Category: Team Building
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To praise, or not to praise: that is the question!
The desire to praise people or teams should be firmly rooted in the mind of every leader. When someone does good work or puts extra effort in for the team it feels natural to praise them for it. I wouldn’t want anyone to think their effort has gone unnoticed. HBR’s blog – The Easiest Thing…
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Considering personality types when recruiting
Over the years I’ve been part of many teams, both as a developer and leader, some teams worked well, others not so. There can be many reasons why teams struggle, some of these are clearly visible while others are more difficult to identify. Covering all the technical skills in the team goes without saying, but…
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Lunchtime conference talks
How often do you go to conferences? Going to 2 one day conferences in a single year is my record! Although there are hundreds of tech conferences each year we often don’t get the chance to go to everyone we would like. On the positive side, most of the talks are recorded and shared online…
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Christmas retrospective – Many Faces of Santa
Regular retrospectives are essential for continuous improvement, but they can get a little tedious if the same format is constantly used. Having variation in location and structure helps to create some interest and hopefully a bit of fun! There are various places to look for ideas, here are a few I use: Fun Retrospectives Retrospective…
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Try out new things
Do you get that air of excitement when trying something different? The anticipation waiting for the outcome builds the tension. Will the result meet expectations or will there be a surprise? Whether it’s a personal or team change there is a sense of intrigue trying to prove a theory or simply a hunch. Then the…
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Perfection is elusive
I do see myself as a perfectionist, I’ve always seen that as a good thing. Constantly having targets that I work hard at hitting in both personal and work life, but I’ve never believed I can be truly perfect because there’s always the next thing to improve. So this makes me wonder if a hardened…
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Team building – All About Me
Geographically distributed teams are commonplace, for some larger teams you could say the sun never goes down on them. There are positives to having teams distributed across different timezones but there are negatives too, even if the teams are in the same timezone but located in different places you lose a certain dynamic in the…