Strategies For Getting Unblocked as a Software Engineer

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Hey folks, I am just headed to the office. It's Wednesday morning, halfway through the week. Well, first part of the halfway point. Uh we're gonna go to experienced devs for a topic today. Um this one is a pretty general question. It's just uh how do you go about getting unblocked at work? And then they were asking from a really general point of view, right? like regardless of your level or if you have maybe level specific thoughts on it, what do you what do you do for that? So, I think it's an interesting one. I think it's helpful. Oh my god, there's so many cars coming. It says it's going to take me an hour to get to work. Like, and it's already well after rush hour, so something's going on. I guess it's a little bit damp outside, so no one knows how to drive. Even though it's Seattle and that's all that happens is rain.

Um, I don't know if you can see how long I've been at the stop sign at the end of my street and it's halfway through the lineup of cars. One more car added. Um, but yeah, I think this topic is really good because uh I feel like especially with more remote work, um, it's much easier for people to to get blocked and stay blocked. See how long that took? And now I'm going to have to wait at this stop sign cuz everyone's piled up at the stop sign. So great. Um, so yeah, I want to talk through this. Uh, I only read like one comment at the top and um, I I agree with it. So, we'll get into that. Um, a friendly reminder for folks if you're new to the channel, this channel is all about questions that you submit. So leave them below in the comments if you have questions you want answer it.

Otherwise you can send them into dev leader on social media. It's my main YouTube channel as well with edited edited down C tutorials. There's a podcast. There's resume reviews if you want your resume reviewed for free. Um whole bunch of stuff. Check that out. Um otherwise this channel is really just like me blabbing away in a car. But um I think it's a lot of fun. So and uh shout out to Devin Goble. Um, I have not been paying attention apparently and I've been complaining about how Visual Studio does not have agent mode yet and it just got released I guess yesterday. So, um, Devon tagged me in that to let me know. So, I very briefly got a chance to try it out. Was working pretty late last night. Um, but I think I got one prompt in this morning in agent mode in Visual Studio.

And something that was really cool that I haven't seen any of the other agents doing, which I feel like is an absolute no-brainer. I saw it compiling the code. Duh. Like you know what you do as a developer. So instead of just being like, "Hey, I'm done." And everything's broken. It was compiling it. and at different points it was like this isn't compiling let me fix it this isn't compiling Um so pretty cool to see but anyway that'll be another whole topic once I get to use it a little bit more so in terms of getting blocked um I think this is one of the things that honestly like I've seen a lot of different personality types and uh it's kind of fascinating to see a spectrum of like how people treat this kind of stuff so I I think and maybe for context again if people are newer here I've been an engineering manager for almost 13 years.

Basically my entire career actually started like almost right away in engineering management. Uh so I I'm not saying that I have the the best and you know all-encompassing perspective on this just some background like that's been doing this for a while so I've seen some But um I do think that there's a really wide variety of how people approach getting blocked. You know, one end of this spectrum, you'll have people that are like as soon as they're like sensing block, like it's like got to get on top of it, got to get ahead of it. Uh they're proactive in general. And you got people on the complete opposite end of that spectrum where they're like, you know, not being proactive. When they do get blocked, they're like, well, I guess I guess that's it.

I guess I'm at the mercy of whatever is happening here and I must just be quiet and wait because someone someone else told me um you know something is not coming yet or no one's responding to me so I'm blocked right so I just have to wait until someday hopefully they respond. Uh so I've definitely seen like both ends and like everything in between. Shouldn't say everything in between. That's suggesting that I've seen everything, but um seen a lot of stuff in between, I guess. And uh I think a lot of it comes down to experience. I think it comes down to personality type. I think that there's a lot to be said about how comfortable people are in the team and the work environment.

