Category: Team Building
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A leader’s greatest strength is…
Leaders exhibit many strengths to be successful in their role but I argue that self-awareness is the greatest strength a leader needs. Self-awareness is understanding yourself and the impact you have on others. Leaders need to adapt to different situations, often in a short space of time. Without self-awareness a leader could be causing more…
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Having a perfectionist in the team
Is perfectionism a strength or weakness? In interviews, I hear many candidates use it as a weakness but subtly intend it as a strength. The reality is, someone who is on the far end of the perfectionism spectrum can find it debilitating, even causing mental health issues, so care must be taken with any perfectionist…
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Are you bringing your team up or down?
Do you have those days when you wake up in a good mood then on your commute you have a bad experience with someone and it ruins your happy vibe? Or maybe there are meetings you don’t look forward to because you know someone attending will bring the tone down? I’ve had many of these!…
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Meetup talk: Building a Tech Culture at Medidata
As part of the TechHeads meetup on 30th July I gave talk titled – Building a Tech Culture at Medidata. It was followed by a YouTube Live Q&A. A tech culture can be hard to define and even harder to build. My talk covers some of the approaches used to build a tech culture at…
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The results will take care of themselves
TL;DR – Bill Walsh, an ex-NFL coach, had a leadership approach that transformed the success of the San Francisco 49ers. His ‘Standard of Performance’ covers a wide range of leadership traits that apply across industries. Each point offers learning relevant to leading tech teams today. There’s no hiding from the fact that results are important.…
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Culture needs a foundation to build on
We talk about culture a lot, in books, talks, meetings, it’s a major focus area for companies. We start initiatives to build our culture but, at the same time, we want to let the culture grow organically through the people. For this to happen there has to be a solid foundation for the people to…
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Video: the drastic effects of incivility
incivility – rude or unsociable speech or behaviour. This 15 minute TED talk by Christine Porath explains how incivility can have drastic effects on the teams and culture. She shares some powerful research showing the true cost incivility has but also simple steps on how we can avoid it by thanking people, sharing credit, listening…
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Radical Candor – Quotes and Thoughts
Radical Candor by Kim Scott is one of my top recommended reads for leaders. For any leader or those aspiring to be it’s packed with great advice around building relationships and should challenge or direct how we do things. This blog is simply to highlight some of the areas that jumped out at me so…
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Recommended Reading – July 2018
Some blogs I recommend reading from this month… How to Manage an Employee Who’s Having a Personal Crisis Whether we like it or not people in our teams will go through difficult times, this covers good points for supporting those people in the right way. The 4 questions you should stop asking during your one-on-one…