Come, check your company, whether the following phenomena exist:
- There are individuals whose technical level is not as good as yours, but they are your leaders
- There are individuals whose technical level is not as good as yours, but they are project managers
- There are individuals whose skill level is not as good as yours, but their salary is higher than yours
- There are individuals whose technical level is not as good as yours, but they are valued more than you
- There are individuals whose technical level is not as good as yours, but they have more bonuses than you
- There are individuals whose technical level is not as good as yours, but they are more popular than you
If you encounter any of the above situations, you must be resentful and think hard about where your bottleneck is.
In fact, most of the time what you call unfairness and bottlenecks is caused by a lack of soft skills. Soft skills can be learned. The 7 books we recommend today provide various soft skills cultivation methods from different perspectives. You will definitely be able to combine your current situation and extract a suitable way for you to improve.
1. Soft Skills: A Guide to Surviving Beyond Code
This book can be used as a general outline of career development for technical personnel! It doesn't have a single line of code or a flowchart in it, yet it's more suitable for anyone working in software development than any book that discusses code and technology. Because it's talking about yourself—about your career, your life, your body, your mind, and your soul. The content covers technology selection, practice, learning methods, financial management, entrepreneurship, marketing, fitness... It's almost all-encompassing.
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My previous recommended articles: Soft Skills, A Survival Guide Beyond Code , Soft Skills 67th catalogue .
2. "The 12 Practices of Software Architects"
Don't be fooled by the name, the book "12 Practices of Software Architects" is not only suitable for architects, but all kinds of technical people can learn from it.
The book argues that the so-called "glass ceiling of technical bottlenecks" is the lack of soft skills, and divides soft skills into three parts:
- Relationship Skills: Elegant demeanor, communication, negotiation, leadership, politics.
- Personal skills: transparency, passion, context switching.
- Business skills: business knowledge, innovation, pragmatism, cognition.
A total of 12 skills, which is also the origin of the title.
There is a hierarchical relationship between technical skills and the above 12 soft skills: technical skills are basic, then relational skills, then personal skills, and finally business skills.
Jingdong purchase link: https://item.jd.com/10998085.html .
My previous recommended article: The 12 Disciplines of a Software Architect .
3. "Horizontal Leadership"
The book has a central point: " True leaders don't need positions ." It believes that "anyone is a potential leader" and that if they find a way, cooperation can be won.
Horizontal Leadership identifies 5 key personal skills: purpose, thinking, learning, focus, and feedback. You do 5 steps right and the team is yours:
- Tie the team into a single rope through goal organization
- Use thinking and organizing techniques to quickly find solutions to problems
- Learn and practice plan revision techniques, and constantly revise plans to make them perfect
- Keep team members focused through motivation management techniques
- Positive feedback to continuously improve team efficiency
Jingdong purchase link: https://item.jd.com/11788142.html .
My previous recommended article: Horizontal Leadership .
4. "Key Conversations"
A dialogue that meets the following three basic conditions is called a critical dialogue:
- The conversation itself matters
- Disagreement between the two sides of the dialogue
- Emotions on both sides
In our life and work, we experience key dialogues with others. In most cases, we either subconsciously adopt negative attitudes, trying to cover up, avoid, and escape; or use verbal violence, such as control, labeling, and attack. And as a result, things are often screwed up...
This book provides many examples, ideas, and principles around "critical conversations" that teach us how to reach agreement with others and achieve goals.
If you are willing to train yourself, the following situations will be solved easily:
- Put forward your well-designed plan to the boss, only to be poured cold water
- Ask subordinates to work overtime, and subordinates confront them with silence
- Talking with his family about "opening up sources of income and reducing expenditure", he just takes it as a deaf ear
- Neighbors are required to abide by public morality, but the other party still goes his own way
- Want your other half to be romantic, but the other half is still like a piece of wood
- Ask friends to pay back the money, but friends always find various excuses to shirk
- Ask the child not to play games, but the child slams the door and leaves
Jingdong purchase link: https://item.jd.com/12179790.html .
5. The Introvert Communication Bible
This is definitely a book that makes technical people feel that they are too late!
The core of this book is: the 4P method. The 4P method consists of four parts:
- Preparation
- Presence
- Push
- Practice
The 4P method is a method and framework. The author carefully explained how to apply the 4P method in public speaking, leadership improvement, project management, upward management, meeting, and network expansion through cases, which is of great reference significance. The examples covered cover the variety of communication scenarios that introverts may encounter, and are truly biblical guides.
Jingdong purchase link: https://item.jd.com/12090690.html .
My previous recommended article: Communicating the Bible for Introverts .
6. "Nonviolent Communication"
When you hear these words:
- "Why are you late again? Do you still have any sense of time?"
- "Stupid! Such a simple problem can't be solved!"
- "You don't care about me at all!"
- "Okay, okay, don't talk, I don't have time to listen to your explanation, just tell me what to do with this problem!"
- "Your projects are always delayed, can you deliver on time?"
How does it feel? Suffering, frustrated, angry?
These accusations, denials, sermons, arbitrary evaluations, labelling, arbitrary interruptions are everywhere, and we live in such a painful world full of verbal violence.
Fortunately, there is "Nonviolent Communication" by Dr. Marshall Luxemburg!
There are 4 elements to the NVC model.
- First, pay attention to what's going on. What are we observing at this moment? Like it or not, just say what people do. The point is to articulate observations without judging or evaluating them.
- Next, express feelings such as hurt, fear, joy, happiness, atmosphere, etc.
- Then, say what needs to cause that feeling.
- Finally, state your specific request.
Jingdong purchase link: https://item.jd.com/11801688.html .
My previous recommended article: Nonviolent Communication .
7. "Programmer's Growth Course"
Programmers will encounter many difficulties in their careers:
- How to choose the technical direction (to be more competitive and to make more money)?
- How can we keep the technology constantly improving?
- How to change jobs to get more and more worth?
- Do you want to switch to management? How to turn?
- Just starting a technical management position, how to face the challenges of role switching, assignment of tasks, conflicts, one-to-one communication, upward management, etc.?
- When you are old, how to fight against young people and avoid being eliminated?
- I don't want to do development, what else can I do? How to do it?
My new book " Programmer's Growth Course " summarizes my twelve years of development and management experience, combined with career planning techniques, and discusses the above issues very well. It will definitely serve as a mirror for you and help you find your way forward. Methods.
"Programmer's Growth Lesson" is in the hot sale on JD.com. In the past half month, JD.com's new book computer and Internet classification has been in the top 10 in the 24-hour best-selling list. Within the top 6, the hot-selling list in the past 30 days should be ranked 5th. Now, in less than a month, there are already 500+ positive reviews:
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