Re: how to prevent DBA burnout?
- From: Stephen Booth <stephenbooth.uk@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: jerry59grp@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:19:16 +0100
2009/3/30 Jerry Cunningham <jerry59grp@xxxxxxxxx>:
>
> 1) Communicate with them regularly. Forget business/corporate formality -
> everybody you work with is simply a person. From the security guard at the
> front desk to the CEO. How is life? Are you happy? What is stressing you
> out? If there are problems, what can I do to help?
Communication is probably the most important thing anyone can do in
business, manager or individual contributor. A big mistake a lot of
people make is to try to communicate with everyone the way they
themselves like to communicate and be communicated with. Where
possible you should communicate with people the way they prefer.
There are loads of different communications/behavioural models out
there, personally I tend to use DiSC.
DiSC splits communication and behaviour into 4 stereotypes (D, I, S
and C, hence the name) and scores people against them. Most people
tend to score high in one or two and low in the other 2 or 3. What
you score high in you are decribed as being a High-(whatever). I'm a
High-C/High-D, classic techie. There are psychometric tests you can
take (usually for a fee) but once you know the model it's usually
fairly easy to slot people in and adapt your behaviour accordingly
D = Decisive/Dominant. Tend to be loud and in your face, can seem
agressive. Want communications short and too the point, very task
oriented, don't like chit-chat. Very goal oriented ("What do you
want, when do you want it by? ... OK, bye.") and want to win,
prepared to shed some blood to win even if it's their own. Not
interested in procedures. SMS or Twitter are the ideal communication
medium as everything is limited to 140 characters.
I = Influencer. Tend to be loud but friendly. Very chatty, the sort
of person who within 20 minutes of meeting you knows not only your
name and birthday but also the name and birthday of your partner,
kids, pets, siblings &c. Spends Monday morning finding out how
everyone's weekend went. Very people oriented. Tend not to actually
do much themselves but always know someone who can do whatever you
need. Tend to be disorganised, have difficulty keeping to time. Like
to talk face to face and chat, might take a long time to get to what
they actually need to talk to you about.
S = Steady. Tend to be quiet. Very people oriented. Want what's
best for the team. Tend to form few but close relationships. Want to
digest information. Like to talk and chat, interested in how you feel
about things.
C = Conscientious. Tend to be quiet. Very, very task oriented, even
more so process oriented. Want to follow set procedures or if there's
no procedures will document what they do and that's the procedure.
Prefer email, might send a 9 page email discussing the pros and cons
of something before getting to the point because they want to make
sure that the thought process and rationale is understood.
You can have mixes, for example High-D/High-C tends to be common in
techie environments whilst High-D/High-I tends to be common in sales
environments. You're very unlikely to get High-D/High-S or
High-I/High-C as there's too much discontinuity between the
stereotypes.
Once you know which box(es) to put someone in it's not hard to adapt
your communication style to what is most effective for communicating
with them. A High-D or High-I (or High-D/I) communicating with a
High-C might get very frustrated because the High-C takes ages to get
to the point and seems to want to describe everything that happened
since time began. The High-C on the other hand might get frustrated
by the way the High-D or High-I don't seem to care about doing things
the right way. The High-D could amend their behaviour by being more
patient and not rolling their eyes, they could also try to recognise
that the procedure is important to the High-C and at least try to
follow it. The High-I could recognise that not everyone wants to
discuss their weekend in detail and they may just want to get on with
their job. In dealing with the High-D, the High-C could recognise
that not everyone is as interested in the detail and BLUF ("Bottom
Line Up Front", put the key statement(s) at the start then provide the
detail, this is especially useful in emails). To deal with a High-I a
High-C might need to loosen up a bit on the social details and offer a
bit of token chit chat then guide the conversation to the matter in
hand.
>
> 2) Don’t forget how hard it is to find good people. At a previous job, when
> interviewing for a vacancy, I had interviewed for weeks without a promising
> candidate. This made me realize how good the people we had were, and I told
> them so. I told them, that while they were working harder due to the
> staffing shortage, I was not going to settle for less than the high standard
> they had set.
I suspect a lot of people are going to get bitten by this very soon.
The first reaction of many companies to the downturn has been to look
at shedding staff very quickly and assume that if they need to hire
they can leverage the downturn to offer lower pay. Very poor
assumptions. All too often they cut too hard then find when they need
to rehire that whilst there are plenty of applicants they are not up
to the calibre of the staff they laid off, the good people they dumped
have mostly been hired elsewhere so leaving the less good flooding the
market.
>
> 3) If somebody resigns (and you value them) - make them a counter offer
> immediately. It amazes me how often this does not happen. Or, the employee
> is asked “what can I do to keep you?”. Too vague - make a concrete offer.
This is usually a very bad idea, unless you know that money is their
primary reason for leaving. Personally I think that if the first time
a manager knows that one of their directs is thinking of leaving is
when they get the resignation letter then the manager should probably
be sacked. They're obviously not talking to their people enough.
Offering more money assumes that the only reason they're leaving is to
earn more, not always the case. Whether that is the reason or not
making a higher offer tells the person "We have been deliberately
under paying you all these years.", if you can find the money now then
why couldn't you before. Offering more money in return for a change
of duties might be OK, so if person has been stuck in an individual
contributor role for a while and expressed an interest in management
or project management then offering them a team lead role might work.
Stephen
--
It's better to ask a silly question than to make a silly assumption.
http://stephensorablog.blogspot.com/ |
http://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenboothuk | Skype: stephenbooth_uk
Apparently I'm a "Eierlegende Woll-Milch-Sau", I think it was meant as
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