Frustration
Hey there!
Welcome to another week. This week’s topic hit close to home recently. I think we all have these ups and downs, impacting not only your personal life but also your work life.
All feelings are valid, but I also practice enough mindfulness and self-awareness to not “spill” it to other people beyond trusted folks.
Was this forwarded to you? You can subscribe here!
Frustration (noun): the feeling of being upset or annoyed, mainly because of the inability to change or achieve something.
Frustration is one of those feelings that I rarely notice, not because I never feel frustrated, but instead, I tend to power through that feeling more often than not.
But I’ve been thinking about it recently, with the reduction of workforce, re-organizations, quickly shifting priorities, finding work, among other issues. It’s hard not to feel frustrated with all these situations and having the agency to solve them sometimes.
This time, instead of powering through, I wanted actually to feel the frustration and understand my feeling, what was creating it!
What creates this frustration?
We need self-awareness to be able to identify the source of frustration.
Other reasons might be in conversations with peers or teammates. But whatever the origin is, identifying what is making us frustrated is essential, not only to process it but also to give us more control to understand which situations might trigger it.
Being self-aware helps avoid escalating situations!
Avoid Conflict before it’s too late
I’ve been in situations where people's frustration escalated to create conflict. It’s not pleasant in any way and only burns bridges with everyone, and in some cases, will get you in trouble not only with the team managers but also with HR.
Being aware of frustration is the first step, but we also need good self-regulation to avoid making comments that don’t contribute to the conversation.
Good self-regulation will help not only to better deal with the situation but also to keep your work relationships in a healthy state. Also, leverage this opportunity to give a positive spin on the frustration.
Reframe frustration
One of the ways to reframe the frustration is to lean into our empathy and compassion.
Why is this person finding this situation? How are we different? Or do we have common ground from some perspective?
Being able to name what each of us is feeling helps us define a way forward! Talking in negative ways only leads us nowhere, and instead, we should look to create a mental image of where we are, where we want to be, and what action looks towards that future.
Build your community
While commiserating with peers and teammates might feel like we're building a sense of connection. Generally, those types of venting conversations don’t see a way forward.
While that is inevitable, I think I’ve looked to build a network of people that I can engage in conversation with but will help me see the positive spin, or I can help them see the positive spin.
Having this group of people has helped me not only to grow as an engineer with like-minded people but also to get me out of a rut! Don’t underestimate the power of engaging with like-minded coworkers!
Listen to the frustration of your team
One last thing that has happened to me, over time, as I’ve come to work with more and more teams. In some cases, I end up being the person who listens to complaints from lots of engineers, as they don’t see me as “management.”
While most of the time, people are looking to vent, I’ve also looked to help them with the same as above. Put a positive spin on the frustration, or they might only want to complain, which is acceptable to some extent.
Other times, when I hear the same thing from multiple people, I must take action with management or directors to change the current environment. Then I talk with those folks to let them know that upper management is aware of the issue, and we might be able to create change!
Your turn!
How do you handle frustration at work? How do you deal with frustration from your team, peers, or overall work network? Let me know by replying to this email!
Happy coding!
Things I discovered in the past week
- Let’s call quiet quitting what it often is: calibrated contributing talks about reframing “quiet quitting” to “calibrated contributing” which means that people are working their salary, as opposed to “exceeding expectations” as some companies put it.
- Brutal truth you need to accept if you want to stop feeling overwhelmed is something I needed to read after talking with my wife as I was trying to optimize my schedule even more, but she was like “you’re doing the work of more than one person”
website | twitter | github | linkedin | mastodon | among others