Author: Leo Gopal

  • 4 Simple Tips to Better Communication for devs. (or how to avoid conflict, confusion, and talk to people).

    4 Simple Tips to Better Communication for devs. (or how to avoid conflict, confusion, and talk to people).

    If I were to look back over my last decade in the tech world and pick one thing as my single best decision as a developer – I’d say choosing to study psychology rather than computer science.

    The most significant impact studying psychology had was on my communication skills, which, as a developer, put me in a very wonderfully unique position.

    The improvement in communication has had many benefits, to name a few:

    • Understanding that people (clients, colleagues, friends) all want to feel a specific emotion and what they are asking for is what they believe would give them that – aim for the feeling.
    • It can avoid confusion by being able to talk fluently to clients, project/product/marketing managers, as well as my dev teams.
    • Improved communication skills reduce conflicts, upset clients, damaging relationships.
    • Communication skills also improve relationship building, grow your network, build rapport, and ultimately be someone no one finds unapproachable.
    • BONUS Side-effect: Being a developer is no longer all your limited to being.

    With the new landscape of the developer career ecosystem, I find that those who are good at many things and master of nothing specific are progressing most significantly.

    I am not a master at anything. 

    Jack of all trades, master of none, but often better than a master of one. 

    Now, for those 4 Simple Tips, I promised you. These little tips or practices have been in my communication toolbelt for quite sometime. I recently read a great book, which helped add more structure to what I was already doing: Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life (non-aff link here).

    TL;DR 

    Here are the four language tips for the impatient 😉 (keep reading if you want to understand them with greater clarity):

    1. Choose observation language without evaluation or judgment based language.
    2. Share how this observation makes you feel without implying blame or accusation.
    3. Share the need you have; that is the reason for this feeling.
    4. Make requests of what you feel with satisfying the need you have without demanding.

    It is also important to realize that any communication should be a giving and receiving pastime. 

    The foundation of better communication in either direction is to remember this fundamental goal:

    1. When expressing: Communicate how you are without the language of blame, criticism, or judgment.
    2. When listening: Hear how you are, empathetically, without hearing blame, criticism, or judgment. 

    BONUS: Listening well can often be more powerful than talking well.

    By sharing and expressing oneself in a way that offers to share how you feel and your perspective without language that places the other person as the reason for how you feel also allows you an avenue to being more honest and transparent (without feeling guilty or fearing conflict). 

    Sharing more allows for more understanding and empathy from others as they now know you better and where you are in perspective. Ultimately, this approach forces the interpersonal connection by acknowledging wants, needs, actions, and desires.

    1. Observations over evaluations

    State what you know to be accurate, over leading to evaluation about it.

    Instead of: 

    “You’re unreliable and wasted my time.”

    Use: 

    “We had a meeting today (fact) which you did not make it attend (fact); I hope everything is ok (non-judgment), is there a better time we can schedule? (solution)”

    People are likely to disagree with evaluation based statements as they may have different core values which allow for miscommunication over resolution.

    2. Express how this observation makes you feel.

    Naming the emotion, without moral judgment, enables you to connect in a spirit of mutual respect and cooperation. This expression allows you to express yourself without shaming them for their feelings or preventing them from feeling the way they do.

    Instead of: 

    “I think you are disrespectful of others’ time and selfish when you miss a meeting like today.”

    Use:

    “I feel concerned when you miss a meeting without informing us; I feel letting me know would have allowed me to use that time better.”

    3. Share the need/value that is the cause of the feeling.

    All of our emotional reactions to what happens around us very often stem from a core need or value that we have and that we wish to acquire. 

    Sharing this need without judgment allows us to both understand what we want at a deeper level and offers clarity to the other in how they may help us achieve this or, at the very least, empathize through understanding where our needs are.

    4. Make a gentle request that satisfies this need.

    Especially when emotions are peaked, we often share, unhelpfully, how we are feeling now, and how much this is not what we want to be feeling. Behavior like this does not move one any closer to the feelings we do want to have – and very often, it stops us from ever getting there at all.