So, I wanted to kind of start on on that front because it's easy to kind of equate it to like, oh, it's just because someone's junior or or oh, just because they're a remote employee, but like I think those are factors, but I don't think that they are like simply dictate that that will happen. to give you an example. Um I I do think that if you are a you know early in career software engineer and you're onboarding remotely to your first job like it's you're probably more likely to be in the camp of like I'm blocked on something no one's answering and you kind of just like kind of wait like ah I don't really know what to do. Um and like part of that is because you're less comfortable on the team. you're new, you're remote, you don't know people as well. That's part of it.

Um the experience part comes into play. Maybe you haven't seen something like this happen before, like where you're just blocked because you have to wait for someone to respond to you and you're like, I just don't know what to do now. So, I think these are factors that influence it, but I don't think that they're like the only things. And I say that because I've seen people that are early in career and onboarding remotely and they do an awesome job of getting unblocked. They're being proactive, right? Something they can't find or, you know, they've time boxed something they're looking at. Boom. Right to the chat for the team. Hey, this is what I'm seeing. Can anyone help me? Um, or I'm following up with them on stuff and they're like, "Yep, you know, put my code up for review. I pinged, you know, these couple people.

They're actively looking at it. I already had review comments addressed and I've let them know like they're not the kind of person who's like I put it up for review and I just hope that someone on the team would stumble upon it and I've been waiting for 3 weeks and no one's done it right. I'm exaggerating a little bit, but um I've seen junior people do that as well. I've seen more senior people that seem to be, you know, where they are in their role, but they're um still not like, in my opinion, effective at getting unblocked. Uh, and that could be because maybe they're busy with other stuff. Maybe there's a handful of excuses where they're they're like, "Hey, I'm blocked on this, but I could switch to this other thing, so we'll just wait." But there's some risk with that because depending on the priority of those things, that might be totally fine.

you know, okay, you're blocked and you got 10 other things to do and that one's actually less of a priority. Okay, we wait. But sometimes there's like stuff that is pretty pressing and people are like, well, you know, they said they can't or they didn't respond, so like I just got this other stuff to do. I'll just go and do it. Even though this one thing is perhaps more um, you know, more critical. Um, but people, it's easy to become complacent with it and if you're kind of pushing for like trying to get people to chime in and help or to get responses on stuff depending on the situation that could be uncomfortable. So, it's easy to avoid. So, I've seen all sorts of this kind of stuff, but I I think a lot of it um comes down to like people's personality types a lot of the time.

And um I think that we can help we can help when people aren't fully like their personality is not fully aligned to like you're blocking me. I got to get up blocked. I got to keep going kind of thing. Um by creating an environment where where people feel comfortable to do that. So um couple of factors I think that play a role here are yes personality type um yes creating an inclusive environment where people feel comfortable doing that kind of thing. And I think how we do that second part is uh a lot of leading by example, right? So just to give you uh you know one brief example is like uh I I tell junior people on the team like and especially if they're uh new to the team as well. So like early in career, new to the team, oh man, are you coming over?

No. person is going half my speed, puts a signal on to merge into my lane and then proceeds to not do that. Um, okay. And now I hit the wall of traffic. Excellent. So, um, an example of doing this kind of thing, uh, or what I recommend to my my juniors, right, is like if you have like we try to make sure people are set up with someone when they're onboarding, that they have like an onboarding buddy, right? They have someone who can help mentor them for for getting started, getting familiar with things. But I know a lot of the time people get to this point where they're like, I don't want to be bothering that person, right? Like, I feel bad I'm bothering them. I'm like, it doesn't it feels like no matter how many times I say it, it's like you're not, you know, that person has like basically signed up to help you, like it's okay.

Um, they understand like they had to go through a similar thing. We're just trying to make sure that you're okay. Like, uh, you're unblocked, that you're able to make progress. So, you know, I'll have conversations with them and I try to offer up. I'm like, "Hey, you know, if that person if you feel like you're bothering them or something, I I definitely don't think you are, but if you feel that way, you can always reach out to me." And they're like, "Thanks." But then like I and I know in my head, I'm like, "They're not going to do that." Because if they're already not reaching out to their buddy, they're like, "Well, my manager is certainly going to be more busy. Like, I don't want to bother them." Um, so there's a couple of things that I try to do, right?

