How joining an existing team might not be as inclusive as we think

Agile Development teams are the heart of an agile organization. Whether the team uses Scrum, Kanban, XP, or some amalgamation of agile practices, the Agile Development team is the core make-up of the organization. These teams, in the spirit of agile, aren’t just nameless cogs in a machine, but have their own cuture, identity, way of working, and of course, a team name. Much goes into setting up a team and crafting its sense of self.

But teams change. Someone leaves, someone is added, or leadership shuffles the team a little or a lot. How do you incorporate a new team member? When the team completely changes, it is quite obvious that a whole new team culture must be created. But when just one person is added or removed, does that require a brand new team identity?

To answer the question, consider your response to the next question. Does the team go back to a ‘Forming’ phase when just one person is changed?

From my experience, the answer is yes, though never as drastically as when the team is first created. When a new team member joins an existing team, how far do we typically go to welcome them? Do we re-establish team norms? Identify a new team name? Revisit the team calendar and meeting cadence? Do you purposefully reset the team culture or expect them to form and adapt to the culture the team has already established?

From a practical view, I rarely see teams change their names or drastically change the culture for one person. Given the overhead associated with returning to the beginning of a team’s formation and starting from scratch, this stance makes sense. Going through all of the formation activities take time that few teams choose to invest in.

Yet let’s look at it from the new team member’s perspective. How welcomed would you feel if you were placed on an established team that expected you to conform to their culture? One might feel like a second class citizen, an outsider on one’s own team. They’re known or introduced as the ‘new person’ on the team. We’ve all felt out-of-place at one point in our lives and it’s not a great feeling.

The next time you have a new team member join your existing team, consider how you can be truly inclusive and welcoming for them. What might you do to fully welcome a new team member onto a team? How can we balance being pragmatic with being inclusive? And how can we ensure that the new team member and their skills are blended well with the team?

Aligning our reading goals to our personal goals is key

I had three large learning focuses for 2023. In addition to books on personal efficiencies and software development, which I also focused on in 2022, a large focus was on Stoicism. For more on the stoic books, check out last week’s post.

Below I dive into the personal efficiencies and software development books I read in 2023, such as ‘High Performance Habits’, ‘Deep Work’, ‘Smart Brevity’, and ‘Leading Lean’.

Curiously absent from my 2023 books were any books solely on leadership. I was shocked when I realized I had missed that category of books entirely last year. When we don’t align our efforts to our goals, we can easily stray from where we want to go.

Thinking statistically

This book was recomended by the ‘Personal MBA’ book I read in 2022. A fairly short read, it provides a useful introduction to statistics for the professional to use. Some key points from the book

• Selection bias occurs when we select non-random data and treat it like it was random data. Selection Bias is very difficult to eliminate.
• Models abstract out into equations how a system operates..
• When presented with new evidence, we can leverage Bayes’ Theorem to help us change our beliefs.

Leading Lean

‘Leading Lean’ teaches how one can introduce lean concepts to any organization and the tools are can implement. This book was difficult to read as the author relied heavily on acronyms, many that they created and spelled out only once, which slowed comprehension. A sample chapter can be found at the publishers website if you’re interested in learning more.

Kanban

Often referred to as the blue Kanban book, this book dived deep into the mechanics of Kanban. I thought I was well versed in Kanban before reading this book and learned that there were many elements and nuances to Kanben that I was blind to, such as the concept of a ‘commitment point’, the point on a kanban board where the flow of work dicates that we’ve ‘committed’ to doing the work.

100 ways to improve your writing

Writing is a passion of mine, so I’ve sought out books on how to improve the craft of writing. This book provides a number of suggestions, many of which are reminders of good grammar or pointing out bad practices (such as the use of parentheses).

The book contains a few useful suggestions and checklists, but many of the ideas, such as utilizing writing exercises to improve your writing, are obvious.

Remote Team Interaction Workbook

Written by the same authors as Team Topologies, this book dives into techniques and practices for software development teams to work remotely. Given many development teams are working remotely part of the time, this book is useful aid for many teams while also serving as a quick intro or reminder on the Team Topology structure.

