Motivating the Engineers in Your Life

Being an engineering type, I am often baffled by what people find motivational or encouraging after a failure. So often, what is meant to be helpful either glances off the surface of our crisis of self-worth, or goes fluttering askew into the nest of some peacefully slumbering irritation, rousing it into annoyed wakefulness.

Wishing to spare my kind as much trouble as possible, and to keep everyone else from giving up on the whole idea of encouraging these majestic but unusual creatures, I have provided a brief guide, by no means authoritative or complete, to what sorts of things engineers actually find encouraging, should you find yourself needing to motivate such a person.

1. Any statement which does not make any sense is not motivational.

One of my favorite examples:
"Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves back up."

This seems to actually encourage some people. I utterly fail to understand how. If one had not fallen, there would be no need to pick oneself back up, and mastering the art of doing so merely implies one is prone to failure. Notice what happens if I change the actions slightly: "Why do we sleep? We sleep so we can learn to wake ourselves back up."

Suddenly it's not motivational at all, it's incredibly depressing. An endless, maddening cycle in which the only justification for one step is that another step necessarily follows it.

(Note: The example I chose above was famously used in Batman Begins. While the phrase itself should be avoided, Batman is usually always a motivating conversation topic.)

Summary: Steer clear of this kind of motivation, or you will get one of those looks which makes people hate engineers. But you probably can't go wrong with Batman.

2. Any statement which is primarily emotional in nature is not motivational

Do I really need to explain this one? We deal in facts, with data. Math does not change based on how you feel about it. Even if your attempt at encouragement is successful in providing some kind of positive emotional stimulus, we will shut it down. That kind of thing is verboten and leads to talking about our feelings... next thing you know we'll be "hugging it out."

Something like "Cheer up, being gloomy doesn't fix anything" simply doesn't compute. Being gloomy doesn't break anything either. It's simply a state of mind which may possibly produce the wrong sort of brain chemicals for working most effectively, but even an engineer isn't likely to be cheered up by pointing out that a negative frame of mind will ultimately reduce their productivity and ability to solve problems clearly. (it might even them out a bit, though)

The main difficulty here is to avoid emotional language when the goal indeed is to make someone feel better. The secret which aids you is that engineers of course do have feelings like everyone else, they're just on very formal diplomatic terms with them. To succeed in encouragement you need the kind of diplomat that can get things done over there, preferably without attracting too much attention from the Logic side.

Something along the lines of "It's ok, in 5 years you won't even remember it" is somewhat better, in that for an engineer we are then forced to calculate 5 years into the future and decide if it's more or less likely that we'll remember the incident. (Note: make sure to pad in enough time. If the thing which has depressed your engineer is personally significant enough or was an important work project, they might actually stand a good chance of remembering it that far ahead, and your strategy will backfire.)

Summary: Appealing to the emotions forces us to reject your encouragement. Making us think about your encouragement gives it time to sink in.

3. Any statement which does not actually contain any rational information is not motivational

You have to give us something to work with. An empty sentiment or simple command to feel better disguised as a meaninglessly cheerful adage are like offering artificial-sweetener-laced chewing gum to someone who's starving after a long day of installing server racks.

"Turn that frown upside down," for example, is only encouraging insofar as the contemplation of the fairly disturbing level of physical violence necessary to accomplish such a feat might provoke some amusement, which, although perhaps a positive, is probably not at all what the speaker had in mind.

It is worth noting, however, that irrational comfort which doesn't seek to disguise itself as rational (something engineers will see right through even if they don't want to, like x-ray vision you can't turn off) can be surprisingly effective. Once after a bad day, I drove past a field of happy-looking llamas, and felt much better afterwards. (If the llamas had unwisely tried to shout pseudo-encouraging drivel, however, it would have spoiled the whole thing.)

Summary: If you're going to be irrational, go all the way.

4. Any statement which suggests that something else is to blame is not motivational
(With one very important caveat, see below)

If someone has failed at something, they are often encouraged by the suggestion that it is not really their fault, that circumstances beyond their control have contrived to confusticate and bebother their well-conceived attempt and have in point of fact succeeded in doing so. This is sadly not the case for engineers, as they know that, had they been fully competent, they would have foreseen this eventuality as well. Suggesting at this point that it would have been difficult to do so only rubs salt in the wound, however reasonable a suggestion it might be.

However- if one can suggest that something else is to blame in such a way that it requires specialized knowledge to understand the excuse, the blow is softened considerably. And if it sounds like an excuse which could only apply to a genius, you may succeed in driving the pain of the incident from your fortunate engineer friend's mind entirely!

Summary:(Example: After a programming failure)
"Don't worry, you couldn't have guessed that was going to happen." VERY BAD
"Don't worry, it's not your fault." BAD
"Don't worry, you know how those compilers are." BETTER
"Don't worry, sounds like you were on the right track but that compiler is notoriously flaky when it comes to multiple thread programming." GOOD
"Wow, I can't believe your simple yet elegant solution was nearly successful in resolving a notorious NP-hard problem!"  SO MUCH WIN

My friends, I hope that this has been instructive. Now armed with these new insights, go out and encourage some engineers in your life! If all else fails, your attempts to argue that they should have been encouraged by your motivational strategies will prove your intentions were good.
And for engineers, like anyone else, the thought really does count.