Um, one is that I will like especially in one-on ones, if someone's like, "Yeah, I was stuck on this or so so and so was helping me and we were making some progress." Sometimes I'll say, "Hey, like you know, depending on how our one-on ones go, I might say, "Hey, like I still have time um a little bit after this or we're wrapping up like uh and we're only like halfway through. Like if you still have some time, why is this beeping at me? There's no cars. If you still have some time, like do you want to open up Visual Studio? We can go through some code together." Like I need to demonstrate to them that like look you need help. Like yeah we're all busy but like I want to help you. We want to demonstrate that it's okay. Like you know people will make time for this kind of thing.

You're not bothering people. So I'll try to do that. But the other thing is that I tried to remind them that like don't just wait. So if you're like I'm scared or whatever the reason is to go ask an individual. Okay. you're getting turned off. Um, like go to the chat, right? Like go to the the team chat and just ask there because if you're waiting on one person and maybe they are busy, maybe they're in a meeting, maybe they're doing a presentation like and whatever it happens to be, they're on vacation, you know, it could be a million things. Um, and you're like, well, don't want to bother them or can't ask them cuz they're out. Do you just wait indefinitely? I hope the answer is no. So like what can we do? We should just ask in the team chat is a is the next step, right?

Like that's we have a team. We work together. So I try to demonstrate that even for me asking questions in general, right? Like I don't know everything on the team, not by not even close. Our the complexity of what we do is is ridiculous. And there's a lot of history. There's a lot of complexity. It's a huge system. And I don't want to pretend to know everything. I think that would be ridiculous. I think that's, you know, uh, misleading. I think that that's not going to help building trust. So, I like to be able to demonstrate like, hey, I don't know how this works. Like, can someone answer this question for me? Because I'm trying to show to the more junior people. Watch. Like, if you have a question, I guarantee other people do, too. And I guarantee there's someone on the team that can at least help you move forward on it.

So, um I try when I can to do that because I think it's helpful because sometimes I feel that um no matter what we're doing with our words to say, "Oh yeah, don't worry, people want to help." I think the actions kind of uh speak a little bit louder. So, that's one part. Um, so the question this Redditor had essentially was like like what do you do? Right? So, um, one of and the the top comment was having to do with like stand-up meetings, right? is I think one thing that comes to mind is like if you're blocked on something a stand-up meeting uh and like depending on how your team does this if at all uh generally standup meetings are done like very briefly every day like usually in the morning or something and um the idea behind them is not to give like an in-depth status update.

It's basically to say like, you know, if you're stuck on something, if you're blocked, right? So, um it's it's a matter of like helping people get unblocked so they can make progress. And um the reality is, and again, the top comment was kind of like if that's your only mechanism for getting unblocked is to go talk in the standup, you're probably missing something, right? So if a even if a standup's happening every day, say you have your stand up, things are good, you go back to your desk, you start working on something and you know within 30 minutes you're like, man, like I actually I need help on this cuz I don't know how to progress. I'm stuck. Do you just do you just wait the whole day? Cuz you're like, oh, standup's, you know, tomorrow so I'll I'll just wait till stand up. Like I I just hope the answer is no.

And I I say that I don't know kind of in a funny way because like I it feels like it just seems like it's the wrong thing to do. But I don't want to tell someone like if that's what you're doing like shame on you because people might be doing that because they feel like they don't have an opportunity or they've been they have been shamed for for asking this kind of stuff and you know getting shut down by team members for for whatever reason, right? like people have some history around trying to ask for help and it not going well. So part of me is like doesn't that seem wrong? Uh but the other part of me is trying to say like if that's if that seems to be your normal mode like why has that happened? Right? If you have a lived experience that has kind of put you into that that mode of like I'm not going to go out of my way.

