 Hello, everyone, I'm Thomas Cowell. So I lead our front-end mobile development and other sorts of random things that you touch in terms of technology, not something else, for sacred nitro. And today I was contemplating, what do I want to talk on? So I thought, why don't I do a talk on why jQuery is superior to Ember? Yeah, wrong audience. So I go, why not IE6 should be, it shouldn't be retired. We should keep it. It's an amazing browser. Unfortunately, Microsoft has roomed that for me and is trying to expel XP. So I landed on this topic. Why everyone in your team secretly hates you? But given the sort of topics I was thinking about, maybe we should just rename it to why everyone hates me. You may be wondering, why can I speak on these sorts of things? So who am I, right? I'm a developer. Check. People don't like me. I probably smell. I'm a little bit obnoxious, rude. I build relationships with clients. So I'm bound to upset somebody at some stage. I advise on technology. So I'm bound to be wrong and upset somebody. I lead teams. Well, that's obvious. And I've had my shares of successes and failures. And by that, I mean, there's a lot of people around me who felt the pain of actually living with me or working with me or all the other things. So someone actually the other day said this to me. I told them the title, you're a boss. That's why everyone hates you. But that's no secret, right? So I'm bound to be hated because I am a boss. Because of territory, right? Richard earlier on was saying that he's got one employee that's himself. He infuriates himself and he really wishes he could fire himself, but nothing like that done. So going back to the topic, right? Why does everyone secretly hate you? Why is there this tension between people, all this kind of frustration and angst that we may feel with each other at certain times? And really, actually the topic, the kind of thing I want everyone to understand is, regardless of your role. So regardless of whether you're a junior developer, a senior developer, lead a team, lead an organization at any level, how do you get to work in great teams, right? Because actually, every day you spend more time with the people you work with than anyone else in your life other than sleeping in the same bed with somebody else, right? You're not gonna spend as much time with anyone else. So really it's like, how do we get great teams? How do we have these great experiences at work where we actually value those people we work with? And when we go home, we feel that this is a place of we have friends here, we have people we work with, it's enjoyable to come to work, even if sometimes the work isn't always the best, it's an enjoyable experience. So my hope being, what does it mean to make a great team? How do we proactively build and support teams becoming or being great, right? So some teams are great with the way they are, they've managed to hit their sort of rhythm, they've got their great experience, everyone kind of gets along, you had that one person come into the team and the team sort of gelled, it was like the magical moment, like Disney moment, it was that sort of thing. And then also I really wanna share some of my experiences, right? I'm no longer 20 years old, I might still be a bit of a punk, but not as much, it's been beaten out of me enough times. So I wanna share with you guys the kind of experiences that I've picked up along the way to kind of give you guys a little more insight on what's involved in being great, being in a team. So let's start with what are the characters, right? What are the actors? What are the characteristics that undermine being in a team that's great? Our Lord and Savior, the office Jesus. Right, what's his catchphrase? You couldn't have done it without me. This company is awesome because I'm here. Everyone, you know, every project I touch is magical, right? You know what, no, no, no, you don't need to do it, I'll do it because I'll do it better than you, right? They're the person, the only person in the building who can save a project or save something, right? They believe, right? They have this innate belief that they're worthy of adoration and exaltation, right? So they should be held above everyone else because they're so amazing. And actually, these people are actually really nice people and they're great people to work with most of the time, right? But it comes to that moment where, because they've stepped on a few people's toes, they've been a little too big for their shoes where actually undermine the people around them because they're not thinking about those people around them and giving them an opportunity to succeed and they're thinking only about their sort of role, their kind of deification of themselves. So we're gonna move on to the next character, the massive debater, also known as Mr. Know-It-All. One of my favorite Primus songs is Mr. Know-It-All and the sort of chorus of it is, well, that's a matter of opinion, right? So it's this idea that there, anything you may say as an individual, right? Jamie comes up to me, says to me, you know, I think Ember's the best thing. Well, that's a matter of your opinion, right? And to me, you're trying to deflate them. You're trying to, this person's trying to, you know, you know, say, no, I have a better opinion. You know, you are just a mere mortal. Somehow I have this vision of the world that you