Escalate the channel, not the conflict is a principle of conflict resolution. When a conversation with someone goes awry, switch to a more personal medium of communication rather than escalating (e.g. to a boss, etc.).
Talking privately in person is the most personal, then video chat, then voice chat …
The whole point of feedback is to change someone’s behavior in the future. That only works if you can give it in a form that they can listen to. This is a template I got from the wonderful Manager Tools on how to give feedback in a way that …
I have tried a script like this for the past year for engineers at around the Senior engineer level. I have been really happy with the results so far: the idea of "leadership mini-vacuums" makes growth here fairly approachable. The steps are small and people can choose to start with the step with which they are most comfortable.
Some thoughts on how to give better apologies.
The central thesis of this book is that measuring employees will necessarily incentivize their behavior and measurement systems are doomed to by dysfunctional if any critical dimension of an employees role is not measured.
While interviewing at a potential company, the engineer evaluating you asks the obligatory "Any questions for me?". What do you ask?
Some might be tempted to follow a checklist like the Joel Test1, but I prefer to ask questions that allow me to be more diplomatic when probing a …
On the advice of a former colleague, I recently read Winning with Data: Transform Your Culture, Empower Your People, and Shape the Future by Tomasz Tunguz and Frank Bien.
This book was a bunch of just-so stories about how companies used a data-driven methodology (via Looker) to improve their business …
On the advice of a former colleague, I recently read Drift into Failure: From Hunting Broken Components to Understanding Complex Systems by Sidney Dekker.
By examining several recent disasters (ranging from the Challenger explosion to the housing market collapse of 2008), Dekker contends that …
Tonight, I sat down and read through every resume in the 2013 SCS senior resume book. Reading resumes for a company is really interesting, because I find myself looking at them very differently. As a student, I didn't really understand what sections of the resume are important. I thought it …