I'll just wait till the standup even though it's tomorrow or you know for us we do across our feature crews we have like basically a sync meeting it's a little bit longer once a week and um could you imagine waiting a whole week just to raise awareness that you got blocked on something a week ago like it seems wrong right it seems like that would be a ridiculously ineffective way to to participate in a team so I don't mean to like shame people if that's what they end kind of defaulting to. But I would want to challenge those people and say like, well, why does that happen? Like, do you agree that that feels kind of weird that you have to wait a full day or a full week to go get unblocked or even to raise awareness that you're blocked? Because I I hope that that feels like the wrong thing.

And if we agree that that feels like the wrong thing, like what's causing you to have um that discomfort? And we should like dive into that, right? Like because I think there could be a million different reasons. That's why I was saying creating this environment where people feel supported that way I think is really important because people might have had previous lived experiences where like that kind of environment wasn't there. So yes, standup meetings and sync meetings are one way to do it. I think depending on what the thing is, you have different modes of of trying to get some help. So you might have there's like let's talk about a couple of common things I guess. So I see stuff like uh dev environment stuff, right? My my build isn't working or you know I you know updated my repository stuff's not building or hey weird like I'm running these tests locally and they're not working.

Uh or I pushed code up and it works on my local machine but like the build is failing for some reason. These are the types of things that like I would honestly not waste too much time on by yourself. Um I say this because I think that there's low return on investment for putting time into it for for the most part, right? And I say that because if you're having a local build thing, um, it's having an issue or the the cloud build, you know, you push something up and it's being built by CI/CD, um, that's not working. Like, if we think about the time and effort that goes into you debugging that, yes, you're building up some skill by being able to debug it, but I would tie box the hell out of that because if you're a week into it and you're like, I still can't build locally.

Like is that actually like what your job is supposed to be? And I know that sounds kind of facitious, but like is that a good use of your time? Right? Like yeah, I understand your build isn't working locally and you need it to work locally, but surely surely someone can help, right? Have you talked to anyone about this yet? Do we need to engage another team because there's an internal tool that's broken or something like you spending more and more time on that is probably having very very low return on investment of your time. So let's not do that. Um I think a little bit is good because you get to understand the tooling. It's not like you're just like you know I got a squiggly line in Visual Studio. It's not compiling. I better better go ask for help. It's like, well, why do you have this wiggly line, right?

Like you're like, okay, I've confirmed the code is actually right. So, is it like a dependency is not being loaded and like I'm expecting it should be there. Uh, like what's going on, right? Like poking a little bit's helpful so you can build up that understanding. But certainly time boxed. Um, another one I'd say is very common. I'm going to yawn. Another one that's very common is when you're blocked by partners. And I think there's uh you know in this alone a million different scenarios that we could go explore. But um ultimately I think it's very depending on people's experience and comfort level. I think it's very easy to to get into a situation where you're like talking with a partner about something and they're like can't be done uh or you need to wait until like a month from now or um or they're not even responding, right?

Let's start with the not responding one. So, um you are trying to investigate something, whatever it happens to be. You're helping with a live sight issue and uh partner team probably has some knowledge about something that's going on in this area and you send a message, no response. Send an email, no response. Day goes by, you follow up email, no response. Ping them on Teams, no response. Now you're two days in. Okay. Like how much how much time did we just lose? Right? So, I think that there's sort of like escalation paths that we can look at in something like this. Uh, I always I I don't like this, but um I I tell teammates this and I tell them I don't like it, but uh sometimes like I have team members that report to me that will go ask a partner to engage on something, no movement.

And I encourage them to be leading the communication, right? Like I'm like, "Hey, like you're a software engineer. You're going to have to be doing this. Like you should engage the partner. You should be trying to to get their attention." But if it's not working, like I can try to help. I don't like that this generally works, but it seems to generally work. And that's like add my manager to the thread, right? So then they put me on the thread and I'm like, "Hi, so and so has been reaching out to you and there's no response. Here's why this is critical." Um, I find it generally works. I don't like it because I don't think that it's fair to my employees that just because I have manager in my title that that's the reason that people should respond to me. That seems like a very very bad reason because I don't specifically need the help.

