
He ripped me up one side of the room and down the other for using fake data to demonstrate something. I’ll be honest, I was pissed but I listened.
After I calmed down a bit, I had a chance to think about what he was saying, not how he said it. Then I broke down what I got out of that interaction:
- I got 2 hours with a system architect to go over how he wanted things to work. (Okay, he was senior enough to say how things would work.)
- I got an important lesson on presentations that may go in front of directors, etc… because they can look down into the developer conversations. “Daffy Duck” and other silly things like that didn’t work in our industry and I needed to keep that in mind.
- I did get some useful feedback on what I had worked on and how to tighten it up.
- I also found out that when working with this guy, other times of the day, or when he wasn’t under a lot of stress would probably be better to ask questions.
We went on to have a fairly good relationship – possibly because I took the lessons that he wanted, not thrown by how they were delivered.
Good luck with this week’s Operation Joy assignment, everyone.
-Jp
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“It isn’t what you say but how you say it” is correct but can be antagonistic if brought up to someone in the moment.
I would say the last point on your list seem to have outside importance in my mind. The setting and preface for the interaction will dictate to some degree how it plays out.
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This week’s assignment - let’s reject judgement !!!
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Wow, I am impressed! It is not easy to pick out the positives from such an interaction. I am glad you were rationally able to look back at the conversation with generosity and even went on to have a good relationship with the developer. While I’ve always told my kids what a person says about you and how they say it usually says more about them than it does you, an interaction like that could easily send me to the nearest ladies’ room, desperately applying concealer to my red nose and swollen eyes. (I was not blessed with having a cute cry 
)
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