don't seem to understand because I've understood way more than you, right? And so therefore they're always kind of trying to debate, trying to sort of make sure that their opinion is the most important thing, that it's always heard, that it's the primary opinion. And really, this is another, you know, this person's not bad to work with, right? You can have a really good time with them down at the pub talking about politics, religion, why EmberJS is 10 times better than Angular, you know, whatever. They're actually a really great person to work with, right? So this is not somebody who's awful to work with, like let's remember about this all these people. This is a great person to work with. The problem here, the kind of thing that the characteristic that they do is actually undermine, those people are a bit more soft-spoken. Those people who, their opinion takes a little more time to be formulated and they're not really sure but they're trying to figure it out and they're just shut down, right? And it undermines people's ability to kind of really feel that they're open and able to express within a team. So we're gonna move on to our next character. Right, does anyone kind of guess what his name is? He is the porcupine, right? He is the, his catchphrase, I will not say out loud because this is recording. Everyone's heard this, right? He shows Monday morning, I've been guilty of this sometimes, someone shows up my desk, chirpy, hi, great, you know, like, I wanna talk to you about this thing, right? But this attitude doesn't exist Monday morning, it exists Monday morning, Monday afternoon, Monday evening, Tuesday, Thursday, Wednesday, Friday, all the time, right? They're grumpy, they're abrasive, they're easily threatened, they're ready for a fight all the time and really, they're always in need of a good hug, right? You know this person, right? This is the paternal instinct of me, guys, so. And really, for them, nothing is good, right? There's, you know, the world is shit. You know, it's rubbish, you know, like, oh my God, everything doesn't quite make the measure. And this person, they're not, they can be nice, but they're probably someone you don't wanna work with because you don't wanna have a conversation with them about the fact that their code didn't link or the add-on they wrote doesn't comply with the pattern that's set out in the documentation, right? Because they're gonna argue with you about everything. And they're generally quite negative, which just drains the sort of the energy out of people, right? And this person's really easy to spot, right? You know, you go into a room, they're sitting in the corner, they're grumpy, they probably got one other person with them who's like, being grumpy with them. And that's about it, right? You know, in a large party. So we're gonna move on to the next, the character, right? I love Gilbert. I don't know, there's always something kind of fascinating about it. Almost as much as a oatmeal, but that's a side conversation. So, does anyone have a guess what this guy is? I did nothing today, let's look up here. Slippery Sam, AK, Slacker Sam, right? His catchphrase, worked on my machine, I had nothing to do with it. Actually, sorry, we're all guilty of this, worked on my machine, but this is a person who knows what's happening on Reddit, on Twitter, on Google+, on Facebook, on LO, on the BBC. They know everything about what's happening on the world. Do they know what's happening on the project? Well, we'll leave that to the conversation their bosses can have with them. They're always very busy, right? Busy, busy, busy, busy. Do you know what they're doing? Maybe not. And overtime is an opportunity to say goodbye to everyone and not hang about. And I'm kind of overdramatizing this person, and this person's actually quite nice to work with, they're quite knowledgeable, they're an expert, right? But they leave a gap on the team, right? This is where you wanna work with people that you feel you can rely on. You want the kind of this band of brothers thing where you feel that you're all in it together, that you're all there to the end, that, yeah, there's times to flex, and someone may have to go home for some reason, but you guys are all there, you're all trying to do it together, you're all sharing that load together. But this person kind of like shirks away and reneges on the responsibility in a way. And it kind of leaves you with this frustration with them because you don't know how to deal with it. Moving on to the next person. I love this picture. So, I'm sorry for Leonardo, I always mispronounce his last name. Deep Caprio, or whatever his last name is, I'd call him DeCrapio, you know. So this is a great picture. I wasn't even in the selfie, right? This is Winging William. This is the guy who is always complaining. Something's always wrong. Somebody's always done something wrong. And they're a nice guy when they're not whinging, right? There's something to complain about, right? So probably tonight, they're gonna complain about my talk for some reason. They're gonna complain about the pizza. They're gonna complain about the beer. They're gonna complain about the soft drinks. They're gonna complain about the wifi not working properly. They're gonna complain about the seating. They're gonna complain about the lighting. There's something that they'll find to complain about, right? And