I'm doing other My employee needs the help. They've given you the context. Please help them. Um, I think sometimes why this happens, aside from just seeing a title or something, cuz that's the part that I really don't like, like it shouldn't matter. I think sometimes why it helps though is that um I go in and try to provide some additional context as to why it's critical. So that could be a learning opportunity for my employees depending on the context, right? Where, you know, they've given uh they're like, "Here's what's going on and here's why we need your help. like we think that you're the subject matter expert here, but sometimes what's missing is like the criticality or the urgency around it. Like this isn't just like a hi, it would be so so lovely of you if you could, you know, at your earliest convenience like maybe point us in the direction of some some document that might describe this.

It's like, hi, shit's on fire. We need your help. We need you to look at this. Here's the significance of this impact. please engage and otherwise we're going to keep escalating. So I think that the sort of the the why around what's going on is sometimes missing and you know and sometimes my employees have done a great job and they have included that and then sometimes I don't get the response and then I have to escalate. So it's uh you know like I said I don't like that sometimes the just being a manager works but uh other times it doesn't and other times I have to escalate as well and I will say great like I'll talk to my employee and I'll say hey we'll give it like you know one more day or something or by the end of the day if they haven't responded I'm firing off something I'm including their manager and the strategy here is not like tattling on people.

It's like, "Hi, this person's manager. This person's doing a bad job. They're not responding." It's remove the the human element. It's like, "We got an issue and we need some help." And you guys are the subject matter experts. Like, get someone looking at this, right? Here's the significance of it. I'm not here to complain that so and so wasn't reading their email or they dodged some Teams messages. I don't know what's going on with them. like we're not on the same team. Like I'm not trying to blame them. It's not an individual is a bad person kind of thing. It's just like we need help. We're getting unblocked and we're going to push forward on it. So I think with that's my sort of approach with not getting team engagement from partners.

Um the other thing around partner engagement is sometimes you'll have like you get blocked by a partner because they're saying like we can't get something done by some date and uh depending on the scenario like everything in software engineering is it depends but uh I think there can be some conversations around like for example um we need your team to go deliver this feature for us and they're going ah yes that feature will be part of this deliverable that's at the end of uh this 6-month period and I'm just making this up right and that's 4 months from now. So like you should be able to expect that you'll have it in 4 months. So in some situations we might be like okay right the feature we wanted to do it's pretty low priority in comparison to some other stuff like given that I shouldn't

say low priority in comparison it's equal priority in comparison and if we have um you know a dependency that's going to be pushed out we got other we can do that's probably fine right um that's like a sort of the easy path I guess. Uh if you're in a situation though where you're like this is the most important thing that we got to do which generally hopefully we're working on the most important things and not everything's an allway tie for most important. I think that there's an opportunity to do some push back here. And it's not about it's not like being rude to the partner, right? It's not like you don't understand why like you don't value us or you know we don't give a about your road map. It's not about presenting things that way. It's more um like actually trying to understand. So great.

Okay. we, you know, we're hearing you that you're saying this feature is part of this deliverable that's, you know, 6 months out and then we start going, well, for us in in our milestones and the things we have to deliver, like we actually have a timeline that looks like X, in this case, X happens to be way shorter. Um, and then we could get into conversations and saying like, hey, is there a possibility like in terms of how you're implementing this? Could we discuss different paths where like could you land part of this sooner? Maybe it doesn't give us a 100% of what we were asking for, but it gets us 80%. And it might be a little bit of extra work for you guys to kind of shift your plans to go do that, but if we had 80% of what we were asking for way sooner, like that could be gamechanging for us.

I'm just making up this example, right? So, um, being able to push back and have conversations like that that aren't like, "No, you have to drop everything you're doing for us." But like, is there a compromise where like we get every team is overloaded and busy doing all the most important stuff from their perspective? Makes sense. But if we can all have a little bit of give and take, I feel like it um helps smooth some of this stuff out. Because if every team is very rigid on not moving to to help others out, I feel like it slows the entire organization down because we are teams. We do work together, right? We are part of the same organization. It's the same idea that if you're on a team as an individual, if no one on the team helps each other ever, are you actually just a team or are you just a bunch of individuals that happen to be working in a similar area?