High Performance Habits

Through extensive surveys and interviews, the author has identified 6 habits that high performers follow. High Performers are those who can sustain high output over a long period of time. In doing so, they exhibit six habits, three personal and three social habits.

• Personal Habits
  • Seek Clarity
  • Generate Energy
  • Raise Necessity
• Social Habits
  • Increase Productivity
  • Develop Influence
  • Demonstrate Courage

The author then provides 3 key practices for each habit to help you implement the habit for yourself.

Looking over the list of habits and diving into the book, there is some overlap here with stoic philosophy. The author also frequently quotes stoics and others.

Full Steam Ahead

‘Full Steam Ahead’ explores what makes for a good vision and how to craft are on your own. An inspirational and compelling vision includes a clearly articulated purpose that explains why you are doing what you are doing. It includes a vivid picture of the future we are working towards, which tells us where our efforts lie. Finally, it includes the values we follow, which says how we will accomplish the vision.

Deep Work

Our ability to retain focus for long stretches of time is decreasing just when the value of thinking and working deeply on a task is becoming more important.

That is the premise of ‘Deep Work’ which lays out the value of being able to focus and work deeply while also providing strategies and tips on how to achieve deep work.

There are 4 key philosophies to Deep work

• Monastic. Eschewing most if not all shallow work
• Bimodal - Taking stretches of days, weeks, or even months at a time for deep work
• Rhythmic-Develop a routine of deep work stretchus within a day
• Journalistic-Using any possible time to go into deep work.

For most, monistic and bimodal are difficult or impossible to fit into their life. The journalistic is the most challenging to implement, as it requires strict discipline to use every short moment possible. This leaves rhythmic the most accessible approach to achieve deep work for most people.

Smart Brevity

When you write, keep your audience at the fore front. Place the most relevant information for them firsh, then provide more context below if they wish to read on.

That’s the main takeaway from smart Prefer more, check out my blog post on ‘Smart Brevity‘ or cheek out the book yourself.

A deep dive into the practical side of Stoicism

Over the past 5 years I’ve read at least 24 books a year. In 2023, I surpassed previous years by reading 64 books over a large, number of genres.

My main reading focus for 2023 wes personal efficiencies, software development, and Stoicism. Today, I’ll focus on the lessons from the stoic philosoply and its practical applications.

After reading ‘The Obstacle is the Way’, in 2022 I became intrigued by Stoic philosophy and read 10 different books on Stoicism in the year.

Below are the key insights I gained from the 10 books on Stoicism. Of note, many of the books below are written by Ryan Holiday who wrote ‘The Obstacle is the Way’, including ‘Life of the Stoics’, ‘Ego is the Enemy’, ‘Stillness is the Key’, ‘Courage is Calling’, ‘Discipline is Destiny’, and ‘The Daily Stoic’.

Next week, I’ll dive into the key learnings from my other 2023 books.

Life of the Stoics

Written by Ryan Holiday, author of ‘The Obstacle is the Way’, this book tells the history of Stoicism through the people who founded it, influenced it, taught it, and shaped it to the school of philosophy that we now associate the word ‘stoic’ with someone who is emotionless.

The book starts with Zeno the founder of Stoicism in Athens. It follows several generations of leaders of the school of Stoicism and how it spread to Rome, where many of the later stoics like Cato the Younger, Seneca, and Epictetus would extend and build on the philosophy. The book concludes with Marcus Aurelius, described as the Philosopher King, as we was both well versed and strongly practiced Stoicism and served as the Emperor of Rome during the height of the Empire.

Ego is the Enemy

Another book by Ryan Holiday, ‘Ego is the Enemy’ explains how our ego sabotages us and how to overcome our ego to succeed. Ego can masquerade as many things. Often it shows up as arrogance. It’s the “need to be better than, more then, recognized for”. But ego can show up in other, more subtle ways, such as telling ourselves that we’re special, that we deserve to succeed or that we were wronged by others.

Ego is at the root of most challenges. And it can be managed and overcome. To do so, we must

• Be Humble in our aspirations
• Gracious in our success
• Resilient in our Failvers

Stillness is the Key

Yet another Ryan Holiday book, Stillness is the Key dives into how to instill and nurture a sense of calm in the mind, body, and spirit.

