Comments on: How do you deal with smart ass?

By: Andy

Andy — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:52:21 +0000

Hi im 13 and have been friends with someone for about 6 years but in the past 2 years here at secandery school he has turned into such a smartass showing off everything he knows in different ways, thinking i dont know what he is doing. for example he asked me once if i wanted to play a game called would you rather for some reason then said if u were homeless with no money would you jump into a tank of alligators to get £10 at the bootom and i said i wouldent bother cuase they might bite me then he said that alligators dont eat humans then he said lets stop playing. i could easily tell that he only said all of that to showoff what he knew .could someone give me some advise for whenever he tells me something he knows, how to get him back.

By: Redneck

Redneck — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:01:30 +0000

My brother is a smart ass i want to knock the living hell out of him he is 17 and i am 21 talk about no respect for elders

By: Risks of Social Networking and Collaboration in Organisations | Synergise IT

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 00:49:43 +0000

[...] networks can also be quite dysfunctional and counter-productive due to certain actors in the network or lack of social beliefs and norms within the environment where actors do not have a clear set of [...]

By: Pete B.

Pete B. — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:46:34 +0000

Hi Jo, I’d be happy to. Can I contact you via flowing motion?

By: Sean Lew

Sean Lew — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 11:30:20 +0000

Thanks Pete and Jo for your comments.

@ Pete, I like your “documented evidence” bit. Sometimes I am so into the whole software that I tend to forget that what they write is documented and version controlled. Thanks!

@ Jo, absolutely brilliant – “invite and apologize”. I will totally try this out. Thanks for reading and its great motivation for me especially in this world wide web where dreams are made but before anyone gets there, they are just a small fish in the ocean.

By: Jo

Jo — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 11:16:45 +0000

From experience of leading teams, I would add: work hard to try and figure out why they are doing what they are doing. Sometimes that’s hard, if not impossible, but it often adds value and solves other problems on your to do list. In other words, rephrase this dillemma as you finding insigiht – it’s less frustrating and more profitbale. Or you use Ben Zanders expresssion – invite and apologize. Begin by saying I am soooo sorry this doesn’t work for you. Could you spend 5 minutes with me explaining what you need so I can do a better job?

Pete, would you be willing to fill out some questionnaires for a psychology PhD student at Humboldt in Berlin. He is researching on agile methods.

Sean, I love this blog. You are becoming a regular stopping point on my daily round.

By: Pete Bonney

Pete Bonney — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 05:11:49 +0000

Hi Sean,

You are right, collaboration is all about sharing in a constructive manner, disinformation is affects the integrity of the content, be it code, or just some kind of wiki.

However it seems to me that what your are alluding to above, is that you are on a project where one particular team member is making waves. If this is the case then the first action has to be raising the resource issue as a potential risk to project delivery. Speak to your PM about it, if you are the PM, then you have to sit down with the individual and work through the problem. If there is still no joy, escalate it.

From a collaboration perspective, you have to establish some kind of governance over the data you are sharing, this is most important with scrum/agile project development styles as things are moving very quickly and you cannot afford to have individuals not working as part of the team. Additionally you should have collaboration guidelines in place especially if the tools you are using are as part of your implementation, if this person continually violates them, it gives you documented evidence to deal with the situation.

Good luck