this person always has something to kind of nitpick and pick at and kind of make sure that, you know, people are put in their place is they've not quite done this right. And this person, really, they're actually quite a nice person. And you might join in the complaining as well, because we're all prone to have a little good whinge every once in a while. We're a bit frustrated. Good vent, right? This is the person you whinge with regularly. But actually, there's a real unhealthiness to the interactions with this person. And they drain the kind of energy out of you. They drain any sort of positive things that have happened. They're not celebrating their complaining, right? And they're very kind of difficult at times to work with. So just so you guys know, this is the disclaimer. I could have put it at the front, but it appeared here. I'm not intentionally singling any of you out, right? Apologies if I do. If you feel guilty, gravely conscious is working. It means that there's hope for you. But this is just to show you I'm not singling you out. We're all offenders in this, right? We're all offenders in varying degrees. And I will put myself in front of you, right? I have been an offender of this, right? I have a terrible mustache in this photo. Yes, I have a terrible mustache, right? I've been guilty of all these things as well, right? You can see that. I've kind of gone in all this, you know, I thought it was better than everyone else. Kind of was a bit grumpy. A little too long, a little too often. I complained a little too much. I argued with people because I thought it was right for a little too long. And generally, I'm just a big pain in the backside. And, you know, so we can all kind of feel that, you know, there's safety in this conversation we're having, right? And right, stop whinging. This is, I have to remind myself, right? It's important, right? So what do we think are the qualities, right? What are the things that everyone kind of, if you were kind of thinking about that person who like exemplifies the great things, not that the characters are laid out there who are kind of exemplify the negative things, but the people who exemplify the great things. What are the sort of things we're looking for? So it's really about everyone having a common shared goal or vision, right? So it's this idea of we all, all as individuals need a direction, right? We need a focus. We need something we're working towards. We need to be able to achieve. We want to work with the end in mind, right? Because actually working for the end in mind means that we're able to make decisions along the way that we can kind of go, well, that's not important and that's important, right? So it's that kind of focus, that shared common understanding. And also it's really important that all of us in a team, if we're working in a team, that we're all aligned to the same goals. Because this is where some of the friction comes out. And if, you know, somebody may not be aligned to the goals, but they need to be on their way to getting to it. Some people take longer than others. You know, it happens. I'm probably one of those people. And I think the other thing is, why are adverts repeated so many times, right? Because you need to be reminded of something. Why do children, I know this personally, repeat themselves until you listen to them? Because they need to remind you that they're most important and that you need to listen to them, right? So it's this idea of why do we talk about, you know, why do businesses talk about share visions and goals? Why do they repeat it? Why does, you know, why do we come to Enbridge AS? Because we wanna talk about the importance of Enbridge, right? So this is the importance of repetition. Now, just for clarification, it's not about bowing before one person, right? So, you know, someone, there's gonna be someone who kind of goes and tries to use this as like, oh yes, you know, I have the vision. We should all follow what I'm saying, right? It's about us sharing it, us all kind of just signing up to it. And actually, even if one person sets up the vision, we all need to kind of be participants in it to it. We need to all agree to it. We need to all work towards it as well as agree. Right, next, moving on to the next one. I love this Farside comic. I don't know how many of you guys know Farside. I was nicknamed Gary in high school because that was me. That boy, right? Not great understanding what the sign said on the door. So really, you know, the next thing is about we need to be people in a team who are willing and understand that in order to have success, sometimes we all need to make mistakes along the way, right? And it's not, it's the kind of, it's not just the boss, right, who has to accept it. It's people around you, right? So somebody's tried something out. It's a new thing. You didn't quite work. Instead of getting pissed off with them, we need to kind of help them get it right. Really, it's about giving people space, right? We want people in teams, you as an individual, right? You're the junior guy, right? Your boss isn't quite getting it right. Well, he might be figuring out what it is to be a boss. He may not have understood how to engage with you in the right way. You need to kind of understand and work with him to grow that person, him or her, sorry, not to be gender biased, to understand what it means to be a