Fill in the blanks

I’ve been noticing what’s missing lately. In some ways, its harder to see what’s not there than what is. But there’s lost of useful information in what isn’t said, as well as what is. For example: A manager, talking about one of the...

5 Sources of Team Conflict

Conflict is inevitable at work. Sooner or later, people will disagree. Might be about what to test or how to implement a feature. Team members may disagree about what “done” means, or whether “always” means 100 per cent of the time or some thing else. If...

Are You Ready to Coach?

Agile coaches are expected to help teams learn agile methods, engineering techniques, and improve the productivity of the teams they work with.  But before they can do they need to be ready to coach.  Being ready to coach means that you have coaching skills, relevant...

The Cost of Withholding Information

I’m not talking about withholding information related to the task and context. Without doubt, that will damage a team. I’m talking about information regarding your internal state . A Story Let me tell you a story about a team I coached. They’d asked me to observe them...

Dealing with “Difficult” Co-workers

We all have coworkers who rub us the wrong way, get on our nerves, and generally drive us crazy. Let’s consider these examples of three people who have difficult coworkers: 1. Ted finished working on a difficult bit of code and headed for the team meeting. When...

When Your Boss is a Bully

When a boss is a bully, interesting work, perks and competitive salary may not be enough to retain good employees. Abusive treatment from the boss can drive people out the door and damage a companies reputation. Bosses Who Bully Not too long ago, I had lunch with my...

First Things First: Acknowledge Emotions

I read some advice suggesting that when we’re stressed or feeling non-positive emotions because of situations out side work—the illness of a spouse or child, a divorce, or other personal problem–employees should hide their emotions and pretend to be “eager...

Facing Up to the Truth

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act II, Scene 2 The other day I was skimming the Harvard Management Update when a section in bold red print caught my eye: “Why don’t more organizations...

No is in the air

A while back, Slacker Manager bemoaned micromanaging colleagues who over use “call colleague X” as thier next action (a la David Allen). And that got me thinking about saying No. Most of us are inclined to accept any task that comes our way at work–...

Astonishing advice

Oh, dear. Oh, dear.Sunday afternoon, as I was getting ready to fly out to visit a client, I cast about for some airplane reading. I found a thin little book called Managing Your Boss, by Sandi Mann.In the section titled “Emotional Management,” the author...

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