This calm or stillness is the key to seeing clearly, being strategic, building good habits, and following the example of the Stoics.

Stoic Challenge

Everyday life presents an opportunity to practice being Stoic. Whether its being stuck in traffic, waiting in line at the grocery store, or dealing with an upset child, each moment offers us an opportunity to practice a stoic mindset. Viewing these moments as ‘Stoic challenges’ offer a way for us to set the proper mindset to approach these situations and remind ourselves to remain in control of our emotions.

Enchiridion & Teachings of Epictetus

After reading many modern books on Stoicism, I decided to spend some time reading ancient stoic texts including the ‘Enchiridion’ by Epictetus and the ‘Teachings of Epictetus’. The writings are dense and contain a few useful muggets including:

“You will be hurt when you consent to be hurt.”

“If you wish someone to be without faults, you are foolish.”

Discipline is Destiny

The Stoics valued 4 virtues: courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom. Temperance, or discipline as the author choose to call it, is about having command over one’s mind, body, and soul. “Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.” - Seneca

We must exhibit discipline in all areas of life. Each area strengthens the discipline of other areas and conversely, a weakness in one area results in a weakness in other areas. “Once you compromise, you’ve been compromised.”

Courage is Calling

“There is nothing worth doing that is not scary.” It is up to us on how we respond to fear. Courage is about overcoming this fear and taking action anyway.

There are many aspects of courage, but one that resonated with me is the idea that our training and our preparation enables us to overcome our fear and push forward anyway.

The Daily Stoic

There’s no one single lesson that jumped out at me from this book. Instead, it was the experience as a whole of a daily reminder on some aspect of Stoicism that made this book a great read that I am continuing into 2024.

Anti Fragile

While not a book strictly on Stoicism I’m including it in this list as it references Stoic philosophy while also referenced in Ryan Holiday’s ‘Obstacle is the Way’. The concept of Antifragility is that there are things that get stronger by being exposed to stressors. The opposite of fragile, an item that breaks when exposed to stress is not robust. Something robust, at best, is unharmed by stress. The true opposite of fragile is something that improves by being exposed to stress. Conceptually, one can apply this idea to development teams. Such an application may be intentionally exposing the team to stress instead of protecting them like a ‘Scrum Mom’ would.

Software Design Principles do not always translate to leadership

Software engineers learn and follow a number of design principles when building solutions. These principles outline good practices that one should follow in order to build the best applications. These become ingrained in our brains as engineers, lessons like do not repeat yourself. In 2019, I delivered a talk at Cincy Deliver considering if and how these principles translate to leadership. Can the principles that we as engineers spent countless hours learning translate to a leadership role?

One such design principle is information hiding. Good software design states that well designed code doesn’t include information that is not needed and hides information from others who don’t need access to it. This design principle reinforces other design principles such as Separation of Concerns and Single Responsibility Principle. By hiding information away, we ensure software is crafted with clear lines of duty.

But, when we take this principle and apply it to leadership, what does that look like? It might come across as a leader hoarding information, keeping his team in the dark, and feeding just the information the leader deems is necessary. Have you worked for or encountered a leader like this? Your experience in this situation may vary. You may thrive on having only relevant information delivered to you, freeing you to focus on the task at hand. Or, you may be like me who does their best work with the context of what is going on around me. The information may not be relevant now, but knowing it may lead to a connection later that proves valuable.

In my current role, I work with eight development teams. We’ve experimented with conducting a sprintly review that includes all teams, allowing them and the stakeholders to a window into all of the work occurring . This practice of information sharing frequently bared fruit, such as a time a developer suggested utilizing new functionality another team developed in a unique way with the feature his team was developing. If the information was hidden too tightly, he wouldn’t have known of this feature and how it could be used.

In an organization, not all information can be widely shared. Some things, such as HR moves, are sensitive. But hiding information paired with limiting team members to a single responsibility robs the organization of your teams mind and
their ability to make fascinating connections.

My key takeaways from my 2022 books

In 2021, I read just 24 books. Going into 2022, I wanted to read more and managed to read 57 books. Many of these were fiction books I read for fun, often alongside my wife who got back into reading in 2022.

