I had this guy working for me, to mask his identity let\u2019s call him Adam. I can safety say that he was the \u201cworst\u201d guy that I had worked with in 20 years of running a software company<\/p>\n
He \u2026<\/p>\n
My day would frequently begin with seeing some critical and obvious mistake he made and then call him up to, once again, admonish him and try to get him to correct his ways.<\/p>\n
I would begin many conversations with the question\u00a0\u201cAre you going to quit?\u201d<\/em>. Because if he was, he could at least have done it then, saving us another torturous session of feedback. His answer was always \u201cNo, Brian\u201d<\/em>.<\/p>\n My philosophy on terminations was to terminate for\u00a0Values<\/a>\u00a0problems, not mistakes, and if the employee exhibited at least some of our core values and was expending effort and working hard, to not terminate. In fact, in all of my years, I have never fired anyone, no matter how bad, if they were working hard. And I\u2019ve never regretted that decision.<\/p>\n Over time, and I mean quite a bit of time, mistakes began to be diminished, but more importantly Adam internalized my feedback and transferred it to new team members, who were able to learn and progress faster because of it.<\/p>\n Throughout this process, the mistakes that Adam didn\u2019t make were that he never \u2026<\/p>\n I refer to Adam\u2019s actions as\u00a0\u201cFucking up\u201d vs \u201cFucking down\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Too many times I see people react negatively to constructive criticism which essentially precludes their ability to grow and ultimately succeed. Also, I\u2019m generally not interested in mentoring someone who is resistant to feedback, nor, for that matter, working with them. Such people have \u201cglass jaws\u201d. They shatter into many pieces when you criticize them. Adam had an \u201ciron jaw\u201d. He could take any feedback, no matter how tough, and not wilt in the face of it, let alone fall to pieces.<\/p>\n Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Adam grew, progressed and developed to a level where I was able to not only stop admonishing him on a daily basis but begin to validate his growth and progress, a process I call \u201cTurning good\u201d. This culminated in him being promoted to a full Level I analyst, no easy feat in our company. His work continues to improve and progress to this day and can be seen in the amazing results<\/a>\u00a0of the\u00a0content marketing effort<\/a>\u00a0driven by him and his team.<\/p>\n Adam didn\u2019t turn into the \u201cbest\u201d guy I ever worked with, but his success stories are one of the best that I experienced in my career. Nobody was prouder of him getting promoted than I was<\/p>\n I spent a ton of time with Adam. He invested a ton of time himself. But his actions and the fact that he didn\u2019t quit (and I didn\u2019t fire him) turned what could have very well been wasted time, into simply time invested and in fact, well invested.<\/p>\n If at any point during this process, Adam had quit, he would have failed. And I would have failed as a leader, mentor, boss. But the fact that he didn\u2019t quit, meant that he never actually failed. And he continued long enough avoiding failure, that he eventually succeeded.<\/p>\n Backstory I had this guy working for me, to mask his identity let\u2019s call him Adam. I can safety say that he was the \u201cworst\u201d guy that I had worked with in 20 years of running a software company He \u2026 Made the same mistakes over and over again Failed to follow instructions properly Didn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1161,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,15,18],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nFucking up<\/h3>\n
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\u201cTurning good\u201d<\/h3>\n
Time wasted vs invested<\/h3>\n
Failure vs success<\/h3>\n
Other lessons learned<\/h3>\n
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