Keep seeking new challenges, keep learning new skills – Jim Grey on Software Management
How I became a Director of Engineering without ever having held the title Software Engineer| Jim Grey on Software Management
We’ve known for years that emotional intelligence improves results—often by an order of magnitude. Now, new research shows that a leader’s mood plays a key role in that dynamic—a discovery that should redefine what leaders do first and best.| Harvard Business Review
Reprint: R0410H The strength of the American economy does not rest on its manufacturing prowess, its natural resources, or the size of its market. It turns on one factor—the country’s openness to new ideas, which has allowed it to attract the brightest minds from around the world and harness their creative energies. But the United States is on the verge of losing that competitive edge. As the nation tightens its borders to students and scientists and subjects federal research funding to i...| Harvard Business Review
Research has long shown that using friendly nicknames can be a great way to solidify personal relationships between peers or romantic partners. But what’s the impact of using nicknames in professional environments, in which power disparities are common? Through a series of studies with more than 1,100 U.S.-based adults, research finds that using nicknames in workplace relationships between supervisors and subordinates can sometimes have positive effects — but not always. Specifically, res...| Harvard Business Review
Managers are often at a loss as to how to effectively motivate uninspired employees. Research indicates that managers first should identify the reason for an employee’s lack of motivation before applying a targeted strategy. These reasons fall into four categories called motivation traps. Namely, these are values mismatch, lack of self-efficacy, disruptive emotions, and attribution errors. Each of these four traps has distinct causes and comes with specific strategies to release an employee...| Harvard Business Review
Research conducted during Covid-19 shows that a large number of managers are struggling with the effective management of people working from home, with this translating into many workers feeling untrusted and micromanaged by their bosses. The consequences of poor management at this time — for workers, families, and the economy — suggest the urgent need to help develop managers’ skills in this area. However, simply telling managers to trust their employees is unlikely to be sufficient. R...| Harvard Business Review
Just focusing on differences isn’t enough.| Harvard Business Review
With political polarization on the rise and companies gauging the risks of employees’ internal political activism, some are opting to ban political speech at work entirely. The authors, experts in speaking up at work, explain the pitfalls of this approach and instead suggest asking a different question: How can we support employees and encourage them to handle difference, respect one another, listen, and learn? The answer, they suggest, requires four actions on the part of leaders: Building...| Harvard Business Review
Reprint: R1105D Allen, the author of the best seller Getting Things Done , and Schwartz, the author of the best seller Be Excellent at Anything and the CEO of The Energy Project, are two of the world’s foremost authorities on increasing personal efficiency. Yet although they agree on much, their ideas on how to maximize the output of knowledge workers are fundamentally different. In this edited conversation with HBR, they discuss their own approaches and what they’ve learned from each oth...| Harvard Business Review
Which ones are hurting your company?| Harvard Business Review
Sorting out hybrid work arrangements will require managers to rethink and expand one of strongest proven predictors of team effectiveness: psychological safety. When it comes to psychological safety, managers have traditionally focused on enabling candor and dissent with respect to work content. The problem is, as the boundary between work and life becomes increasingly blurry, managers must make staffing, scheduling, and coordination decisions that take into account employees’ personal circ...| Harvard Business Review
Lack of respect hurts morale—and the bottom line.| Harvard Business Review
How I became a Director of Engineering without ever having held the title Software Engineer| Jim Grey on Software Management
Reprint: R0909J The value of information in the knowledge economy is indisputable, but so is its capacity to overwhelm consumers of it. HBR contributing editor Hemp reports on practical ways for individuals and organizations to avoid getting too much of a good thing. Ready access to useful information comes at a cost: As the volume increases, the line between the worthwhile and the distracting starts to blur. And ready access to you —via e-mail, social networking, and so on—exacerbates th...| Harvard Business Review
Briefing Paper Sponsored by BetterWorks| Harvard Business Review
Reprint: R0707J Popular lore tells us that genius is born, not made. Scientific research, on the other hand, reveals that true expertise is mainly the product of years of intense practice and dedicated coaching. Ordinary practice is not enough: To reach elite levels of performance, you need to constantly push yourself beyond your abilities and comfort level. Such discipline is the key to becoming an expert in all domains, including management and leadership. Those are the conclusions reached ...| Harvard Business Review
Especially if they are older workers, or confident ones.| Harvard Business Review
The finding: To get employees to do something, managers need to ask them at least twice. The research: A team led by professors Neeley and Leonardi shadowed 13 managers in six companies for more than 250 hours, recording every communication the managers sent and received. The researchers discovered that one of every seven communications by […]| Harvard Business Review
According to recent research, 42% of global employees have experienced a decline in mental health since the pandemic began. What can managers do to support their team members during these trying times? The authors offer eight concrete actions managers and leaders can take today to improve mental health in the face of unprecedented uncertainty, including expressing their own vulnerability, modeling healthy behaviors, and building a culture of communication.| Harvard Business Review
Although most great managers want to recognize their people, the challenge, which has only been made more difficult in the hybrid world, is finding meaningful things to recognize them for. The limitation to our typical approach to praise is that we can only recognize what we see, observe, or learn about from others and our recognition focuses on what we appreciate, which is not always what others want to be appreciated for. This is why it is important for leaders to add a new technique to the...| Harvard Business Review
How to make the performance review process more effective. We will discuss the challenges and provide practical advice for managers and HR teams.| blog.engagerocket.co
Many people with neurological conditions such as autism spectrum disorder and dyslexia have extraordinary skills, including in pattern recognition, memory, and mathematics. Yet they often struggle to fit the profiles sought by employers. A growing number of companies, including SAP, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, and Microsoft, have reformed their HR processes in order to access neurodiverse talent—and are seeing productivity gains, quality improvement, boosts in innovative capabilities, and i...| Harvard Business Review
What exactly is psychological safety? It’s a term that’s used a lot but is often misunderstood. In this piece, the author answers the following questions with input from Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson, who coined the phrase “team psychological safety”: 1) What is psychological safety? 2) Why is psychological safety important? 3) How has the idea evolved? 4) How do you know if your team has it? 5) How do you create psychological safety? 6) What are common misconceptions?| Harvard Business Review
Start by getting the challenge/skills ratio right.| Harvard Business Review
Four ways bosses can create them.| Harvard Business Review