In 2021, my learning focus was Leadership and Personal Efficiencies. I expanded on these learning, in 2022 with books like The Mentor Leader, Personal MBA, and Building a Second Brain.

In 2022, I added two more learning focuses, Mindfulness and Software Development books. This includes books such as The Obstacle is the Way and Team Topologies.

I also read a number of history books and a few other non-fictional books including The Road to Disaster and Can’t Even.

How to get your point across in 30 Seconds or less

Attention spans are shortening, the author Milo O’ Frank wrote in 1986. The World of Tik Tok and X (apparently people didn’t have long enough attention spans for even the name Twitter) would not here surprised the author of this book.

When talking or writing, to make our point, we must make our pitch short. Start with a hook to bring the listener in. Have a single objective for your pitch. Know your audience and tailor your pitch to them. And finally, find the right approach, given all the above, to lead you to your objective.

6 Thinking Hats

The 6 Thinking, Hats introduces a useful tool for conversations for when a decision needs to be made. All too often, we lead to endless debate or a topic, pitting people against eachother. By inviting everyone to approach the problem by looking at it from the 6 different thinking hats together, one at a time, a group can engage in a collaborative effort instead of a combative one.

The 6 thinking hats are:

• White Hat - Based in Fact
• Red - Concerned with Emotions
• Black - What can go wrong?
• Yellow - What can go right?
• Green - Breeding ground for Creativity
• Blue - Concerned with Organization

Talking to Strangers

Talking to people we don’t know is not as simple as we think. We cannot tell what they want, when they are lying, nor if they have good or bad intentions. Our approaches often lead to conflict, and so we need to re-examine our strategies of talking to others.

To me, this book was more focused on highlighting the problem and a bit light on offering solutions or advice.

The Mentor Leader

Part memoir, part leadership book, the Mentor Leader follows Tony Dungy, former head coach of the Indianapolis Colts through the rise and culmination of his career with winning the Super Bowl in 2007. Interspersed with his personal history, this book lays out Tony Dungy’s leadership style, which he dubs the mentor leader. A mentor leader must have strong character, put others above themselves, strive for significance, and keep a lay term perspective.

Road to Disaster

The Road to Disaster is a history that provides an insider look into book the political workings behind the Vietnam war. What is an interesting view is how self-confidence and inaccurate data contributed to the escalations of the conflict.

Success Under Stress

Stress is an emotional reaction to threats in our environment. Evolution has evolved these stress responses to enable us to survive, but they are poorly adapted to modern life. This book provides a few techniques for us to succeed with our stressors.

The key tool I took away from this beak is the story log. If you struggle with taking things personally, capture the stories you are telling yourself in a story log. Jot down the event, and the story you are telling yourself about the event. Then, brainstorm three alternative stories that could be possible. Then, with perspective, consider how you want to respond, or it the event has passed, what a better response would have been.

Team Topologies

In Software engineering, Conway’s Law states that the architecture of our systems takes on the shape of the communication paths of our architecture. If we want to change an architecture then we must change how we are structured.

Team topologies offers an in depth look at how we might organize teams in order to build the architectures we went while trying to limit the cognitive load of our teams - that is the mental effort we must exert to do our job and all of the things we must remember to do it well.

Can’t Even

Many people, myself included, tend to only read books with which we agree with the premise or which build on our world view. Rarely do I seek at books that argue something counter to my view of the world. Can’t Even, which describes how millennials became the burnout generation, falls into the latter category. The author lays down all of the reasons why millennials have it so much worse than previous generations and how society and how our parents raised us are to blame. This book sits in stark contrast to the next book on my reading list…

The Obstacle is the Way

Everyone, millennials included, face challenges. Rockefeller started his career during a recession and saw it as blessing, as he was made stronger. Compare this with the title of the previous book, “Can’t Even”. This book is divided into 3 elements, Perception, or how we perceive a situation, Action, or how we choose to respond to what we perceive, and our Will, or the internal drive that says when we will give up.

The author provides examples From many people yet leans heavily on Stoic philosophy including this quote from Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius “Choose not to be harmed - and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed - and you haven’t been.”

