Personal Growth

The Importance of Emotional Intelligence for Software Developers

Giorgi Bazerashvili — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 10:13:43 +0000

The Importance of Emotional Intelligence for Software Developers Giorgi Bazerashvili Thu, 07/01/2021 - 14:13

As software developers, we have our image of what it means to be a good developer, and we also have a mental model of the road we started walking when we first entered the field as interns or as junior developers. Most of the time, we research what technical books to read, what courses to watch, which field to go into, web development, mobile development, or something else. If we choose web development, then our mental energy gets spent on deciding whether we want to be a front-end developer or a back-end developer. If, for example, we chose to work in the front-end, then we start the process of choosing the correct tool. We spend many hours thinking about whether it is Angular, React, or Vue that will make our career the most successful.

That’s all well and good, but there is something very foundational that you might miss if you don’t pay enough attention and get lost in the technicality.

There is a set of skills known as “soft” skills. It’s a term created in U.S Army in the late 1960s and it refers to a skill set that’s not technical, or that doesn’t employ any use of machinery.

Soft skills encapsulate all the personal traits and skills that you need and are fundamental to succeed in basically any field that you work in. They include skills of communication, listening, leadership, empathy, creative thinking, teamwork, self-control, self-awareness, speaking, assertiveness, work ethics, time management, context awareness, patience, focus, and even a sense of humor.

When was the last time you read a book or article or watched a course that taught you how to develop self-awareness or leadership abilities? But I’m sure you’ve read many articles on which framework or library to use, React or Angular. You get the point.

Soft skills include skills that are much harder to develop than technical skills. It requires a certain character to even realize that you can work on those. But, from my experience, you can certainly develop many of those to a degree that you don’t think are even possible for you yet.

For me to communicate how you can get better soft skills or why they are necessary, I have to talk about EQ (Emotional Intelligence).

Before we do that, let’s talk about IQ.

I’m sure you’ve heard about IQ many times. You might even consider yourself to have a high IQ and you think that it measures your intelligence somehow. And you also might have someone in your mind, like Albert Einstein, and attribute his success and genius to his high IQ. Alright, but I want to help you shift your perspective a bit.

Basically, what IQ does is it measures your logical reasoning to some degree. It tries to more or less accurately evaluate the functioning of your brain’s left side and is useful for certain things.

But the cultural blunder is that every one of us has heard of IQ but most of us haven’t heard of EQ even once. And I can’t even articulate the significance of EQ over IQ.

Your life is governed by your emotions, not by your reason. You are a much more emotional creature than you are logical. In actuality, emotions will override most of your logic. And if you look and observe parts of your life, you’ll see that it does. Just think of the last time you procrastinated even though you logically know that you shouldn’t. As developers, we fancy ourselves that we are logical and analytical, and actually, we are. But if we neglect the emotional side of ourselves, we get a version of us that is hard to communicate with, hard to work with, and hard to have fun with. And we become like a fish (us) in the water (emotions), who doesn’t even realize the importance of water and sometimes even neglects it. We are deeply wrapped up in our emotions, mostly unconsciously, and we need ways to deal with that.

Emotional Intelligence is a measure and an ability to become aware and correctly handle your emotions. It is also an ability that helps you harness your intuition more.

People with high EQ are in touch with emotions, and people with low EQ suppress and hide their emotions.

People with high EQ actually fully feel their own emotions, and also they notice and label emotions in other people as well. They have a much more accurate understanding of the origins of their different feelings and emotions. They go to the root to understand the reasoning behind their anger, fear, jealousy, envy, or even happiness and excitement. That’s why they know how to handle those because they have enough self-awareness to actually identify anger and fear as it’s happening and handle it correctly.

People with low EQ get lost in the content of their thoughts, which causes emotions. Unconscious thoughts cause unconscious emotions. Then they don’t have an option of responding and handling their emotions correctly. They lose responsibility (response-ability).

