Aspiration, explained
Challenges arise. Does your teammate find ways to resolve issues or do they wait for you to tell them what to do? There is nothing wrong with asking for help when you don’t understand something or need help building a skill. People who take initiative still ask for help, but they also do their best to come up with potential solutions on their own. Instead of coming to you and saying, “What should I do?” They come to you and say, “Here’s an issue I encountered, and here are two things we might try. They are just ideas, and I like this one better than the other—what do you think?” Initiative is doing the legwork, being creative about solving problems—it is the opposite of acting like it’s not your problem and waiting for someone else to tell you what to do when you could have come up with potential solutions yourself.
Examples / Observations
Observation created about 4 years agoFeaturing:Ross h.We don't wait to be told what to do, we take initiativeWe put the team before ourselvesNow for the real shout out for Ross 😆
I touched on this in our all-hands already, but I wanted to share how appreciative I am of Ross taking initiative to represent all of the devs in the interviews for the DoE.
Ross organized a meeting where the devs could share qualities that were important to them in the next DoE, and/or questions we wanted to have answered. He then helped guide us in distilling our collection of random thoughts into a few questions that the two selected interviewers could use while interviewing.
I appreciated how Ross took the time to think of how we could broaden representation of our needs an engineers from just the two interviewers to the needs of the whole team. That definitely demonstrated putting the team above yourself (even before you were selected as an interviewer) and I really appreciate it!
Observation created over 5 years agoFeaturing:Noah B.We put learners firstWe have difficult conversationsWe ask clarifying questionsWe get agreementsWe recognize the opportunity in challengesWe inspire others to do better workWe don't wait to be told what to do, we take initiativeWe challenge ourselvesWe represent Lessonly positively in the communityWe critique, we don't complainImplementation engineerTechnical investigatorTier-2 escalation engineerNoah has been with us for a little over 6 months at this point and in that time, he's done a great job developing relationships with the rest of the company, going out of his way to help both customers and our internal folks resolve issues, and helping improve the escalation process. He's done such a great job that folks outside of our team have sent me messages about how helpful he's been. Here's the latest from someone in the company: "Noah has been killing it! He is doing an awesome job, especially with a few difficult customers lately. We appreciate him and his hard work SO VERY MUCH!!"
Thank you, Noah for your empathy, patience, and the initiative you take to help everyone do better work 🎉
Observation created over 5 years agoFeaturing:Raphael A.We put learners firstWe inspire others to do better workWe don't wait to be told what to do, we take initiativeWe put the team before ourselvesCopywritingFeature DocumenterDocumentation is vital for a software company. That is true for all aspects of our app but particularly user management. Lessonly cannot exist without learners, so the action of making it clear and easy to get users into Lessonly is important. Even though I know all of that creating documentation can be seen as the least fun aspect of software. It is more fun to build new stuff than to write in painstaking detail about the stuff you just built.
With all of that being said, it only makes what Raphael did more impressive. We recently wrapped up the development of SCIM for OneLogin. We were left with the documentation piece. I tried my best to get it started but we reached a point where we had to set the JSON user schema and I was lost. Raphael (who got involved late to the project) was able to familiarize himself with the code base and write some killer documentation (found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zaEPLM1wtiDHBth9owIG29R2c-3oYWq04jPtxvH-5P0/edit#)
This is the definition of a team player. Hopping onto a project and helping out any way you can no matter what. Raphael has always been game for these sort of things but I was reminded again by this.
Observation created over 5 years agoFeaturing:Tom C.We put learners firstWe have difficult conversationsWe share before we're readyWe ask clarifying questionsWe own our requestsWe are truthfulWe are coachableWe inspire others to do better workWe don't wait to be told what to do, we take initiativeWe put the team before ourselvesWe challenge ourselvesWe critique, we don't complainRubyCommunityInitiativeMentorshipDesign CollaborationBack-end engineerIn last week's Learn Squad weekly huddle, the topic of a bug (dubbed "a hole in the spacetime continuum") came up. This bug came to life as a result of a story I had recently done in the Accessibility epic, but Tom had taken the initiative to fix it shortly after it was noted as an issue in Slack. I greatly appreciated him taking this on, but found myself feeling even more appreciative in Monday's meeting during the conversation around what happened/why the bug occurred. He explained that he guided me down the wrong path when I consulted him on some Ruby syntax while working on the ticket, and explained the fix. Prior to this, I had never seen someone take so much ownership over an issue that occurred from assisting another engineer. In my past work, the responsibility would've fallen all on me, so this experience left me in awe. I am very thankful to work alongside someone like Tom, who a) understands we're all human, and b) takes ownership of his work (whether that's in the codebase, or offering help to others)!
Observation created over 5 years agoFeaturing:Conlin D.We put learners firstWe share before we're readyWe ask clarifying questionsWe highlight what's workingWe own our requestsWe recognize the opportunity in challengesWe inspire others to do better workWe don't wait to be told what to do, we take initiativeWe put the team before ourselvesWe challenge ourselvesWe critique, we don't complainCommunityInitiativeMentorshipProduct DiscoveryDiscovery engineerFront-end architectFront-end engineerLast week, I did a code review for Conlin. In the PR description, he did a phenomenal job at leaving detailed testing steps and notes around why the story was necessary. Beyond that, however, he also went out of his way to thoroughly talk through the issue on a deeper level. He explained the research he did on the problem, potential solutions (and why they wouldn't work), his decided solution (and why it does work), as well as the history and potential future of the problem. As both a reviewer and fellow engineer, I was really impressed by how much thought and effort went into this.
While I already find myself aiming to be as clear and informative as possible in my PR descriptions, seeing this inspired me to raise my standard going forward, and left me feeling grateful to work with Conlin.PR of Reference - https://github.com/lessonly/lessonly/pull/7482
Conversations about We don't wait to be told what to do, we take initiative
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