Why It’s Good to Listen

A lot of these posts are pretty interchangeable with any industry. You do a find/replace on “Design Technology Support” and replace it with a host of other job titles, and it will work. Honing the skill of listening is no different.

This is an essential ability to constantly be working on. You never get perfect at it, but you can get better.

Building empathy

First and foremost, properly listening to users lets them know that you are on their side, and listening is one of the easiest ways to do that. There’s another post on the importance of being on the same team. As a quick refresher, when the users know and understand that you are working with them, they are far more willing to take a chance on what might feel like an outlandish idea, or even better, they are ready to let it slide when you mess up (and you will mess up).

Understanding the issue

It’s quite frequent when a user comes up with a problem, that’s not really the problem. It takes good listening skills to start to peel back the layers of an issue, reply with probing questions, and get to the root core.

I haven’t tracked how many times someone says they have a problem with “x” when in fact the real issue is “y”, but it’s to the point where I am frankly surprised when the correct issue is the first thing brought up. It’s not that users don’t understand what could be wrong, but all they see is the immediate symptom, and a good listener can both recognize and sympathize with their issue, and also put together the clues to let you know what the real problem is.

Next post, I’m going to highlight some tactics that I find useful in listening and peeling.

 

This Isn’t Open Heart Surgery

A common theme that I try to impress when working with BIM/CAD support folks is that it’s more than OK to take a step back and take a breath. What we do is critical to building efficiencies and, for now, providing a good set of documents.

But nobody is going to die.

That’s a bit hyperbolic, but it’s important to be honest with ourselves. If we wait a minute or two or five before speaking, before replying, before fixing a problem, nobody is going to die. In fact, nobody is even going to get hurt.

There are many tasks that we tackle that are very important to tackle right away. Some, in fact, are important enough to stop the other thing we are doing and tackle them.

Nothing that we do is critical enough to warrant us being rude, not thinking through the whole solution, or pausing to listen.

It Might Be Time to Buy Those Sneakers

When I was a kid, I really wanted a pair of Vans. I fancied myself a skater (I was most definitely not – ask me about how I broke my arm twice if we ever meet somewhere) and Vans were the shoes for those who thrashed. Sadly, my parents would never get me a pair.

Quick sidenote: my parents are both very loving and hardworking individuals. This is not even remotely intended as a dig against them for not buying a teenager some very expensive sneakers. As a parent myself, I get it.

So I went through my whole life with no Vans. I would see other people with Vans, and 14 year old me got a little jealous.

Then, sadly quite recently, I realized that I am a 45-year old grown man. I can buy my own Vans if I want.

And so I did.

This, of course, is not a call to arms to buy comfortable shoes. It is a reminder to not hang onto decisions you made years ago. At that time, you made the best decision you could and for one reason or another the time might not have been right.

But maybe the time is right now.

Don’t throw away your old ideas. Just tuck them away and pull them out every so often. Maybe technology has finally caught up to you. Maybe your design team is more advanced and can handle a new workflow.

Maybe you realize you can now buy your own shoes.

Find the Right Amount of Time – to NOT Respond

For those of us who do more day to day support with a set group, it’s important to know your users as well as you can. For some of them, you might find this strategy useful:

Don’t respond to them right away.

The 5 minute rule

It doesn’t work for everyone, but there are a handful of users who will ping me with a question or problem, and if I wait 5 minutes, at least half of the time they will figure it out for themselves.

It’s natural for some people to reach out quickly for help: they might have been burned before for being late, they might feel panicked, they might not have a lot of faith in their skillset.

Letting users figure it out for themselves will build their confidence and more importantly they will remember the solution more. You need to do some trial and error to figure out who your users are that will benefit from this, but once you do, it’s a great tool to use.

(I’ve actually named this tactic after someone I used to work with. It worked the vast majority of the time she had a question. To avoid embarrassment, I will keep my internal rule name to myself. Feel free to name yours after your best 5 minute rule follower.)

Let’s Try Something New

It’s a new year (happy 2020!) and it has been quite some time since I’ve spent time blogging here (happy 2018!)

As a design technology consultant, I have a great opportunity to blog about Revit and related topics over at my work blog. So aside from some more “experimental” and unsupported hacks, I don’t actually need to write that kind of stuff down here anymore.

I thought I would try something new this year.

Shifting gears

As a manager of other design technology consultants, I’ve found the need to collect and share my thoughts about consulting with my team. I’m far from perfect, but I’ve had a couple decades to test out how to do things, and how not to do things. I like to think that I’ve found some tactics that work for me, and I’ve worked with me teammates to try to find tactics that work for them, too.

A lot of this is related to the presentation the Donnie Gladfelter and I did at AU 2019 concerning how NOT to be a BIM or CAD manager. I found myself wanting to spend more time on some of the topics.

I was never trained for this

The biggest factor is that most of us who find ourselves in a design technology support role never intended to end up here. For a lot of us, it wasn’t even a thing and now that it is, we are scrambling to fill in the skill gaps.

So for the next several months, at least, this blog is going to shift its focus to try and help those out there who, like me, found themselves in this new role, doing their best to tread water.

But I came here for the Revit

Yeah, I know. I started this for the Revit. If you still want that, feel free to keep an eye on the CADD Microsystems blog. I still write about Revit and related technology there.

I hope you stick around with me for this writing experiment, and more importantly, I hope you find it helpful.

Happy 2020!