Software developers work in teams. We require to communicate with other human beings every day. We need to be aware of how our emotions and mind distort perceptions and we need to have tools for dealing with that. The tool is more consciousness and awareness of ourselves and the situations we find ourselves in. We need to be able to change perspectives, be open-minded to new and different ideas. We also need to be empathetic and consider other people’s opinions without defending our own. To understand other people, especially ones with different ideas than our own, we need to get out of our self-centered bubble and really consider alternative perspectives. That’s hard to do but it’s possible through being aware of your defense mechanisms.

We also need to manage ourselves. We need ways to motivate and inspire ourselves when necessary. You don’t have to wait for others to give you the motivation, you can get that yourself. You just have to know how.

There are tens of other traits that I can list here, but it will take a couple more dedicated articles to fully articulate the subtle distinctions that we need to make to understand the importance of EQ and soft skills better.

Lastly, I want to give you some ideas on what you can to do develop EQ and soft skills. First of all, you need more self-awareness.

You need to observe yourself and your mind more. You have to study the patterns and defense mechanisms of your ego and your mind. You have ideologies and ideas that don’t allow new ideas to penetrate. That’s what makes you super-serious and very defensive about everything. Just become aware of how that’s happening to you. It will help your career goals but especially your relationship endeavors. But as I’ve said, we relate to other humans during our software development careers. So, that skill is crucial.

Meditation will help you with developing more self-awareness over your thought patterns, triggers, and emotions. Also doing some yoga will take you from your over-logical mind to your body and emotions and you’ll feel once more what it’s like to just feel different things in your system and not analyze everything to death. You don’t have to approach yourself as logically as you approach your software projects. Remember that balance is the most important thing.

You can find meditation instructions on YouTube.

You can also start journaling. Just get pen and paper and begin writing your thoughts about things that bug you. Pour your emotions into it and don’t limit yourself. That way you can objectively observe thought patterns and that will make you more self-aware and ultimately develop your EQ even more.

You can read books on different soft skills that I mentioned. Information on how to develop each of those is out there. Just Google it.

In conclusion, I want you to look at your career as a combination of hard skills and soft skills. Obviously, you have to spend many hours writing your software projects, reading technical documentation, and educating yourself through books and courses. But my advice is to spend even more time developing self-awareness and all the other traits that I mentioned. You’ll learn much more about yourself, about others and life in general. And your software development career will also become more fun.

Originally published on Medium

Personal Growth

Soft Skills

Emotional Intelligence

Language English

Becoming a Renaissance Man

Giorgi Bazerashvili — Fri, 23 Apr 2021 13:44:50 +0000

Becoming a Renaissance Man Giorgi Bazerashvili Fri, 04/23/2021 - 17:44

Nowadays, specializations in various fields get more and more narrow. We, as employees and creative workers, are used to being labeled as something. We consider ourselves either as software developers, designers, artists, teachers, or whatever. Then we limit ourselves to only that field, even though we might have interests outside of that label that we are afraid to explore. And we think that’s pretty normal and that’s how things should be.

But let’s consider other alternatives.

Let’s go back to 15th century Italy, Florence in particular. There was a man known as Leonardo da Vinci, which is considered as one of the most influential people of all time and is labeled as a genius by most people in today’s world.

Leonardo was truly a remarkable person, but have you ever wondered about the character that he had? How is it possible for a single human being to be so effective in so many things, and become known as a universal genius?

If you don’t know, Leonardo was a painter, sculptor, humanist, scientist, architect, philosopher, engineer, and more. He was a prime example of what we call a Renaissance man. This idea comes from a time of history called the Renaissance which lasted from about 1400 to about 1600.

Just think about it, how strongly curious should a man be to become interested in so many things and excel in most of them. Can we cultivate the same curiosity in our lives as well?

Well, that’s a million-dollar question.

I think that the force of creativity should not be limited to a single bubble. By bubble, what I mean is your current label. What do you consider yourself to be right now? Have you ever thought of maybe changing your careers? Or getting involved in a field that you have zero experience but are very curious about?

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but your self-identity is a very dynamic thing. You think that it’s as stable as it gets. But you are not the same person you were 10 years ago. And after 10 years, you won’t be the same person you are today.

