How can you develop your soft skills as a developer?
Hi there! Are you aware of the fact that the more soft skills you have the better software developer you become? At first glance, this statement might seem to be quite ridiculous. But… surprise! Actually, this is 100% true :) Why? I will explain it and share with you my story. You can easily grow as a developer by participating in many different non-technical initiatives you already have in your company. It’s as simple as that. Let’s start!
Change the way you think about software developers
If you read my article you probably know that in DocPlanner Tech we believe in people who are the core of our company. You can feel and taste that approach just when you take part in our recruitment process. Do you notice that I use words like “we”, “our” etc.? To be honest, I do it somehow subconsciously cause I strongly identify myself with the company. No one forces me to it — on the contrary — I love the things I do in my work everyday!
First things first, in DocPlanner Tech software developers are far more than just code writers. We are fully autonomous and trustworthy people who take care of the product every day. If you feel that your work, decisions, and ideas have a real impact on the whole company then you start working in a different — more passionate way. Believe me, it comes naturally.
Moreover, developers often and willingly share their knowledge inside and also outside of the company. So this gives us a great opportunity to build communication skills and also test ourselves in new activities. Remember, this is fully voluntary so you try it only if you wish and you are ready.
Leave your comfort zone — make the first step
So how can you start to tweak your soft skills and find a way to use them inside the company? The first thing is to leave your comfort zone. Yes, it’s not a hackneyed statement anymore. Thus we believe that success starts with the decision to take a step forward into the unknown and leave our well-known habits. It’s obvious that every change is quite a challenge. When you leave your comfort zone you always feel anxious and insecure. But no worries. If it doesn’t overwhelm you — just try it! It can bring you so many profits. So think of it in that way. It’s a matter of doing just a first step. You don’t have to entirely change your daily work habits and your profession. This first step may be just taking some new tasks from another project that you didn’t work on yet.
Use your 20% time
DocPlanner Tech gives every developer a lot of autonomy and flexibility. So you can manage your priorities and time in the way that you prefer. Everyone has space for spending 20% of their weekly time on other company-related projects. This can just work for another team or something related to more soft things like leading webinars, meetups, workshops, or even recruitment processes. You can choose from a variety of things. It’s totally up to you and — at the same time — not mandatory but kindly welcome. Why? Because it provides developers a kind of break and rests from the team tasks. You can switch to other fields and focus on different areas of work that are interesting for you.
Personally, I’m using my 20% time on another inside company projects — both technical and soft ones. I agreed with my team to involve myself in those things every Friday — of course, if I am up to date with all of my ongoing tasks. So how does my 20% time look like? I work on a very interesting project with a team of developers from both Barcelona and our polish office. We develop and improve one of our application modules. This gives me a great chance to learn from other developers (not only from my product team) and contribute to the final success of our project.
Tech Areas — different strokes for different folks
Moreover, I participate in two Tech Area groups. These are some kind of cross-company teams focused on different fields and DocPlanner goals. For example, I’m an active member of Employer Branding and Recruitment Tech Area. What do we exactly do? We take care of the promotion of the whole company both inside and outside the scope. We organize meetups (currently due to pandemic they are 100% in online mode) and other webinars/workshops. We also write articles for the company Medium channel, manage our social media, etc. I was always close to such kinds of soft topics so I’m glad that I can use my communication skills and creativity to do really fancy things! There are many groups that you can join and fulfill yourself inside them.
Write articles — become a blogger
I also write articles on our Medium channel. We encourage every developer in DocPlanner Tech to try it. We are writing not only for the sake of sharing knowledge but it also helps us to spread our company culture and values outside DocPlanner. The fun fact is that I prepared my first text for the DocPlanner Tech channel before I started working here (that time I was involved in the recruitment process) ;) So if you have a knack for writing don’t hesitate and do it!
Writing is not restricted to inside-company channels cause you can also create your own blog. I did it :) you can find my website here (currently only in polish).
Interesting workshops — feedback is the key
Every person who joins DocPlanner participates in feedback workshops. Believe me or not but this is an extremely important and valuable experience and has a great impact on the atmosphere inside the company. It shows how the culture of feedback works in DocPlanner and sensitizes people on the way they communicate on a daily basis. There are even more interesting and valuable workshops you can attend such as interpersonal communication and emotional intelligence. This bunch of workshops is aimed to boost your soft skills and make you aware of others’ needs. So as you see there are many different occasions to take a break from technical scope and invest time in developing yourself in soft areas.
Participate in meetups/webinars
Since I started working at DocPlanner Tech in march 2020 so far I was co-leading our three webinars. Two of them were part of the DocPlanner Tech Academy group where we share knowledge outside of the company. The third one was our last meetup. This is a periodic series of meetings where we present different technical and sometimes also more soft things to the audience. The last one was devoted to front-end and testing. I was a host of that meeting.
I must say that those kinds of events are a great place to wrap your head around public speaking. Especially if you want to improve your oratorical skills and fight back the fears and concerns in that field. This is also a perfect way to reveal yourself inside the company and build your personal network of contacts. So as you see this is definitely worth doing.
Share your knowledge — this is easier than you think
Apart from public speakings and writing articles, there are also other ways to boost your soft skills. You can engage yourself in our recruitment process by leading trial days. This is also a great chance to test yourself as well as help people in stressful situations. That way you also have space to share your knowledge with newcomers and bear to be known for people who join our company. You can also represent the company during different career fairs and outside meetings.
Another thing that will make you use and enhance your soft skills is mentoring other developers. This can be just as simple as doing a typical code review or pair programming when you share your point of view and take part in a technical discussion. But what’s more, you can also put some junior developers under your wings and drive his/her development and growth.
There is even more! If you like social relations and dealing with other people you can become a team leader. In DocPlanner Tech being a team leader is neither managing people and tasks nor superiority. It’s just taking care of people, their development, fulfillment, and also mental health at work. So this role is more about relations than duties.
Final recap — take your chance
As you see, in DocPlanner Tech there are many different ways to improve your soft skills as a developer. Believe me or not but engaging myself in such above mentioned soft activities — along with technical ones — is giving a huge positive impact on my career and self-development. I feel that I grow very fast in many areas and become a better software developer each day.
So don’t be afraid to spend some time on different things than coding. It will bring you plenty of cool things! I’m rooting for you :)