    If we do share what we need, we tend to communicate it as a demand, not a request – this strips the other of their right of consent and their desire to help. If this demand is met, it is far less out of voluntary desire; and more out of pressure, guilt, or compliance. 

    It is far better to have someone want to help you than it is to have that have to help you.

    Instead of:

    “I set up another meeting at the same time tomorrow; please don’t waste my time again.”

    Use:

    “This progress of this project is important to me, and I need to feel secure that you can get it done; Can you help me by giving me a few meeting times that you are sure you would be able to attend. This certainty will help me feel more confident in our partnership.”

    In-conclusion-ipsum

    These four simple communication practices, although seemingly obvious, when practiced mindfully, can deeply improve all areas of one’s communication and interactions with others.

    If we use these practices in our self-talk and be more understanding and forgiving of our flaws, we stand a chance to improve our relationship with ourselves – and let the cup floweth over.

    Did you find these tips useful?

    Do you have any tips or stories of your own when you felt a practice or mindset improved your communication? 

    Please share your story, let’s communicate 🙂

  • On Kindness

    On Kindness

    Contemplation of ‘Why?’ we learn, adhere to, and behave in certain ways has always intrigued me – one such question is:

    “Why do we find it necessary to be kind?”

    One of the many tediously bland, and reasonless, lessons we are taught by adults when we are kids is the importance of having manners, using the magic words (please, and thank you), and ultimately to be “nice” and “kind” as a person and to others.

    We accept this lesson and abide by its mechanics of superficial social normalcy and grow to be adults who are simply swifter and more versed in the platitudes of gratitude than our younger-former selves.

    But, why is kindness important? Why is it so necessary?

    I do not have the answer, but consider this:

    Consider the idea of a world in which others were not kind; it would come with revelations we so desperately endeavored to disallow ourselves the simple awareness that we are deeply sensitive to our unconvinced legitimacy for existing. The alarming sensitivity to our own value, our worth, our claims to happiness and love, our own goodness and our uncomprehending deservedness of attention, acknowledgment, and our ultimate fate and legacy.

    We are taught kindness not for others but with the hope of its return to us. We despair for the validation against our own self-loathing through the tiniest of gestures that we are bestowed, like a smile, a door held open, anything to convince us against our inner pains and battles of questioning our worthiness to continue.

    Kindness being traded as a currency from which we purchase little plots of emotional survival. After all, if there is no one around to see our shattering hearts, does it make a sound?

    Once we learn the value and power kindness bestows upon us – the ability to be the savior of another from their own self-contempt – the kinder we become through the desperate need of others to be kind to us.

    As we grow in our understanding of self-knowledge, we do not cling to social norms and manners as a cause for a kinder world but do so through the awareness of the existence of the duality of this world – if it’s not kindness, we are left with cruelty, or worse; indifference.

    We grow kinder through our pain and our acute desperation for it to end and ultimately, our desirous craving of some evidence of our right to exist.

    Be kind.

  • In Praise of short-term love

    In Praise of short-term love

    Nothing lasts forever, and never has forever had such a short life span as in love and relationships.

    It was probably the French-Swiss film director, Jean-Luc Godard, who said it best:

    “A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.”

    (more…)

  • In Praise of Melancholy

    In Praise of Melancholy

    As a species and a society, we have grown to over romanticize and popularize happiness and have exiled all feelings of the contrary to the unpopular and unwanted crevices of human emotion.

    We strive only to increase those things that make us happy or that bring happiness to us, and at the slightest surfacing of alternate emotions we do everything we possibly can to “cheer” ourselves up and those around us. We forcibly excise sadness and inflate happiness.

    We forget, or at least we do not realize, that what makes us complete individuals is our ability to access the full spectrum of human experience as well as the whole psycho-emotional range – low and high – enabling us to create rich, multi-dimensional, and meaningful lives. (more…)

  • Poem: Already gone.

    Poem: Already gone.

    (This is a poem about the thoughts & feelings that so many suffer with daily.)

    “He fought so hard“,
    people would say.
    And he did,
    he did,
    until he didn’t.

    Gone, long before his heart stopped beating.
    In a moment living merely became the passing of time.
    He was defeated by the long hard struggle
    of being alive.

