My lovely wife Heather gave me a call and said… “Guess what I have in my hands?”  I had heard that Ken and Jorge received their author copies this week so I was very quick to guess it right

Can’t wait to get home today and check it out… I have all the pdf page proofs for all the chapters but it just isn’t the same LOL

By request I’ll be doing a blog in the next day or so about the whole book writing experience as it was probably one of the most challenging yet rewarding experiences in my career.

(Big thanks to wifey for taking a pic!!)

Enjoy!!

OK so wifey and I before getting married were required to take a marriage course. I wasn’t at the time entirely sure why. Perhaps this is where they told her to have my pipe and slippers ready for me when I get home? Sadly no… but one of the things that did come out of the course was something called the 5 Love Languages.

Everyone has a love language… some have more then one. Your love language is the way that you know that someone else appreciates you. The 5 love languages are:

• Quality Time
• Receiving Gifts
• Acts of Service
• Physical Touch
• Word of Affirmation

Now lets look at this from a professional team point of view. I think in order to be a successful team member and/or manager one needs to figure out the individual team members “love language”. Let’s go through the “love languages” and turn them into more “Team Love Languages”

Quality Time – If a team members TLL (Team Love Language) is Quality Time then they are the type of person who likes to talk about the work they are currently doing, or work they have done in the past. If you engage this type of individual and show a real interest in something they are or have worked on this will let the team member know that what they do matters and you are appreciative.

Receiving Gifts – OK so if we were to turn this into a more “office” setting… receiving gifts could be anything from a bonus, raise, more holidays, etc. Money is a great motivator but it’s not EVERYONE’S motivator. As a team member if someone really came through and maybe even saved your #bacon why not take this person for a coffee or a lunch and just say thanks.

Acts of Service – Let’s say someone on the team is in a pinch and little Billy has a hockey game on the weekend but this is the weekend that they were supposed to install some service packs. Why not take one for the team… help out and offer to do the service pack installs for them. Not only will they appreciate it (and will return the favor down the road) you end up looking like an oober team player.

Physical Touch – Don’t do this… I repeat… DO NOT DO THIS. I don’t care how much you THINK this persons “Love Language” is physical touch…. DO NOT TOUCH ANYONE IN ANYWAY

Words of Affirmation – If a team member’s TLL is Words of Affirmation they make sure when they do a good job that you let them know. Privately or publically acknowledge that they did a job well done and it was great work.

OK so this post wont rank very high on the “geekitude” scale but working WITH your team is a very important aspect in most jobs out there and if you don’t take an interest and learn how best to work with your team you’ll find your job becomes more difficult and less enjoyable in the long run.

{{{GROUP HUG}}} hahahaa

Enjoy!!

P.S.   DO NOT TOUCH ANYONE!!!

Here’s my top 3 (well not really my top 3 cause I’m going to try and not say something that has already been said…):

1) Don’t stay in one job for too long

As an indepenent contractor this one doesn’t apply as much as when I was a fulltime salary employee but… during any fulltime job I had over the past 12+ years when I started looking for that next job I felt like I knew it all. Each job after the last taught me that I didn’t know as much as I thought. Every time I thought I had mastered everything there was to know about SQL Server there was some other facet that I may of known about (or not) but hadn’t fully engulfed myself in. So don’t stay in any one job too long… a good time to look for a change is when you feel like you “know it all”

2) The community is a wonderful place… get into it!!

It still amazes me that there are so many highly skilled SQL Server peeps out there willing to “geek out” with you over stuff that you’re into or working on. I had been a community voyeur for many years and thought it was a good place to find stuff but it’s so much more once you’re actually interacting and being a part of it. I got so motivated by getting more involved that I actually started a SQL PASS Edmonton Chapter just to get even more involved and help other people who are wanting to get involved.

3) Blog From Fact Not From Experience.

Confused yet? Recently I wrote a blog post about SQL 2008 Row Constructors where I made a comment in the post of something to the effect of: “or if you like UNIONS (and I wont go into why you SHOULDN’T like UNIONS lol)”. At the time of writing I thought it might be a bit much but I let it slide. Someone asked me about my “hate-on” for UNIONs and asked for some context and when it came right down to it I didn’t have anything really negative to say about UNIONs and found my dislike with UNIONs was more about how people MISUSED them rather then their function. It’s like if someone decided to play hockey with a golf club and it didn’t work well… should you throw out the golf club and say it sucks or educate the user that a golf club is meant for golf and NOT hockey. Anyways that comment/conversation showed me that my opinions about UNIONs came from people misusing it rather than their actual functionality/purpose.

Tag! You’re it.

I’m “paying it forward” and calling out these guys to post their own responses (this is getting to be like a geek chain letter):

(@mrdenny on Twitter) http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/
(@Peschkaj on Twitter)  http://facility9.com/
(@RaOsolage on Twitter) http://raosolage.net/

Enjoy!!

1) Get a sample printed – This is key. That way you can show it to a few different people, get opinions/feedback, and make any changes that make sense to you

2) Round the edges of your card – While this does usually cost more this gives your card a more modern look in my opinion

3) Laminate your cards – If your card has very bright colors and you want to keep those colors bring use a glossy finish rather then a matte

4) Print a limited number of cards – This way if after a while your title, information, etc changes or if you just want to change it up you don’t have boxes and boxes of cards that become useless to you. Yes printing smaller a smaller number of cards is not as cost effective as buying in bulk but at the end of the day if you throw away 1/2 of your massive order are you really saving money?

There are a tonne of options now with business cards that never used to be available so take a look at your current card and maybe it’s time for a business card facelift.

Happy Friday!!!