Right? Are you just a bunch of teams that happen to be working under the same employer, but you don't work together? You should have a common goal in your organization, right? Uh, I understand that there's competing priorities, but there should be a common goal. So, if you can find ways to carve out some uh alternate paths, I think that can be pretty powerful. So, those are a couple different ideas. I think we talked about three of them. Um, I think if you're uh like maybe another direction to talk about is cuz we did some like uh you know, partner dependencies. talked about just like as an individual maybe on like technical roadblocks but there's sometimes situations too where like could have interpersonal conflict on teams. I need water pretty bad. I have to yawn again. Oh god. I did not I didn't go to CrossFit this morning because I I could tell I was going to bed last night.

And um well, this is some inside scoop on Nick's sleep patterns. I every night this happens to me. I go to sleep. You're going to try to pass me. Okay, good luck. Have fun. Um every night I go to sleep and uh This guy's an absolute I I actually like lucid dream every single night. So when I go to sleep, I fall asleep pretty fast, which is great. But then I generally will lucid dream for like 15 to 25 minutes or so every single night. like very very very vivid dreams. Vivid enough that every single night 15 to 25 minutes in they wake me up cuz they're vivid dreams and I am wide awake. Generally this happens like once maybe twice and then I'm I'm out and I wake up in the morning and I'm fine. But I always have these really vivid dreams right when I go to sleep.

And um last night it was like non-stop. It probably happened like over 10 times. So the problem with that is that like I'm not getting um I'm not getting to sleep, right? I fall asleep and then I wake up like shortly after wide awake. Then I fall asleep and then I wake up after wide awake. So, I could tell um I'm like I'm gonna be screwed for waking up for 5:00 a.m. to go to CrossFit. So, like no. Um but I'm feeling super tired this morning. My water's all the way. I didn't put it in my cup holder. Let's see. Can I multitask? Watch the road. Feel for the shaker. We did it. Mission accomplished. Eat that, Tom Cruz. Okay. Um, interpersonal conflict stuff I think is an interesting one. Um, because I think that sometimes it's not sometimes for everyone, but like it comes up where individuals sometimes have challenges with other people on the team.

Uh, sometimes this kind of stuff is hidden completely from other team members. Um sometimes people are having friction with team members and the other person doesn't even notice. So there's always as a manager there's always lots of fun stuff going on uh behind the scenes that I am trying to help out others with. And this kind of stuff can come up where you have people working together on something and you do have a situation where there's some friction or how people work together is not effective for one the other or both people. And ultimately like in people's careers they got to work on this kind of stuff, right? You're going to be working with different types of people, different personalities. It's, you know, it's it's part of having a career. You're just going to be working with other people. And I understand that that's like, how do I say this?

I feel like you can go through this kind of stuff and just be pissed off at people all the time and be like, "Work sucks and like I hate so and so and like they're wrecking everything." But like I get it because I've absolutely been frustrated with working people in my career. But so it's easier said than done. What I want to say is that like these are all good opportunities to figure out how to work effectively with different types of people. So if you're like, I feel like I work well with everyone and then you start working with someone, you're like, man, what the hell is wrong with this person? Why are they such a pain in the ass? Like a good opportunity to try and figure out what is actually different about your working relationship and see how you can make that better, right?

Like I'll give you a brief example. I don't think this person watches my YouTube videos, but I would I don't say things that I'm not like uncomfortable saying to people's faces. I had to start working with a a product manager recently, different team completely on a pretty important project. And um in the very beginning, I was like I was pretty frustrated. I'm like I got tons of stuff to do. Tons. And the way that this person was communicating with me made it feel like um I need to be dropping everything I'm doing and like everything is just like boom boom boom like get this I get this I get this done and I can't operate that way. And all that I did was like found a way that I felt like was as polite as I could to set some boundaries. That's all.