    He looked upon life and realised that everyone
    should have the right to reject this gift
    that they had never asked for.
    Was it not more selfish to demand of another
    that they endure the intolerable pain of existence?

    In the end it takes more courage to stay
    than to leave and everyone leaves eventually,
    Everyone is going to hurt you.
    He wished to leave, to give in
    before He could see the rest leave too.

    They taught him how to give up,
    They gave up on him.
    He gave up on him.
    He gave up.
    He gave.
    Gave.
    He poured all of his soul into the world,
    He was now empty with nothing more to give.

    He did not mean to drown. He was to swim until he sank,
    It was not quite the same thing.
    As an anchor, touching the depths of the sea,
    It was comforting to know he could sink no further.

    He could no longer see the point of getting up.
    What was in this new day to look forward to?
    All he was doing was suffering sunrises,
    And the sun will rise again,
    But one day he wouldn’t.

    One mans treasure is another’s curse.
    What he once saw as a curse,
    He now saw as a treasure,
    For he was no longer the same man.

    For weeks he was afraid he may leave,
    and then he was afraid that he wouldn’t.
    There were so many things he could have become.
    But he will remain, made up of possibilities,
    for he was already gone.

    Words, lasting longer than people.

  • My Talk on Mental Wellness at WordCamp Cape Town 2016

    My Talk on Mental Wellness at WordCamp Cape Town 2016

    At WordCamp Cape Town this year, I gave talk on Mental Wellness, the WordPress Community, and You. An unusual talk for a tech conference, but one which needed to be spoken about – and I had no idea how it would go down.


    Watch on WordPress.tv

    https://twitter.com/maxbarners/status/774164897810657280

    Summary:

    The main point of this talk was to raise awareness at the intensity, the struggle, and the seriousness of various Mental Wellness issues within our current space.

    To raise the awareness of Employers who have Employees with issues, for Employees to understand their colleagues and employers better, for people to change the way they think about mental health in general.

    To remove the stigma that mental wellness issues have, especially in the working environment, and even more so in our daily lives for those who live with it.

    During my talk, I told my story. Maybe one day I will talk about it more here, but here are the main points I touched on:

    • We have too many people living in our midst who need help, but do not get it, and who are too afraid by the stigma to seek it and talk out.
    • I was one of them, I said the three hardest words during my talk: I have depression.
    • As a society, when someone breaks their arm, we run to sign their casts, but when someone has a mental issue we run the other way. We are okay with any body part breaking down, except our brains, our minds. This needs to change.
    • When you have a broken leg, you cannot leave it outside the office doors when you walk in in the morning – why do we expect this too of people who have mental health issues?
    • People should be as okay with speaking to someone on a regular basis, like a therapist, life coach, psychologist or psychiatrist. We should have subscriptions to these just as we have gyms subscriptions for our physical wellness.
    • Employers need to be more open and understanding, currently we are very far away from this.
    • Employees need to be more open with helping themselves, and seeking the help they need, or being supportive of their peers who need it.
    • We all need to be more open and understanding of the current state of Mental Wellness in the world.
    • When we ask people “How are you?” we need to starting caring about their truthful reply. When we are asked “How are you?” we need to start being more open and brave to give an honest reply. On the day of WordCamp, before my talk, I was asked sixteen times how I was, I lied sixteen times.
    • Started the WordPress Hashtag called #WPHugs, a way of sharing, appreciating and caring within the community.
    • I need you, you need us, we need each other. People need people.
    • When someone has an issue, in my case depression, people believe that its simply because of the things going on in their lives that are not going well. This is often furthest from the truth. In my case, life was at its best and I was depressed, absent, and in that time I started losing hold of life: Been through break-ups, losing friends, losing a home, feeling more hopeless, work performance dropped, and not being able to have any say or control of any of it. Those around me thought I was depressed, because these things happened. No, because I was depressed these things happened.
    • Depression is something that we know to be so common, yet know and speak the least about, as with all mental wellness issues. Its time this ended, I began the end of silence by telling the world my story, maybe you would be brave enough to tell yours? Or open enough to listen to anothers?
    • As an open source community that relies on the work of the people behind the scenes that make this possible, we need to also spread the idea of 5 for the future for ourselves, you cannot pour from an empty cup so before giving back, start giving within.
    • Stop the Silence, Remove the Stigma, Care.