boss. You know, I think there's another key thing. We don't want the face palm moments, right? We don't want those moments where it's like, oh my goodness, I can't believe you did that, to yourself, right? It's that kind of like what will, it's not a license to be sloppy, right? You know, learning is about kind of figuring things out, trying to understand it and then work towards something. It's not an excuse for me to kind of go, meh, I'll figure it out. It's a, you know, this is kind of just to sort of say, this was probably me years ago where I go, meh, I'll figure it out. And we don't want to do that because actually that's a little bit destructive. We want to learn and grow, but kind of apply a bit more rigor around it. So moving on to the next principle. And yeah, I got it from a business site. Let's look at that picture. It's great, isn't it? So really it's about collaboration, right? So we want to be able to discuss, we want to be openly share, we want to collaborate, we want to, you know, we want to be able to feel that we have a voice in this situation. And really communication is the key. And actually, misunderstanding is the enemy. You haven't quite got something or somebody's saying something you don't want to agree with? Trying to figure out where are they saying that? What are they saying, right? It's about opening up those terms of communication because actually code isn't what makes or breaks great products. It's actually our understanding of what we're trying to build and that vision we're sharing. So getting that communication of them, making sure we're really kind of talking about what's going on so that when you go to do something that's going to break the build massively, it doesn't come as a surprise to everyone because you had a conversation about it. And really this is not about wrong answers, wrong comments, wrong things. It's about, you know, some people say things and it's because they've not quite got the right language. Maybe they've misunderstood. Maybe they've not kind of got it, right? There are times where I talk to some of the guys in my team where they're talking about technology and I always describe it as the penny drop moment, right? You can learn and learn and learn. All of a sudden you get that clarity, right? You've kind of gone through the forest and you can see the vista. And someone maybe on that journey of kind of working their way through the forest and they haven't quite got to the place where the forest breaks and they can see the vista. And this is why we need to kind of discuss, collaborate, try to figure things out together. This is not what we're trying to do, right? Put people down. Tell them that what they're saying is rubbish, right? You don't want to shut them down. The sort of, the antithesis to open an open collaborative environment is probably the massive debater, right? The guy who's just like, you're wrong. And let me tell you why you're wrong, right? There's a little more camaraderie involved in it than just kind of shutting somebody down. Right, so moving on to the next characteristic. We want to encourage growth in yourself or myself, speaking about myself and others around me. And the reason I use word encourage because I have two small children in terms of them trying to learn to walk. I didn't say to my daughter or my son when they fell down and started crying because they smacked their face on the floor, you terrible child. How could you have got that wrong, right? They're a baby, they're figuring it out, right? You want to say, oh, well done, two steps. You know, three steps, right? You know, parents get super excited by this. I don't know why, it's crazy, but parents do. There's something that baked in them. And we want to kind of take this mentality and not that we all want to be parents because I don't want to have 500 children, but we all want to sort of take this attitude, which is if somebody is a junior developer or somebody is a junior in your team, you want to sort of help them celebrate the small successes they get, the learning they get, the things they gain, the sort of adaptions they've now got from where they were six months ago, three months ago, a year ago. And it's, you know, we're in it together, right? So I love this picture. And this is a bit cheesy, this picture, but I love it because a dog does not have opposable thumbs. A dog cannot use the water fountain. The small boy can't reach the water fountain to get the water for the dog, but he has opposable thumbs. So he's able to turn on the water fountain so the dog can get to it. And it's this kind of like weird sort of camaraderie and this sort of shared thing where actually they're all working towards the same goal. They both can't individually do it, but collectively they're able to get to that goal that they've set out as a group. Now, yes, this is not what we're trying to accomplish. Sharing with people about their witness or helping people understand their weakness is not about putting them down, right? It's not about putting your foot upon their head and making them bow before your awesomeness. It's not about any of that. It's about helping people where they are to lift them up and to raise them up. Yeah, it's a brilliant picture. And so the next one, I am not any sort of football supporter. Just in case anyone's confused by this picture, I actually don't understand football because