I was like, "Hi, like just so you know, like I'm not saying that you're not busy, but like I am also busy and the way that this sort of update mechanism is going, like it's just not going to be sustainable for me. So, can we come up with a plan that feels better?" And we did. I have no problem working with this person. It's not like a, you know, in the beginning it feels like why is this person the issue? It's not the person. It's just like a working style. and then like try to figure it out. The alternative is I could have just been like I hate this person for forever and then anything we have to do together is going to suck. So when you have these opportunities I mean sorry these challenges you can see if they're a learning opportunity.

Like I said, I know easier said than done, but so when you have interpersonal conflicts and you're feeling like someone's blocking you from making progress, I think great opportunity, talk with your manager about this, right? How could I make a video without referencing? Talk with your manager. Um, when I have employees that either come to me and outright say this or we're digging into things and I'm uncovering like they're having some interpersonal challenges, um, my recommendation is always to individuals like I think that you should try talking with the person about this first. Okay? And that's not me being lazy about it. I'll explain why. I think people should take the opportunity to try having a conversation with other people first because it's not easy and it's the most effective thing to do. So if you I'm laughing at this because it's not easy cuz we never do it.

It's uncomfortable. We avoid uncomfortable things. I get it. We're human. That's what we do. So, it is the most effective though because you're not including anyone else. You're going right to the source. You're explaining to them, hey, I'm having some challenges. Don't make it about them. Just make it about the working relationship. Like, um, you know, I'm finding that when I'm putting stuff up for poll requests, I I feel like every time I have to start from scratch based on review comments. Is there something we can do to make that better? or um hey, I know you're really busy, but you happen to be the senior on the team that needs to sign off my stuff, and uh I'm starting to feel like I'm not able to make the progress I need to. Um but I know you're busy. So, like, is there something else that we can explore to make this better?

Someone else we can include. Is there a way I can batch my updates, get them over to you, and then can we talk about something else I could be doing on the side so that I can be unblocked? Like, have the conversation. But um I will also tell every single employee when we're having conversations like this. That's my recommendation. Go that path. But if you're uncomfortable, right? If you're uncomfortable, I'm happy to try and help. And my approach for trying to help is basically to approach both sides. So, how can I coach the person who's having or talking to me about the issue and how can I approach the other person to kind of um make them aware of some challenges without like, you know, without making it seem like I'm talking behind people's backs and whatever else. Hey, that's not how uh turns work. You just turned into my lane.

Interesting. Okay. So, like I'm I'm happy to go do that. I've done that million times, but I would I think that people get better results when they can kind of tackle this stuff uh on their own. The other sort of hidden reason why that's so valuable is that as much as I can when I'm trying to do the coaching from both sides, I think sometimes it can be there's a little bit of like hm like you know pe people aren't dumb. If uh I'm trying to be as good as I can about it, but if they can detect that there's some coaching going on or something like that, it can start to erode the trust. like I know I'm having friction with this other person, the manager stepping in. Hm.

Um instead, the exact opposite can happen where someone that you're having some friction with, you talk to them about it and you're like, "Holy like so great to see that this person actually cares about making things better." And I've seen like time and time again, you have these conversations, the people that had the challenges like come out of those conversations having a much better working relationship because they have this new level of trust where it's like, hey, it's not easy to have a conversation like that. It's not easy to go to someone and say, hey man, like this isn't working so well and like I want this to work. I know you want this to work. Right? That's a that's not an easy conversation. But if you can have a conversation like that, clearly you're trying to make things better. You're having some level of trust with the person, right?

So I do recommend people try to do that as much as possible because um the improvement in the the working relationship is uh very noticeable from what I've gathered. and we will find a parking spot. Let's take this one. And I think that's it, folks. That was uh that was a lot of stuff. It's quite the lengthy drive, too. 40 minutes in the fast lane. Cool. Okay. Thanks, folks. I will see you next time. Take care.