Kurt Lewin shaped modern thinking about psychology and groups dynamics and stated (pithily): B = f(P,E) Behavior is a function of the person and the environment. Let’s assume that the Behavior in question is related to work performance. A lot of the focus in...
I came across this example of a request on Ned Batchelder’s weblog (along with some advice on asking for help.)Hey, I’m in a hurry, so this isn’t going to tell too much. I was having problems with your cursors pygame code. See if you can see...
More linguistic viruses that spawn much misery. The good news about linguistic viruses is that we can choose to stop them in their tracks.6. Not Declining RequestsPeople who say “Yes” to every request tend to find themselves overwhelmed, resentful, and...
I’ve been reading You Are What You Say by Budd and Rothstein. Budd is a physician and has a program that helps people look at how they use language and the affects health and well-being.I really like his list of the 10 Linguistic Viruses which can wreak havoc at...
“To be more effective with others, we first need to become more effective with ourselves.” Kevin Cashman I came across this piece by Cashman on FastCompany… it’s from 1999, and still worth reading. Leadership is built on trust, and trust is...
On Tuesday, David Greenfield (a very smart and insightful technical manager I met a couple of years ago) posted this comment: “The most challenging part of managing for me is learning how to deliver (or accept ) bad news to (from) those who report to me.”...
I’m in Boston for a book-writing week with Johanna Rothman.We’re focusing the skills managers *must* have — the skills that form the foundation for effective management:Managing one-to-one Building relationshipsSpeaking the language of the business /...
“But too often in our business, money is used as a substitute for managing. So the idea that if I can pay you a lot of money, [then] I don’t have to engage with you, I don’t have to be direct with you, I don’t have to be honest with you, I...
I spent a couple of days with Charlie and Edie Seashore last week. The were in town through the local Organization Development Network.The Seashores are elders in the arena of change, diversity, and working with groups. They are also co-authors, with Jerry Weinberg,...
Linda Hill’s Becoming a Manager: Mastery of a New Identity came out a decade ago. This summer she published a new edition, Becoming a Manager: How New Managers Master the Challenges of Leadership. There’s an excerpt on HBS Working Knowledge.Linda Hill...
or unhappiness and problems as the case may be.Hal Macomber points to an article by John Brandt in Industry Week.”The sad truth about unhappy companies: They won’t be around much longer,” says Brandt. Unhappy companies share a set of traits that make...
Julian Elve points to an article on How to be Happy in his post on Positive Psychology.Now there’s something worth knowing :-)Also see Keith Ray’s post on the Paradox of Happiness.I’m reminded of one of the sayings of Virginia Satir: “The...
My mother used to say that to me when I was a child and didn’t exhibit sufficient independence of thought. I was reminded of that (annoying) phrase recently at a talk I gave on influence and managing your boss.My premise is that influence depends on:1) having a...
I’ve come across a couple of references lately that state that aglile methods won’t scale because they are people-centric — they rely on highly-skilled, people who are capable of working together to produce software.When has this not been true? Any...
I believe that great managers are made, not born. And there are some minimum qualifications to become a great manager. A while back I wrote about one of them, the ability to delegate and trust people to achieve results.The other entry criteria is liking to work with...
I walk through a variation on this statement (originally from Norm Kerth) at the beginning of a retrospective:The Retrospective Prime DirectiveRegardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job he/she could, given what...
I came across this list of guidelines for learning on Jason Kottke’s site (via Ned Batchelder).Post script: Dale Emery points out that this list is remarkably similar to David Bohms work on Dialogue, which has been made popular by Peter Senge and others....
When I work with a project team on a retrospective, one of the first things I attend to is the safety of the group. I define safety as the ability to speak your truth without fear of ridicule, rejection, or retribution. Once in a while, someone has a strong reaction...
Yep, that’s me. One of the key ideas in Tom De Marco’s book Slack is that people need a little slack in their schedules to reinvent and change. Humans who are busy all the time don’t have the time/ability to reflect and create new hypotheses on how...
Dave Hoover has an interesting post on where to look for the source of errors, Assume it is Your Fault.I was fortunate to learn this lesson on my first programming job (very very long ago). We didn’t have a separate test group, so we tested each others code. I...
