management

My Agile Life: Be Your Own Best Boss

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s LinkedIn, and Steve’s Tumblr)

(My continuing “Agile Life” column, where I use Scrum for a more balanced and productive life continues).

One of the better bosses I had, when seeing a report I had created, noted “Now I understand where we are and I’m worried.”

Why do I say he was a better boss? Because his reaction to seeing disturbing data was to then figure out what to do. He didn’t kill the messenger (me) or berate the team (everyone else).  So, solve the problem.

This provided what’s known as Psychological Safety (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_safety), feeling I and we could take risks.  Ironically I was laid off a few months later – as was he – due to other reason.  I felt so bad for him being laid off I forgot my own feelings of annoyance.

Psychological Safety is crucial for good management and good Agile.  Agile philosophy and methods depend on feedback and authenticity so people can respond, communicate, and improve.  Without that it will fail -and trust me, I’ve seen some doozies.

In personal Agile, you’re everyone – the boss, the product owner, the scrum master, the team, the analyst, etc.  Psychological Safety seems to be a bit irrelevant here.

But I realized it’s not.

Ever berate yourself for mistakes?  Ever beaten yourself up over missing something?  Hard on yourself?  You probably have done all of this – you haven’t provided yourself with psychological safety.  You’re being the Bad Boss to yourself.

This is very common.  This is probably near-universal.  I’ve encountered many people who beat themselves up constantly, and worse of all excuse it.  They’re their own battered spouse, their own abusive parent, their own tormentor.

Honestly, a lot more of us probably need to be in therapy.  But back to Agile before this gets too depressing.

To be productive, you need Psychological Safety, even in your own personal life.  How can you achieve that?  A few things I’ve found:

  • * Honesty.  Be honest with yourself self, admit your mistakes and flaws and issues.
  • * Cooperation.  Work with yourself to improve.  Coach yourself.  “You” are on the same team.
  • * Enablement.  Help yourself get better so you don’t repeat mistakes and can improve.
  • * Review.  Review what you do to improve what you do.  It becomes regular, it becomes habit.
  • * Empathy.  Let yourself “feel” what you feel, its like having empathy for others but you’re taking a look at yourself.
  • * Humor and fun.  Learn to have fun, let yourself have fun, enjoy things.

It’s not easy.  But it’s better than the alternative.

Being your own worst enemy is, well, the worst.  This is because you can never get away from yourself.  How about being a good manager to yourself instead?

(By the way I do plenty of books for coaching people to improve in various areas, which may also help you out!)

– Steve

Geek Job Guru: Full Management Alchemist

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Org Chart

It’s time we have The Talk.

OK, that admittedly isn’t clear, which is the point because this is a lame attempt at humor before a serious situation. This is The Talk about Management.

It’s probably not what you think. That, by the way, is my attempt to lure you into reading in case the lame humor didn’t work.

Let’s talk Management

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Why We Have Management

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As a Program Manager I sometimes speculate, analyze, and answer the question “why the hell do we have managers?”  Admittedly that question is usually “why the hell do we have this manager,” but people tend to tar us all with the same brush.

Management is a skillset like anything else, but here’s the thing – we’re all managers.  It’s just what we’re able to effectively manage.

Some people have the knowledge and intensity to write a program, others can lead and perform in a surgical team, others can guide a company.  All of that is management – even if you’re managing yourself (though sadly some people can’t manage that).  We’re all managers.

It’s just that some of us have the skill, perspective, and ability to manage people and organizations.  Not everyone can do it.  For that matter, some people who could manage a team couldn’t manage writing a book or managing a department.  We’ve got different management abilities – some of us just end up making a profession of it.

So we need managers – good managers – like we need anyone else.  I find looking at it this way gives a useful and true perspective.

So I don’t think less of people who aren’t managers, nor do I think everyone with the title is necessary good at it.

But necessary?  Yes.  Ask yourself how you organize things in your career, and what would happen if you weren’t there.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.