LeaderShift

Written by John C Maxwell, Leadershit shares the 11 mental shifts a leader must make in their career, such as when an individual is promoted to a leadership position, they must make the shift froma soloist to a conductor.

Building a Second Brain

In “Getting Things Done”, David Allen stated that “your brain is for thinking of ideas, not remembering them”. This is where a “Second Brain” comes in. How can we save all of the interesting bits of information, knowledge, and artifacts we build in a way that we can easily access it and leverage it when we need it?

At its core, the system consists of a common folder structure for your electronic documents, wherever they are that is called the PARA method:

• Projects
• Areas of Focus
• Resources
• Archive

Strategize

Strategize deals how to define and execute a product strategy. A successful strategy lies at the Center of business goals, market needs, and the key feature differentiators of the product.

Art of Business Value

Art of Business Valve explores what the elusive ‘Business helve’ that many agile frameworks and practices refer to. If the role of development teams is to deliver and maximize business velve, we must understand and articulate what the business values.

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

We develop many habits on our way to success and significance. But many of these habits hold us back and prevent us from making the next jump in our career. This book presents many of the most common habits that hold people back and how to overcome them.

Personal MBA

An MBA is expensive in both time and money. The Personal MBA aims to give the reader all of the knowledge of an MBA without the expensive price tag. Even if you do pursue an MBA, the Personal MBA provides Clift notes for most of the topics covered and is a great resource to point to other books tht die deeper on the topic.

My key takeaways from my 2021 books

I am an avid reader. Over the past 5 years, I’ve read at least 2 books a month. I read for both fun and learning, striving to strike an even balance. Often, learning occurs from my fun reading as much as the other books. Take Matthew McConaughey’s memoir, Green lights. In addition to being entertained by his stories and his refined Texas drawl, the premise of the book is that at times the universe will give you “green lights” to proceed.

My reading in 2021 followed 3 key themes, books for fun, books on leadership, and books on personal efficiencies. I’ve left most of the books for fun off this light, like the Silmarillion. Below are my key learnings from my 2021 readings.

Team of Teams

Team of Teams combines three of my favorite types of books history, military, and leadership. The author recounts first-hand how he transformed the military and the leadership of the military organization responsible for rooting out and fighting insurgents in Iraq during the Second Iraq War. As the title of the book suggests, this was accomplished by forming a team of teams that decentralized decision making and the free-flow of information between different agencies, including intelligence agencies usually accustomed to keeping secrets well guarded.

Green lights

I prefer to read my books instead of listening to them. However, if I come across an audio book that is read by the author AND their profession is to speak for a living, then that audio book will get the ‘greenlight’ for me.

This is a fairly entertaining read. What I wasn’t expecting deep insightful ideas. Here are a couple quotes that jumped at to me.

• Great leaders are not always in front, they also know who to follow.
• We cannot fully appreciate the light without the shadows.
• We have to be thrown off balance to find our footing.
• Persist, pivot, or concede. It’s up to us, our choice every time.

War of Art

Creative endeavors done by professionals is a war. Professionals will encounter resistance in many forms, yet know that the only way to succeed is to overcome resistance in its many forms.

Boundaries

Many of us fail to establish and enforce strong boundaries between us and other people. This results in inner or external frustration. Poor boundaries at work may result in us being overworked as we find it difficult to say no.

This book dives deep into types of problems with boundaries, the laws the authors feel boundaries follow, and how to establish boundaries. The key point is that boundaries are not selfish but actually lead to mature relationships.

Leader Who Had no Title

Told as a story, the leader who had no title explains how anyone can stand up and be a leader, regardless of your position in the organization. By taking responsibility, taking actions, and developing the right behaviors, anyone can inspire and lead others.

Leadership is Language

Written by David Marquet, the author of Turn the Ship Around, Leadership is Language talks about how the language leaders use is important. Equally important is to not follow the old patterns of leadership but instead follow the new plays of modern leadership, which are:

• CONTROL THE CLOCK, not obey the clock
• COLLABORATE, not coerce
• COMMIT, not comply
• COMPLETE, not continue
• IMPROVE, not prove
• CONNECT, not conform

Getting things done when you’re not in Charge

This book is written around a model of change influence in which you, as the change agent connects people, wants, and reality. Influencing change requires understanding how the reality interacts with the people in the agenication and their wants and desires to change.

