jonathan@researchcomputingteams.org
Parent categories: Strategy
How to Give Difficult Feedback to Your Boss (Even When You’re Scared) - Karen Hurt, Let’s Grow Leaders Giving negative feedback to your team members takes some courage the first times you do it as a new manager; when you’re providing feedback to your own manager that’s a whole other level. Here Hurt provides some steps for how to proceed (paraphrased) Be clear up-front about your intent and goal, and how you’ll communicate Set up a time to talk in a private place Be objective...
Continue...Other tags: | Managing A Team: Other | Becoming A Manager: Feedback |
Managers should ask for feedback - CJ Cenizal Cenizal makes what should be an uncontroversial - but relatively uncommonly followed - point that managers should be routinely asking for input on their own behaviours and leadership from their team members. This is much more easily done if there are routine one-on-ones, if the ask for input is also routine (not necessarily every one-on-one, but frequent), and the manager has a habit of demonstrating that they take such input seriously and are comfortable talking about their...
Continue...Other tags: | Strategy: Working with Decision Makers | Strategy: Working with Stakeholders | Working With A Research Community: Communications Tools |
Minto Pyramid - Adam Amran, Untools Amran gives a very clear formula here for emails that you also see in advice for briefing boards (or in our case, e.g., scientific advisory committee.). Start with a one-sentence paragraph of the conclusion (or the ask); then a listing of the key arguments; then the supporting details. I’d add that the subject line should reflect the conclusion/ask. I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently. I’m generally ok about writing to-the-point, skimmable emails. But that skill may have...
Continue...Other tags: | Managing Your Career: Other |
Get More Feedback This Week - Laura Tacho Specific guidance along the lines of what we discussed last week about getting more feedback: Be specific - ask for super-specific feedback/advice/guidance Be timely - ask for it immediately after what you want input on, or even before Be gracious - reward the behaviour you want to see more of! Thanking them, taking the input seriously, and even letting them know later how you incorporated the input makes it more likely you’ll get good feedback in the...
Continue...Managing Your Manager - Brie Wolfson Back in #95 we had an article by Roy Rapoport about manager “guard rails”, introducing us to the idea that there are spectra people tend to fall on when they are leading, like “freedom vs guidance” or “caution vs speed”. There’s no intrinsically bad side to either end of those spectra, although they can be better suited for some environments than others (nuclear plant safety equipment manufactures tend to avoid “move quick and break things” sorts of leaders in...
Continue...Other tags: | Strategy: Working with Decision Makers |
Managing Up - Lessons From Scaling Teams at Credit Karma and Lyft - Matt Greenberg, Valerie Wagoner, Dor Levi, Anne Lewandowski Managing upwards isn’t that different from managing our own team members; and it’s very similar to managing relationships with peers and external stakeholders like collaborators, situations where we also lack the ability to be directive. Greenberg, Wagoner, Levi, and Lewandowski suggest focussing on three areas: Aligning your and their goals — making sure you understand their goals so can find areas that align; Developing...
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