That process can be done consciously or unconsciously. What I mean is that you can consciously choose who and what you want to be and work towards it. Or you can go with the flow of your current experiences, don’t think much of what I’m saying here, and unconsciously morph your self-image and self-identity into something that you may not even like in the future, and then blame the world for not working in your way, even though everything was set up by your subconscious mind.

Becoming a Renaissance man is taking control over your creative inspirations and ways of expressing yourself. It is a process of self-discovery when you experiment and get curious about life.

And there are so many interesting fields that you can become interested in.

Apart from Leonardo, there were so many Renaissance men throughout history and still are today.

Michelangelo, contemporary of Leonardo da Vinci excelled as an architect, painter, sculptor, poet, and writer.

Galileo was most interested in astronomy but was also knowledgeable in the fields of mathematics, physics, philosophy, music, and art.

Thomas Jefferson is another great example, who was an architect, author, lawyer, musician, botanist, inventor, philosopher, political theorist, and naturalist.

Nicolaus Copernicus was interested in and excelled in the fields of astronomy, canon law, economics, mathematics, medicine, politics.

Aristotle was also a philosopher who studied and wrote about many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology.

Albert Einstein was a physicist, mathematician, cosmologist, professor, refrigeration engineer (patent), patent analyst, essayist, activist, pianist, and recital violinist.

Isaac Newton was a physicist, mathematician, astronomer, theologian, natural philosopher, and alchemist.

Sir Winston Churchill was a British prime minister, military leader, historian, novelist, painter, and sportsman.

And many others…

Today’s technological advancements and deepening of various academic or technical fields seem to force us to be specialized in one area. That’s what it seems to be culturally feasible and suitable for business. But if we look closely, those people I mentioned above were not dabblers in their areas of interest. They were masters. They were one of the most remarkable people in their fields. That should make us wonder. What if having many different interests gets combined into something very valuable and useful even for today’s society?

What if you become a better software developer if you at the same time devote your time to understanding psychology, philosophy, and history? What can you offer to your clients other than your technical skills? Maybe your communication will get much better if you spend your time in a less tech-oriented field and get out of your technological bubble for a while?

What if you become a better artist if you are naturally curious about understanding the world in general and not only your small little art bubble?

What if your success in any field can skyrocket if you go and study the lives of eastern monks and yogis and learn techniques and methods from them that are applicable in the modern world as well?

You see, it’s all about the integration of big picture understanding, curiosity, specialization, and mastery.

You have to be smart about this and choose a field through which you will be able to provide massive value to society. But you should also consider the fact that everything in the universe is interconnected. It might not seem that way but it is. Every field is somehow connected to all the others, and if you are naturally curious about the understanding of the reality around you, and you are afraid of that being a bad idea, just go with it.

If you want to learn how to draw, go grab a pencil and get to work.

If you want to learn how to meditate, and you don’t think of yourself as a monk, go ahead and do it. You don’t need to be a monk to become a masterful meditator.

If you want to learn how to code, and right now you are working as an artist, follow that instinct.

If you are interested in music but haven’t played any instrument in your entire life, go to a music store and buy the instrument of your choice and start practicing.

If you want to learn about anything, just go to Google and find books and articles. All the knowledge and how-to is one Google search away. Don’t forget that.

Follow your curiosities. The people I mentioned above did exactly that. That’s what made them great thinkers, artists, and inventors of all time. That’s why we know their names after hundreds and sometimes thousands of years.

You can be good at many things, but also consider tackling things and domains of life one by one. If you try and do everything at once, you might fail at everything, that’s why I emphasized the point of being smart about this.

If you want to know how to develop your skills in any field of your choice, you can go ahead and read one of my articles about Mastery and Skill Development.

I hope I inspired you a little bit to consider the possibility of becoming a Renaissance man for yourself. And if you do that, you’ll discover that life can be much more exciting and fun when your labels and self-identity expand to not only include the things that society or your upbringing made you believe but to whatever or however you want to be.

Originally published on Medium

Personal Growth

Skills

Language English