jonathan@researchcomputingteams.org
This resource first appeared in issue #81 on 02 Jul 2021 and has tags Becoming A Manager: One-on-ones, Becoming A Manager: Managing Individuals
The Hotel Giraffe - Michael Lopp, Rands in Repose
There’s a lot in here about stress, how it builds up, and how it’s hard to see sometimes from the inside.
Lopp has four questions he asked his team members during a previous job:
On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 == low, 10 == high): How stressed are you right NOW? What is your IDEAL stress level? Ideal meaning the stress is useful and not debilitating. What is your MAX stress level? What behaviours do you see in yourself when you close or at MAX?
Most of us in this line of work like to be a bit stressed, if the stress is of the right kind - learning challenging new material, developing new skills, reaching to make stretch goals. But when stress builds up, it gets unproductive (sometimes this distinction is referred to as eustress vs distress). Lott walks through his failure modes when he’s near max stress:
Lossiness: I become unreliable. I miss on commitments and I’m not aware I’m doing so until reminded after the miss which leads to
Irritability: Small annoyances have a disproportionate effect on my mood. I have strong negative reactions to small developments that I normally easily shrug off. Then I start to become
Increasingly Pointlessly Tactical: Stuff is dropped, I’m grumpy, so I start to make lists. Lots of them. […]
Rage: The final straw. When we’re not all following my irrational unspoken script, I get rage because of my totally unrealistic expectation that everything must proceed exactly to plan.[…]
I think mine are pretty similar; certainly lossiness and irritability are early warning signs.
Much of the article is a particular example of how he only belatedly discovered he was very stressed out because he was missing on commitments to himself (food, exercise, sleep). The key is to pay attention to early warning signs - in yourself as well as your team members! - and then course correct, rather than letting things go too far.
