Browse Tag: consulting

Strangers and Coding – Can Rock Help?

A bit of a break from the LabVIEW technical content but hopefully something many of you may find interesting.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the process of writing software for someone. Both as someone that others look to and currently looking for outside assistance on some JavaScript code, it is undeniable that this is often a scary process for everyone involved. Can rock help?

Taking on or outsourcing a project involves large unknowns. Unknowns generally require trust in your partners but that has to be built first, it’s a chicken and egg situation.

I have recently become a big fan of listening to podcasts, one of my favourites is NPR’s TED radio hour. As someone who loves TED talks but never gets around to watching them it is a great way to consume them.

This week’s theme was all about playing games. The interesting section for me was the first about strangers.

Research shows that just putting two strangers in a room together, no tasks, just in each others presence, raises their stress levels.

In fact the study goes on to show that this stress means it is very hard to empathise with the other person. In a related experiment on pain, participants tended to believe their pain was worst than the strangers, even when inflicted in the same way (holding your hand in ice water, no developers were harmed in the making of this article!).

This reminded me immediately of the relationships in taking on a new project, everyone is on edge being forced to leap into the unknown with a stranger.

The solution? In this case it was shown that 15 minutes of playing rock band together eliminates this stress, causing participants to empathise with each other as much as a good friend.

So as part of our on-boarding process, bring your singing voice! Not really, but it has certainly set my mind to work on what we can do to remove the unknown and make the process easier for everyone involved.


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