If you'll allow me to comment Mark, I would say that I valued your commitment to discover how to avoid a repeat of the problem. It is nice to see someone truly care about a project and insist a problem does not repeat itself.
In practical terms, putting a few smiley faces in emails probably helps. Especially near any criticisms of others. May I mention two book recommendations that I've loved? (Leaders are readers, so I read a lot!) Crucial Conversations is a fantastic book that argues that you can talk about ANYTHING with anyone AND be completely respectful. A crucial conversation is something like "Honey, I don't think we make love enough. May we talk about that?" THAT'S a CRUCIAL CONVERSATION. Everybody is emotionally invested in the outcome of the conversation. So how do you have a good conversation? 1) Focus on your goal. Remind yourself that your goal is to be SUPER respectful to all parties and also to show your point of view and also to believe that you do not know everything and your solution may not be the best one. It is easy in crucial conversations to be silent or violent. To either SCREAM your view or not to express your view. This is a false choice. You CAN be respectful AND persuasive AND open to be persuaded. :) 2) Create dialog. Dialog happens when there is free flow of information. This happens when both people are adding information to the pool of shared meaning. Dialog comes before the decision. I like to say something like, "Let's both honestly add information to our pool of shared meaning. Before we make a decision what are some objective facts that we both should know? Having more facts will help us reach a better decision. Please be completely honest. What am I missing here? What do you know that I don't?" You can read more about some of the tips in crucial conversations. But that is perhaps one of the greatest books I've ever read. Another great book is How to Win Friends and Influence People. It's in the public domain. You can download it now. Here are a couple of principles that are super interesting. - Never criticize. "I have spent the best years of my life giving people the lighter pleasures, helping them have a good time, and all I get is abuse, the existence of a hunted man." - Al Capone. Almost no one thinks of themselves as a bad person. Criticizing almost never gets the result that you want. Lincoln was considered to be one of America's greatest leaders. He learned the hard way that criticizing is a terrible idea. It almost cost him his life. "In the autumn of 1842 he ridiculed a vain, pugnacious politician by the name of James Shields. Lincoln lampooned him through an anonymous letter published in the Springfield Journal. The town roared with laughter. Shields, sensitive and proud, boiled with indignation. He found out who wrote the letter, leaped on his horse, started after Lincoln, and challenged him to fight a duel. Lincoln didn't want to fight. He was opposed to dueling, but he couldn't get out of it and save his honor. He was given the choice of weapons. Since he had very long arms, he chose cavalry broadswords and took lessons in sword fighting from a West Point graduate; and on the appointed day, he and Shields met on a sandbar in the Mississippi River, prepared to fight to the death; but at the last minute, their seconds interrupted and stopped the duel. That was the most lurid personal incident in Lincoln's life. It taught him an invaluable lesson in the art of dealing with people. Never again did he write an insulting letter. Never again did he ridicule anyone. And from that time on, he never criticized anybody for anything." - Lavish people in praise (publicly if possible) "One of the first people in American business to be paid a salary of over a million dollars a year (when there was no income take and a person earning fifty dollars a week was considered well off) was Charles Schwab. He had been picked by Andrew Carnegie to become the first president of the newly formed United States Steel Company in 1921, when Schwab was only 38 years old. (Schwab later left U.S. Steel to take over the then-troubled Bethlehem Steel Company, and he rebuilt it into one of the most profitable companies in America). Why did Andrew Carnegie pay a million dollars a year, or more than three thousand dollars a day, to Charles Schwab? Why? Because Schwab was a genius? No. Because he know more about the manufacture of steel than other people? Nonsense. Charles Schwab told me himself that he had many men working for him who knew more about the manufacture of steel that he did. Schwab says that he was paid this salary largely because of his ability to deal with people. I asked him how he did it. Here is his secret set down in his own words --words that ought to be cast in eternal bronze and hung in every home and school, every shop and office in the land--words that children ought to memorize instead of wasting their time memorizing the conjugation of latin verbs or the amount of the annual rainfall in Brazil-- words that will all but transform your life and mine if we will only live by them: 'I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people, said Schwab, 'the greastest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement.' 'There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a person as criticisms from superiors. I never criticize anyone. I believe in giving a person incentive to work. So I am anxious to praise but loath to find fault. If I like anything, I am hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise.' If you'll let me brag a little...I actually put Mr. Schwab's principle to the test. I made a mailing list post on guix-devel entitled "Thank you for your leadership Ludo." It was quite a thrill to have a pleasant public chat with Ludo: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2020-04/msg00021.html To see Ludo suggest that I may influence him was a real joy. Who am I to suggest anything to Ludo about guix? Am I a genius? No. Frequent guix developer? No. I just happen to be lavish in my praise. I hope the above novel was worth the read. :) I really think you are a fantastic, brilliant, and crucial part of guix's development team Mark. And I hope the above encouraged you! Your friend! 143*, Joshua -- Joshua Branson (joshuaBPMan in #guix) Sent from Emacs and Gnus https://gnucode.me https://video.hardlimit.com/accounts/joshua_branson/video-channels https://propernaming.org "You can have whatever you want, as long as you help enough other people get what they want." - Zig Ziglar 143* is Mr. Rogers secret way of saving "I love you." Because there is 1 letter in "I", four letters in "love", and three letters in "you".
