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TECH PEOPLE LEADERSHIP NEWSLETTER

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A weekly newsletter of curated links giving help, advice and opinion to leaders in teh tech industry.

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THE ARCHIVE

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FEEDBACK

13 Questions to Get More Feedback From Your Team - Programming Leadership - Medium

Easy read, useful stuff. Exactly what it says - ways to start the “I want feedback” conversation with your team.

Disrupting Bias in Feedback — Jill Wetzler

A cool, practical post outlining specific ways to notice, and then disrupt our own biases when giving feedback. Great piece.

MEETINGS

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Feedback
Meetings

ground_rules/README.md at master · joelparkerhenderson/ground_rules · GitHub

Neat lists of ground rules for all kinds of situations.  You’ll find some neat lists in here - very much worth browsing to find the rules that resonate with you and your team.

The Friendship of Wolves (Ed Batista)

Leadership is lonely.  Ed Batista breaks it down, and gives suggestions about how to handle it.  A great post.

Don't Wait (Ed Batista)

Another excellent post by Ed.  Waiting is a natural, completely understandable avoidance mechanism.  It’s also often, well, a waste of our most precious resource: our time.

Anger and Sadness in the Workplace – Chelsea Troy

I often feel I have to say this in Radical Candor workshops: we work hard, and long, and with intensity.  Why on earth do we think that we shouldn’t get emotional at work?


Chelsea Troy (who, by the way, writes a terrific blog), makes the same case, with more care and precision than I usually do.

Say the Hard Thing – Rands in Repose

Typically clear, insightful stuff from Rands.  Saying the hard thing is necessary.   Hearing the hard thing is just as necessary.  Why we don’t do either, typically, and what to do about it.

How Leaders Can Support Remote Trust Building

Working remotely means that the normal, accidental connections that build relationships in the office, are missing.  A useful set of tips - take a read.

How to Respond to an Angry Employee | Leadership Freak

A good list.

How To Deal With A Passive-Aggressive Coworker

Another good list.

Ai Winter Is Well on Its Way – Piekniewski's Blog

Is AI over-hyped?  Is the bubble about to burst?  I have no idea, but this is a knowledgeable, thoughtful post, and the discussion on Hacker News is a useful followup.

A Course for First Time Managers

I’ve started building the outline of a course for first time managers.  It distills the many conversations I had with new managers as an exec, the critical issues that come up repeatedly in coaching and feedback from Radical Candor workshops.


I’d love your input and, naturally, it’ll be offered to readers of this exclusive newsletter first!  Take a look, and let me know how to make it great!

The New Manager Death Spiral – Rands in Repose

Rands, brilliant, as usual, on the pitfalls of taking over a management position.

Unintuitive Things I’ve Learned about Management (Part 1)

Julie Zhou’s excellent set of notes on management.  A long, but typically elegant, and readable, post.

7 Tips to Successfully Micromanage Programmers – Hacker Noon

Marcus, in acerbic mood, points out all the ways we can end up getting in the way of programmers when we attempt to manage them.

Five Leadership Hacks – Rands in Repose

Love these.  Simple, quick, effective behaviors to have a better day whilst leading a team.

Expectations – Redbubble – Medium

“It all starts with expectations”   Yep.  If you don’t tell people what you want, it’s hard for them to deliver what you want.  Good post.

Opinion | The Stress Sweet Spot - The New York Times

Stress is an integral part of work in the tech industry.  It’s good to know something about it.  This is a good summary of good stress vs bad stress.

Managing Startup Stress: the tl;dr – Tech People Leadership – Medium

My short notes on what stress is, and how to deal with it.  Conceptually dead simple.  You just have to do it.

Atul Gawande: Curiosity and What Equality Really Means | The New Yorker

Not strictly about leadership, or work, but about compassion, and the power that curiosity has to bring about compassion through empathy.  A beautifully written, insightful piece.

The Marshmallow Test: What Does It Really Measure? - The Atlantic

So the marshmallow test is a long-standing trope in behavioral blog posts: kids who can withstand eating a marshmallow for some period of time (restraint!  discipline!) do better in life.   Or, apparently, if you control for wealth and upbringing, not.


Pretty fascinating, and yet another classic “result” that has been brought into doubt (see also Amy Cuddy).

What You Need: What is Actually Required for Success?

“What you need to succeed, is to do the work”.  Well, true.  What I like about this post is pointing out our tendency to mess about with tools (new sneakers for the gym!  a writing program for our screenplay!) rather than getting on with it.  Always good, and rather humbling, to spot.

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