I'm from Canada where we play soccer. So just get that right. So actually your team, right? Your team is actually about the values you instill into it. It's about the choices you make as an individual and interactions and the relationships you build in it. Do you want it to be a more caring team? Right, it's not about a caring team. You want it to be more caring. Well, then care, right? Do you want the team to try out new things? Well, then go tinker, right? You're not on a project right now. You've got a couple hours on the bench or a couple hours spare. Your boss is saying, I don't know, read a book. Go tinker, right? You want to instill values in an organization? You, as an individual, regardless of level, are able to do it by actually enacting that desire within yourself. I, as a boss, respond to that sort of stuff really positively, right? I have guys in my team who've done something out. They show it to me. They're super excited. I'm gonna celebrate that because actually, they've taken initiative and they've done something. And they're building a value into the team that really kind of helps grow the team. I love all of it's established. You guys actually know the Muppet Show, is this kind of going above some of your heads, right? So these guys sat in their box and they would applaud people and in the same token, they would destroy them, right? So it's not about setting people up. Every single joke they would make from their box seats would set up the actor in the Muppet Show and then immediately the follow-on, the pun, was knocking them down. And actually, when we're building people up and we're trying to grow them in encouragement, we don't really wanna have this attitude because yeah, that kind of doesn't quite help. It makes people feel poor. So what have I learned, right? Change is not always in my power to affect, right? I don't have control over all my circumstances. I don't have control over everything around me. Yet my power to affect change in my attitude, right? Is always within my power, right? So actually, your perspective, now this kind of, this has taken me more than 30-something years to learn, right? I used to kind of rail against people, go ugh, you know, why don't you change? And actually, I wanna affect change in an environment. I wanna affect change around other people. I wanna make something of a situation. I want somebody to be different. Actually, it's about my attitude towards that person, right? And this is kind of the juicy nugget. This is something that anyone at any level of life, any experience can actually act upon. And actually, your mindset is, your team is what you choose it to be, empowered by your change, right? Or what we put into our teams is reflected in what we get out, right? So actually, you put good stuff into your team, right? So I as a parent, if I am harsh with my children, they will reflect that back to me because the parent analogy is kind of thick because I'm doing a lot of that right now, right? But it's like if you're harsh to somebody, how are they gonna reflect it back, right? Think about relationships you've had where somebody's been super harsh with you. What do you wanna do? You wanna punch them in the nose, right? Or that's probably the polite version of it, right? There's other things you wanna do. So actually, what you share with people, what you give to people, they will reflect back to you. And in teams, it's the same sort of thing. And it's quite subtle because you think about guys like Gandhi and Malcolm X and all these sorts of guys. These great sort of people who changed. Actually, it started with them. The sort of things they put into culture, the things they put into the people around them influenced the change that actually had such a pronounced effect on our world and our culture. So I wanna commend to you guys these three books, right? My brother for the last decade has been telling me, actually probably the last two decades, that's how old I am, has been telling me to read the seven habits of a highly effective person. This summer, I broke down and read it. I was, no, no, no. That's dorky, right? It's crap, it's rubbish, it's not great, right? It is a really good book. It is a bit cheesy because it's written by an American, right? Being from the United States of Canada, I can attest to this, but it's a really good book. And it's kind of got some really powerful thinking around it that regardless of level, you can actually learn. These are the two five assumptions of team and leadership and self-deception. They're really good. They're kind of probably things that you need to, if you're in leadership, they're great books for you, but they're not as, but they're accessible to everyone because actually the guy who writes leadership and self-deception, I read that probably in a weekend and I thought I was reading something that was fiction, right? And it's like, it's quite amazing this way these guys convey the stories and it really kind of awakens your mind to actually what's going on. So just to remind everyone, I'm Thomas Cowell. I lead our team over here. If you have any questions, you can hit me on Twitter. I don't know how good I am at replying, but if you do, I'll try to reply. I'm on LinkedIn. If you have questions, you can hit me there as well. I'm gonna leave you with a thought. Be gracious. Thank you. And do you have any questions? Can