Dates covered: March 11-17, 2019 (week 11 of 52)
Communication
An Exercise to Help Your Team Feel More Comfortable with Conflict (via Harvard Business Review)
We’re biologically wired to get along with our in-group, we’re socialized to be polite, and in the workforce we’re rewarded for getting along with colleagues. Friction leads people to either dig in or give up. The article suggests questions to help you elicit where conflict is natural on your team:
- For a specific role, what’s the unique value? What would we miss if we didn’t have this role?
- On what stakeholders is that role focused? Who defines success?
- What is the most comment tension this role adds to discussions?
How Boeing Should Have Responded to the 737 Max Safety Crisis (via Harvard Business Review)
Crisis management involves how you frame the problem. Beoing’s CEO tried to diminish the impact (pilot training issue) instead of taking a more proactive stance (grounding the fleet until we confirm it’s not a technical error). When responding to a crisis, you have to respond to the perceived crisis, not the actual one. (For more info, there’s a Pluralsight course on crisis communication.)
Culture
As Long as We Associate Leadership with Masculinity, Women Will Be Overlooked (via Harvard Business Review)
“And yet, if our solution is to train women to emulate the behavior of men, by asking them to promote themselves more, take credit for other people’s achievements, blame others for their own mistakes, and focus on their own personal career interests, as opposed to the welfare of their teams or organization, we may end up increasing the representation of women in leadership without increasing the quality of our leaders.”
Making Jokes During a Presentation Helps Men But Hurts Women (via Harvard Business Review)
“Our research suggests that all things being held equal, humor at work is interpreted differently for men and women.” When women used humor they were considered less effective than when men did the same. So apparently the advice of using humor to engage your audience has the bias of being perceived differently.
What It Will Take to Make U.S. Child Care More Affordable (via Harvard Business Review)
- Businesses will need to offer robust child-care benefits or other similar options comparable with the size of the company
- Employees can join caregiver networks to help each other when companies don’t
- Government needs to get involved; “If we leave this issue to the private sector to resolve, the best benefits will continue to be distributed to the most privileged workers, increasing systemic inequities.”
You Shouldn’t Volunteer to Help Your Coworkers (via Harvard Business Review)
The title is a bit misleading; what they mean is that you shouldn’t just jump in and help because you see a problem. The two main reasons are that (1) you may not understand your coworker’s real problem — your assumptions may be incorrect, (2) if you swoop in and fix it, you’re taking away autonomy and may diminish his/her self-esteem.
Traeger’s CEO on Cleaning Up a Toxic Culture (via Harvard Business Review)
This piece describes how the CEO of Traeger dealt with an abusive culture and turned the company around.
Leadership
To Seem More Competent, Be More Confident (via Harvard Business Review)
Some studies have shown that showing more confidence and optimism leads people to believe you are more competent than those who are deferential and humble. A few other highlights from the article:
- “Praising your competence seems to be fine as long as you do not claim that others are incompetent.”
- Confirmation bias: “So if you project confidence, others tend to believe you know what you’re talking about, and they will then filter ambiguous information (like how much luck may have helped or hurt you) to fit their initial impression.”
4 Reasons Good Employees Lose Their Motivation (via Harvard Business Review)
- Values mismatch — I don’t care enough to do this. If someone doesn’t value the work or can’t connect with it, they won’t be motivated to do it. Some example values are interest, identity, importance, and utility.
- Lack of self-efficacy — I don’t think I’m able to do this. Someone may need an encouragement boost or possibly more training.
- Disruptive emotions — I’m too upset to do this. Negative emotions impact our ability to carry out tasks. Active listening helps here.
- Attribution errors — I don’t know what went wrong. If someone doesn’t know what something isn’t working, that’s a barrier to getting unstuck. Work with them to reason it out.
As Your Team Gets Bigger, Your Leadership Style Has to Adapt (via Harvard Business Review)
“Success becomes more about mastering a few key skills: hiring exceptional leaders, building self-reliant teams, establishing a clear vision, and communicating well. People who master those skills will be well-equipped to lead teams of any size.”
- You focus more on indirect rather than direct management
- People treat you differently, as you’re in a position of more influence
- Context switching is part of the job
- Pick and choose your battles; you can’t do it all
- People-centric skills matter most
Process
Digital Transformation Is Not About Technology (via Harvard Business Review)
- Figure out your business strategy before investing in any tech
- Leverage your insiders that are closest to the work you’re transforming
- Design customer experience from the outside in
- Recognize employees’ fears of being replaced
- Use aspects of start-up culture (e.g., agile decision making, rapid prototyping, flat structures)
How to Get Your To-Do List Done When You’re Always in Meetings (via Harvard Business Review)
- Think smaller to find things you can do in the gaps between meetings. Checking off small tasks is still progress.
- Block “busy” time on your calendar; otherwise anything with lower resistance (e.g., checking email) will sneak in.
A Model That’s Mental (via Software Lead Weekly)
An interesting take on reframing negative thoughts — e.g., “This slight panic before you show your work means you care a lot about quality.”
Technology
C# 8.X Is Introducing Records (via The Software Mentor)
There will be support for plain-old CLR objects (POCOs) that don’t have any business logic. This saves you from having to write out property definitions, constructors, destructors, and methods for equality.
Why AI Underperforms and What Companies Can Do About It (via Harvard Business Review)
The company executives and the data scientists don’t speak the same language. Non-technical folks need to learn how to frame business problems in technical terms, and technical team members need to work on interpersonal communication (what are typically referred to as “soft skills”).
The AI Roles Some Companies Forget to Fill (via Harvard Business Review)
- AI engineer — this is different than research; you need to build the tools to solve your problems
- AI data czar — managing the data is different than analyzing it
- Business leader — how to translate AI data/results into business strategy