Some managers seem to know instinctively how to create trust. But I doubt that managers in low trust groups set out to destroy trust. I suspect that they have learned some bad habits and have some assumptions that subtly (or not so subtly) communicate lack of trust....
Authors note: I wrote this article in 2002. At that time, Agile methods had definitely not crossed the chasm, and many organizations were struggling to obtain customer and user feedback prior to acceptance testing or beta testing. This article describes a...
I’m a big believer in one-on-one meetings on manager-led teams. It’s a way to connect with people, stay in touch with progress, learn about problems early, coach, work on career goals, offer feedback, and more. But if you are the manager for a self-organizing team,...
Getting team communication to work may seem mysterious—something that just happens or grows through some unknowable process. The good news is there are concrete actions that tend to build strong team communication (and concrete actions that are almost guaranteed to...
No one likes to be blamed, so why do we blame each other in the first place? What place does it have in our relationships, and how does it affect our problem-solving abilities? A personal experience with customer disservice to highlight our attraction to assigning...
Self-organizing teams don’t just organize their work. They make decisions. Not every situation requires facilitation, but when a team faces an important decision, applying facilitation practices saves time and yields better results. A Story… Jason was...
As a coach, your job is not to solve or do—it’s to support other people as they develop skills and capabilities and as they solve problems on their own. When it comes to coaching, one size does not fit all. You need to have a variety of practices in your toolkit in...
Samuel Culbert interviewed on NPR. Employee performance reviews should be eliminated, according to UCLA business professor Samuel Culbert. “First, they’re dishonest and fraudulent. And second, they’re just plain bad management,” There’s...
Performance appraisals are ubiquitous. Many people recognize they don’t work very well. However, people have legitimate concerns about maintaining performance without appraisal. A first step is to separate out the many purposes evaluations served in...