you put the contact back? So maybe I must have put it up. Have a question. Right. Go on, Jimmy. Why did you change your Twitter handle? Why did I change my Twitter handle? Because no one knew the head of the hair bottle this was. And I got mocked by a bunch of people in the office and I thought, you know, I'm gonna grow up and I'm gonna become a mature adult in society most of the time, well maybe on Twitter, and change my Twitter handle. So, any other questions? Thoughts? Does anyone disagree with me? Jake, we're just better, right? Any initial thoughts, things? Go on, Jimmy. Okay, so were you, was there a moment where you were promoted to being a boss so that it sort of happened gradually? And if it happened gradually, when did you realize that you needed to be acting like a boss? I became a boss and then I realized after banging my head against the wall quite a lot, screwing up quite a lot of things, not getting a lot of, I was quite cocky. To be quite honest with you guys, I was quite cocky when I first became a boss and it took a lot of grinding down, right? So there's kind of this life experience thing made me realize I'm not 20, I can't be full of myself, and really I'm not that awesome. I might be good and I joke about being awesome but I'm not that awesome and I don't know everything and I work with actually a pretty good group of people where I can learn a lot from it and it was that kind of epiphany moment where I saw people as my peers and even people who report to me as my peers that I started actually really learning from them much more and that's kind of what's motivated the thinking of this talk, yep. So you were cocky when you started out as a boss? Yeah. Do you think you became a boss because you're cocky? I love this question, go on. Or do you think being cocky as a boss helped you start out as a boss? I don't think I've lost my cockiness. I can be a little bit outrageous. I got accused of HR being a big mouth and loud mouth the other day. So I think being a boss is really about the qualities that you have as an individual to get people to follow you, right? So leadership, so I was having this conversation today, right, there's two people in the world, right? There's leaders and there's managers. Managers orchestrate things and keep them organized, right? Leaders, people follow. And I think I hope I'm a leader and I hope people follow me because that's what I'm trying to convey to people because actually that's what's gonna make me a good boss, a great boss, right? Because if people follow me, I'm probably hitting the psyche, I'm probably doing most things right. There's gonna be some people, right, you know, like the slide, like, of course everyone hates you, you're a boss, right? So there's gonna be a little bit of that as well, but I'm hoping that, you know, I can be balanced enough that, you know, people feel that I'm the sort of person that you approach and that I'm, you know, a good boss, right? You'll follow me. I don't know if you would have made a wrong or would you actually, that's... Yeah, so let me see if I can reiterate the question back to you in a kind of a synopsis for the video. So you're asking, do you hire on culture where people kind of match exactly what I've said is good culture or am I willing to hire with some gaps? I don't know anyone who's perfect. Do you guys know anyone who's perfect, right? So in my mind, you can't hire the perfect employee, you hire the one who's the best fit for your organization's culture and the best fit for your team's culture and somebody who brings a skill gap that you need to fill as well. So really it's kind of a combination of things. I would definitely avoid people who I don't think are a good cultural fit for my team. And I would tend to try to manage people where there are some cultural differences because actually it's more effective for them to sort of be brought into the team as opposed to being sort of left on the sidelines to fester. Does that answer your question? Cool, go on. I think a lot of people can be nurtured into teaching or upskilling juniors. But I think it takes a lot more to nurture and upskill someone who is maybe senior and looking to go from, I'm very good at what I do but I would like to manage others. Do you have any tips about how to take someone or had experience of taking someone that is senior up to a more managerial position? So you're saying somebody, so mentoring junior developers to become senior developers. Everyone's been a junior, so then. It's easier, right? How do you take someone who's a developer, who's a specialist in their experience and turn them into somebody who's able to be an effective leader and manager of teams, right? Yeah. I'll give you an E of two answer first, which is put a bag over their head and beat them senseless, which is not actually what you do. I use it as a joke partly because actually the hardest thing for us as developers to do when we become managers is to abandon our rhetoric as developers, which is technology is awesome. People suck, right? The problem is between the keyboard and the chair. It's not my technology, right? This is one of the real kind of difficulties that we have overcoming because we love technology, right? And I still love technology. I mean, you can talk to me about anything that I've kind of read up or interested and all like spout off at you about the amazingness