I the last post, I shared my transition from a Software Engineer to a Team Lead with you. Next, I tell you about my values and on goals, so that you can understand me and my motivation better.

Learning

Learning is very important in our industry and I really enjoy learning. Over the time, I realized that learning is more subtle as I thought.

In Germany, learning and qualifications are very formalized, and they come with certain certifications when you’re done. I used to believe that you can only learn by doing trainings and getting certificates. I was wrong. I learn the most when I pair with colleagues, attend at knowledge sharing session or just read daily through interesting blogs.

Values

I have some core values, which drive my (working) life, such as honesty, transparency, motivation, ownership and responsibilities. I believe, if you have a set of good values and use them for your work, you’ll get better day by day, because it compounds over time.

Feedback

Feedback is in important aspect in my daily work life, especially since I’ve become a team lead. My goal is to help people grow and for that I need to observe their behavior and interactions closely. I collect feedback systematically and present it in 1-on-1 meetings with my peers.

I’m convinced that feedback needs to be shared immediately and also personally, instead of written. I don’t believe in heavy 360-degree feedback processes with peer selection, review and discussion phase. Nobody is able to give appropriate feedback once a year to a set of peers. Also, it’s then too late to learn from this feedback.

Goals

Why I don’t like goals

I don’t believe in personal goals for the long run. I came to this conclusion, when I read the books from Nassim Taleb. He states, that people underestimate the role of luck in their lives.

This can be applied to personal goals. People underestimate the role of luck when they create smart goals. You can make the most sophisticated plan of boosting your career, but if you don’t have luck and meet the right people at the right time, you won’t be able to achieve it.

Don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean that you have no influence on your life. It only means that your desired outcome is definitely not guaranteed just by following a plan.

Instead, use your goals to open a trajectory that leads you close to your goal, but also leaves room for other opportunities.

Find below a figure that I’ve created for you.

Focus on habits instead

I don’t work with goals, I work rather with habits, mainly based on the idea of atomic habits by James Clear. In essence, I establish some beneficial habits, apply them day by day to get better. At some day, I’ll end up somewhere in my target zone. Most likely not where I would expect myself in the beginning, but somewhere close is also reasonable.

---