Why Group Dynamics and Interpersonal Skills Matter

You think group dynamics and interpersonal skills are just fluffy stuff?

Wrong-o. They are an essential element of competitive advantage.

High-tech companies succeed by out learning and out innovating the competition. Group dynamics directly the affect the ability of a team to think, learn, and innovate together.

Groups that avoid conflict won't be able to face tough issues or handle the creative conflict that generates new ideas.

Groups that are highly competitive won't share ideas and build on other's ideas. People won't share the credit for success, further decreasing the chance for creative collaboration.

Groups that defer to a person of higher status will miss many good ideas, and fail to tap and develop the talents of the entire group.

Groups that haven't learned to work well together will take the first workable solution to avoid unsatisfying and uncomfortable interactions.

It takes more than smart people to succeed. It takes smart people who have the interpersonal skills for creative collaboration.

(If you want to learn and practice collaboration skills, come to Secrets of Agile Teamwork July 21-23, 2009 in Redmond, WA.)

I lost interest...

...in blogging for a while and took a break.


Anders Vesterberg read Behind Closed Doors and has some nice things to say on his blog.

Simple principles

Rothman’s and Derby’s main tenet is that the principles of good management are not that difficult to understand. They discuss for example one-on-ones, portfolio management, feedback, coaching and delegation. The thing is to consistently and reliably perform these practises week after week.

Not that difficult, but not always easy. Systems drive behavior, and it's not always easy to recognize and counter act the affects when you're in the thick of it.


I'll meet Anders in person in January at PSL in Sweden. His review was an awfully nice electronic introduction :-).