of this technology, but it's really about kind of the appreciation of people. The other thing I realize is as developers, we've probably spent a lot of time in subculture and we don't understand what the rest of society does with it, right? I'm glad everyone's laughing, right? It's kind of like me, back when I was a senior developer, trying to go to a bar with a whole pile of bankers and picking up the hottest girl, right? I'm gonna fail the whole entire time. I'm gonna be laughed at. I might be beaten up, right? Right, because it's about kind of shifting our understanding of people, right? So a lot of what I do every day is having conversations. A lot of it is, I was talking to my second in my team today, we're having a catch up, and I was talking about something. What was the conversation we had today? We were talking about this slide deck and he pointed out a few things that I said that could be offensive, awesome, right? I talked to him about some of the things he said that might have been offensive, awesome. Did we talk about technology? Maybe, but it was more about a strategic level sort of thing. Do we talk about people? Yeah, a lot. Do we talk about the soft skills, the kind of the squishy stuff, the stuff that gets us girlfriends and husbands and wives, the stuff that makes us great parents, because we know how to engage with individuals. That was what we talked about because that's actually what leading and managing is more about, more so than our grasp of technology. And the customer guy asked back there about picking people in your team. When you're a junior person in a team and you can't pick the team and the team is painful, I've been there, right? It's not always easy. And I think it's easier for me as a lead to try to pick the right people. But when you've joined a team and the team is a bit awkward, this is where having some soft skills, having an ability to have build camaraderie with the old man in the team who tantrums every single time he doesn't get his way. I've been there, honestly. I've worked with that guy, right? That's the real skill, right? And I think the real ability to form strong relationships. Why do military guys get along so well, right? Because they have this real strong bond between each other. They might beat the living daylights out of each other, but they've still got a strong bond with each other. They've built this camaraderie and this sort of loyalty with each other. And that's kind of the key thing that a lot of what being a great leader and manager is being able to imbibe that characteristic in other people with you. You've got to have a good leader in order or a good manager to take you up to the next level. Because being left on your own, because I was a bit left on my own when I took over responsibility for this domain here, I made a lot of mistakes. Because I had someone who I could kind of talk to once every two weeks, and I had someone like daily working with me, and that's where really that, having somebody who can work with you, you can kind of go, do you know that conversation you had yesterday? Let's talk about better ways to talk about that, right? You know that conversation you had with that individual. They're, you know this about them. Oh, you didn't know this, great. Now that you understand this will affect how they respond to you because of this way, right? And that's where, if you can have that mentorship, it's amazing, right? You don't always get it, so you've got to try to figure out yourself, but yeah. Someone else had a question. Go on. I was going to ask, do you have any stories or tips with dealing with particular people who really embody some of those bad characters? The bad characteristics. Read the book, seven habits of a highly effective person. I think, sometimes you just got to walk away from those people, right? Sometimes you're able to build, find that hook, right? Find that the soft spot in them where you're able to build a bridge with them. Find something that you can reflect back to them. There's a story in the seven habits where there's this boss who's very difficult. He's kind of the office Jesus, right? And his team of senior management don't like working with them because they always feel a little by him. And one of the guys in the team starts trying to understand what this boss is interested in, anticipating his needs, figuring out what's driving him, being able to sort of engage with him at his level and in their relationship, dramatically transformed. Now, for the people who are positive, right? And it's just like a little bit of that negative stuff where you're trying to overcome it, build a relationship with them and then if they're open to being directed differently, help them because they may not realize it, right? I remember in my early 20s, one of my friends getting very cross with one of my friends because someone said something to me and I was like, what the hell is this person saying? Awful, blah, being really upset about it. My friend says, oh yeah, I've known that for a year. And I'm like, mate, why didn't you say something to me earlier? Because I wouldn't have had this awkward, really awkward situation. And we kind of kind of tried to figure it out and sometimes it's, you gotta have that trust in order to share those things and it's really about trying to build that trust first. Any other questions? More beer? More beer.