Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Daily Coping 22 Jul 2022

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

    Today’s tip is to challenge negative thoughts. Find an alternative interpretation.

    In general, I tend to be a positive person. Not always, but most of the time. That being said, I do get negative about conflicts and discord when I don’t get along with others. Most of the time, I do get along, which is good for my mental health.

    I’ve had some concerns lately about how I interact with a new person in my life. I will deal with this person regularly across the next year (maybe longer), and I don’t know them as well as I’d like. We had some tough interaction getting started, more about a situation than us not getting along. This lingered a bit as a decision was put off.

    However, it was easy for me to take the disagreement personally. I struggled a bit to not feel that something was my fault, or it was the other person’s fault. In either case I felt upset, a little angry, sad, and concerned. Not good emotions to hold on to.

    In talking things out with my wife, I tried to look at things from another point of view, from the other person’s, from an independent view, as if this were someone else. I could see that there might be other reasons why we hadn’t come to a quick, smooth, easy resolution.

    Finding an alternative interpretation was good for me to step back and not take things personally. It isn’t resolved as of this writing, but hopefully soon.

  • Daily Coping 21 Jul 2022

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

    Today’s tip is to write down your worries and save them for a “worry time.”

    There are plenty of things I worry about. Perhaps not as many as others, but I do have concerns and anxiety about different things in my life (work, family, friends, world, etc.).

    One of my concerns is with the data community, speakers, and diversity. I worry about this in many facets and am unsure of how to move forward or what to do.

    Rather than be concerned, I make some notes, I chat with people about ideas, and I slowly think about it over time. But, I set aside some time to worry about it and let it go most of the time.

    Most of the time that works. Not always, but most of the time.

  • A Culture That Allows Mistakes

    Building a culture that promotes teamwork, efficiency, retention, and other positive attributes can be challenging. While many organizations want accountability and responsibility, it is easy for managers to tip over into a blame-and-chastise pattern. When someone makes a mistake and a deadline is missed or a client gets upset, how do you respond?

    I saw an article that gives some examples from the cybersecurity world about how to build a culture that allows mistakes and forgives them. We all make mistakes, and we should strive to correct them while working to avoid repeating the same mistake. But we will make mistakes again in the future, so how do we deal with them?

    One of the challenges with building a strong culture that is productive is with management. Far too many people react poorly when things go wrong. I find this is a similar challenge to parenting, where we often struggle to let go of control and accept that mistakes will occur. We can also worry that we will be blamed for others’ mistakes and want to push our employees or children to avoid mistakes. Often our reactions are more fear-based, for ourselves or even for others’ safety. However, we can’t completely avoid things going wrong. It’s never worked for me, either at work or at home.

    There are plenty of articles on creating blameless cultures (one, two, and searches), most of which give reasoning why this works better and hints on what you can do. For many of us, these might feel like a dream we cannot chase. With some managers, the idea of even broaching the topic might be too scary. In those situations, I might try discussing the ideas with peers and perhaps implementing ideas with them, rather than trying to convince management.

    Ultimately culture requires support from those in charge. Management has to actually believe in a culture that tolerates and accepts mistakes, while still striving to reduce their occurrence. Everyone deserves to make mistakes and recover from them. We’d like to prevent repeat mistakes, but those will happen. My goal is to work to be better over time and expect others to do the same. While I might need to move someone to a new job or even let them go, it wouldn’t be because of making a few mistakes. It would be because of constant mistakes without making an effort to change their behavior and be better.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.

  • Daily Coping 20 Jun 2022

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

    Today’s tip is to look for a positive spin on a difficult situation.

    I’ve got a few deadlines coming up at work. These are for some disparate projects, and they all require some effort and work. One is something I tackled, one is something I agreed to, and a couple are things that got thrust upon me.

    This creates stress, as I still have my “normal” work as well as some travel.

    It would be easy to get upset and angry, to get worried and increase my stress. What I’ve learned to do better is treat these are opportunities. I will get a few things done, learn a few more, and push off some other items do deal with these 3 things.

    I’m not always good at this, but when I can do this, everything is a little better. I still have some extra work, but my stress level is better when my attitude is more positive.