    After my talk, so many people opened their hearts out to me and for that I am extremely grateful. I was more than surprised at how well this was received and about how many people had been suffering in silence and are now brave enough to speak out.

    Cory Miller, a very brave man told his story which inspired me to tell mine, will you tell yours? You can leave a comment or send me a link (Totally open to coffee too.)

  • Dear Mothers

    Dear Mothers,
    Please forgive us children who do not understand
    That You offer only a helping hand.
    A hand that has the strength to hold up the sky
    and we reject you and we make you cry…
    Please forgive us…

    I have seen the love of mothers, of all mothers
    with a love unmatched, unfathomable, unconditional.
    A mothers love is love in its truest and purest form
    given to all her beloved children.
    You show love how love should be.

    How cursed am I that God fashioned me into a man
    for i shall never know the joys of being a mother.

    The joys of carrying within me the life of another.
    The joys of holding in my arms the life that has come
    from within me.

    The joys of having two souls occupy my body.
    But I shall never know these joys as anything other than a witness,
    a witness to the most beautiful thing in existence.
    The Love shared between mother and child.

    Kahlil Gibran said that Your children are not your own.

    Yes, your children are indeed not your own,
    They are the children of this world.
    And Dear Mothers,
    Although you may not have given birth to me,
    You are my mother too –
    all mothers to all children.

    Dear Mothers,
    We grow up believing you are invincible,
    infallible and immortal – nothing can hurt our mother
    because she is strong, the strongest being we know.
    And yet, we forget that you are human too
    and time will oneday take you from us
    too soon… it will always be too soon.

    And while you live in this mortal world
    you nurture us, you feed us, you love us
    and the moment we can do these things without you
    Dear Mother, we forget you and all you have done for us.
    We strive for “freedom and Independence”
    We want to “make our own decisions”
    We curse you and cast you away…

    and yet, you never stop loving us.
    Your love defines the word “Unconditional”
    for in your every heartbeat we hear the rhythm
    say, “No matter what you do, I will always love you!”
    ..da-dum…da-dum…da-dum…………………………

    We have never stopped to think of the pain of our Mothers,
    Who have children grow up to be ungrateful and uncaring,
    and when their child hurts another, the mother sits crying
    as if it was her fault the child was the cause of another’s dying.
    We know that no Mother brings up their child to be murderers,
    just as no mother brings up their child to be murdered…

    We think we feel pain.
    When we bruise our knees and hurt our elbows, mama kissed it better.
    When we ‘grow-up’ we’re ‘too old’ for our mothers love because
    no one could ever know our pain and our pain is great,
    We curse you for always trying to help for it is the nature
    of love to want to ease the pain of the object of love –
    who loves more truly than a mother loving her child?
    Yet we charge you for interfering.
    “Leave me alone!”
    “Stay out of my life!”
    Never will we ever say such words we would do anything to be able to swallow.

    But nothing compares to a mothers love
    and nothing compares to a mothers pain.
    To be unappreciated by ones own children,
    or worse rejected and cursed…

    What hurts more than a C-Section Birthing Dead Babies?

    Thank God for not fashioning me into a woman
    for I shall never know such pain as that of a mother.

    My Dear Mothers,
    I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.
    Please forgive me,
    I love you,
    Thank you.

  • On loving and being loved

    We talk of love as if it were just one thing:

    in fact, it’s two very different moves, Loving and Being Loved.

    You start to grow up when you stop focusing on the latter and get involved with the former.

    Original: On loving and being loved

  • Surviving Suicide: Replying to my own suicide note.

    Surviving Suicide: Replying to my own suicide note.

    A few years ago, I tried to kill myself (Don’t worry, that is far behind me now). (more…)

  • 2015 Year in Review

    2015 Year in Review

    This has been quite the year: I moved cities, spoke at some major events, started out in a fairly new industry, survived, had many ‘firsts’ and successes, as well as a lot of failures too. (more…)