Peer feedback is a core skill for collaboration. It’s impossible to work closely with out running into some bumps: differences, disappointments, and disagreements. Peer to peer feedback can help keep working relationships on track and improve results (and it...
Building trust may seem mysterious… something that just happens, or grows through some unknowable process. Like many things, there are concrete actions that tend to build trust (and concrete actions that are almost guaranteed to break trust down).First, a...
In these unsettled times, you can spend time worrying about things you can’t control, or you can take action on things that are within your control. Here are 10 things you can do as a developer to make yourself more visibly valuable, which may keep you off the...
Seth Godin blogs about Three Kinds of Meetings:There are only three kinds of classic meetings:Information. This is a meeting where attendees are informed about what is happening (with or without their blessing). While there may be a facade of conversation, it’s...
From Bob Sutton’s Work Matters blog:15 THINGS I (Bob Sutton) BELIEVE1. Sometimes the best management is no management at all — first do no harm!2. Indifference is as important as passion.3. In organizational life, you can have influence over others or you...
Mike Cottmeyer writes about Feelings, Thoughts, and Actions. When people have a strong response, Mike describes thoughts as the point of leverage to change behavior. How we think can be influenced more directly… it is somehow less personal. We can learn about...
From a CNN article:We’ve all heard the conventional wisdom about good work habits. Many of us have attended time management classes, participated in workshops and have been advised to “work smarter, not harder.”Work habits that might seem less...
Many organizations have a model that feedback rolls down hill. The VPs give feedback to the Directors that report to them. Directors give feedback to the Managers. Managers give feedback to developers. It all cascades downward.A manager’s job is to create an...
It’s a truism that trust is the foundation of teamwork.But trust is a big word. What do we really mean when we talk about trust?First, trust exists within a context. The sort of trust that you need for a productive working relationship is different from the trust you...
I talked to an middle manager recently who promised his VP that his group would deliver a special project for the VP.Unfortunately, he made a promise on the basis of incomplete information. Once he talked to his group and ran the numbers, it turned out the work he...
Every so often, the Prime Directive comes up on one of the lists I follow. And inevitably someone says something like “I don’t believe everyone is doing the best s/he could. I know I don’t always do the best job I could.”There are a couple of...
Earlier this week, I posted a bit about barriers to effective listening. Two days later (conincidentally) I received an email from my friend Janis Aaron Moore. Janis was a programmer for years, and has recently gone back to college, where she’s doing the college...
My teachers in school and at university spent lots of time and effort teaching me how to speak and write effectively. I didn’t get much instruction during my school years on how to listen effectively–mostly my teachers told me to “sit still and...
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–...
Bob Lee & Keith Ray both commented on my post comments on my post Unskilled and Unaware of It. Bob says: The other interesting point in the article is that competent people *assume* that others are as competent. “It’s easy (for me) so it must be easy...
Stephen Norrie (an avid and well-organized collector of articles related to software development, technology, business and humans) pointed me to this study: Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated...
Two recent posts (Focus, Focus, Focus and Breakthrough Thinking on Worker Productivity) talk about the effects of multitasking and interruptions. Spread a person across 4-5 tasks and interrupt her with phone calls, drop-ins, emails, beeps, and meetings and pretty soon...
