Here are a few blogs I recommend reading from this month…
The Ultimate Workplace Praise Guide: How to be More Positive at Work and Give More Praise to Your Team
“Positivity is a choice.” If a manager is always complaining and downbeat how do you think the team will feel? How a manager acts reflects in the team too, being positive and giving praise both play a major part of this. This doesn’t always come easily, it is hard and takes effort but this post provides a number of good tips to boost your positivity. It’s difficult to pick out one or two because I agree with so many, but animated GIFs are a powerful and fun way to praise and share emotions.
Why geeks should speak
I’ve only spoken at one meetup but can attest to it building self-confidence and your professional network. This post provides lots of examples why it’s something every geek should seriously consider no matter how frightening it might seem.
Micromanagement is not a leadership strategy
“Micromanaging isn’t leading, it’s controlling. It isn’t mentoring, it’s anti-learning. It isn’t supportive, it’s undermining.” Micromanaging is a leadership anti-pattern. I believe there are times when a manager needs to work closely with a person in their team but it should be understood by both that this is only for a short period of time. There are also times when you take over a team that has underperforming people, that there has to be a level of micromanagement to be productive while the way forward is figured out. As a rule, try to avoid being one of the types described in this post!
7 Habits of Highly Ineffective Leaders
A few more leadership anti-patterns in this post that are worth checking against ourselves. Some of these do get on my nerves like taking credit for other people’s work, refusing to admit when you’re wrong, and putting your own needs before those of the team!
Engineering Management : Lessons learned in first year
A good in-depth post for first-time managers with many points to consider. “Only 2 things matter: Results & Retention”, whilst these are important if we overly concern ourselves with people staying we can be overly critical on ourselves when people don’t. The reality is that people move on, that’s life, and we don’t always have the luxury of continually growing teams. A big part of a manager’s role to create an environment for people to thrive, for new and existing people, then you a providing a strong reason for people to stay.
Radical Candor – Quotes and Thoughts
I highly recommend reading Radical Candor, in this post I share a few quotes and thoughts from the book.
Video: the drastic effects of incivility
Great short video on incivility with steps on how to avoid it.
Recommended leadership resources:
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