Trust is a foundation for effective team work (and effective organizations). Some managers attempt building trust with ropes courses, sailing, or cooking events. Such activities like these may fun (for some). Indeed, people may develop a level of camaraderie through...
I’ve seen a renewed cry for leaders in organizations lately. Too often in these discussions, the attempt to define the characteristics of a leader boils down to a role in which one individual creates a vision for others to follow. That’s not enough. We need more...
The answer is (of course): “It depends.” Self-management is a spectrum, not a point. How much self-management is right for a team depends on that team. I see many teams in small companies and start-ups who self-manage. They set product goals, make...
I was recently interviewed for an article on how managers should handle office romances: Office romance 101: Relationship advice for managers:46% of employees have been involved in an office romance. If you haven’t dealt with this issue yet, you surely will....
What to do when your (so-called) MVP is destroying team productivity. Luke, the manager of the Rev 2.0 team, was walking on eggshells. He’d had another blow up with Shelly, the team architect. He tried to talk to her about the way she had treated the newest...
Authors note: A recent blog post on Bob Sutton’s Work Matters reminded me of this little piece I wrote a while ago. A simple thank you can make a difference; appreciation builds good will, and reminds people that they are valued as human beings, not just as CPUs...
I’ve noticed something lately: when people write about collaboration, they discuss facilitated meetings or affinity grouping stickynotes. Well-run meetings that encourage participation and building consensus are certainly valuable. Grouping stickynotes can help...
I noticed at the recent agile conference that there were lots of people who billed themselves as agile coaches, and several sessions on coaching. Seemed like more of both than in past years. I consider myself a coach, too, though not with a capital C. I usually coach...
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...
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...
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...
(c) 2007-2010 Esther Derby A ScrumMaster recently asked me if he should take over responsibility for year-end performance evaluations since he was closer to the work than the functional manager for the team. It’s not the first time I’ve heard this question, and as...
If you’re a hiring manager, you know that a typical hiring process emphasizes technical skills, functional skills, and industry knowledge. Interpersonal skills are near the bottom of the list, if they make the list at all. However, if you’re hiring for an...
Hiring managers (and HR departments) expend enormous effort finding people with the right skills to fill open positions. But, skills are only half the equation for success. Many years ago, psychologist Kurt Lewin reduced the mysteries of human behavior to this simple...
As test and development managers, we pay attention to developing technical personnel, but what about managers? Do we do enough to help manager and team leads develop and improve their leadership skills–especially when we are those managers? Some companies, GE...
(c) 2010 Esther Derby I recently spoke to a senior manager who wanted to know how “agile” his company was compared to other companies. When I asked what he’d gain from that information, he responded that then he’d know what practices the...