Smarter, Faster, Better

In the author’s studies around productivity, he landed on 8 key areas. When harnessed well, these lead to smarter, faster, better results. The 8 key areas are Motivation, Teams, Focus, Goal Setting, Managing others, Decision Making, Innovation, Absorbing Data.

A Minute to Think

We all find ourselves very busy, in need of a minute to think. This book is about creating white space through application of smart strategies to optimize your time. One interesting insight from this book is that making many small improvements can be more effective than making one big improvement. The smaller improvements are easier to implement then large ones, meaning we can gain greater successive improvements.

Making Work Work

Positivity in organizations is key to making work “work”, or functional. There are many ways to achieve this, but one way is to act like your “hire” self, that is the version of yourself that shows up to job interviews.

Rebel Talent

Rebels here a knack for making things better. Rebels, as leaders, can drive innovation and creativity throughout the organization. Rebel Talent speaks to the value rebellious, creative people bring to an organization.

Keep the reader at the center of your writing.

Just as we develop user-centered designs, our communication should place the reader at the center of what we do. Three key ways to apply this is to:

• Lead with the summary and key point you aim to convey
• If you provide context that is not absolutely necessary, place it towards the end
• Provide jumping off points for your reader to save them time

These ideas come from the book Smart Brevity, which covers the mechanics of the concept in great detail, from the structure of a message, the use of axioms to highlight the important details, and how to apply it to various mediums, including presentations. Check out the book to learn more.

My three key lessons from Smart Brevity

I’m striving to apply these three key ways to improve how I write. The overarching aim of each is to put the reader at the center of the message. This makes the writing less about what I want to say and more about what the reader needs to hear and understand on the topic.

First, when I’m writing for others, I pause to make certain I know what it is that they truly need to know about what I’m sharing. I try to boil down the message to the one take-away they need from the message. As shared in Smart Brevity, if you can’t identify the key take-away, how can you expect the reader or listener to? As the writer of the message, I am the expert on what I need to convey; if I can’t convey it succinctly, then have I not done my job. In these cases, I need to put in more work.

Second, I aim to put the key take-away at the top, explain why it matters clearly and providing clear exit points for the reader. With shortening attention spans, it’s important to lead with the important message up front. Additional context can be shared, but it should be at the end, so those who do not need or care about the context can skip it.

Finally, my blog posts now contain a tag line along with the title. While the titles aim to be catchy, the tag line summarizes the key point of the post. This ensures that each post has a tight focus and gives the reader the option to decide if they want to continue or not. For those who skim messages, the headings give them an indication on which areas of the messages they should read and which they can ignore.

Are you writing for you or are you writing for the reader?

In software, we say that software is written once and read many times. As such, we strive and reiterate that software should first be functional and second be readable by the humans who have to maintain the code. Many of a developer have come across poorly written code, cursed at the complexity of it, struggled to identify what it is doing, and then only discover that they wrote the code.

Concurrently, we strive to build and deliver user-centric solutions. These solutions aim to put the user at the forefront of our design, so that we produce solutions people actually want to use, not what we think they would like.

Both of these concepts seem simple; ensure that what we write and build is done for others benefit and needs above our own. Yet the emergence of user-centric design in the last decade and popularization of models, tools, and training programs to teach this style of design show that while the concept is simple simple, it doesn’t mean it’s obvious nor easy to do.

In the book Smart Brevity, the authors identify a similar pattern with communication. When writing a message for others, how often do we consider the needs of the reader when we draft a message? How much time do they have available? What is the bare minimum they need to know about this topic? Why is this message important?

As with any skill, writing reader-centric messages takes time. This post itself went through MANY edits to land at its current state and I’m still questioning the length and brevity of the message. But I believe just as iteration is the key to user-centered design, iteration is a key part of crafting and learning to craft reader-centric messages.

What doesn’t kill you truly makes you stronger

Imagine a stormy evening for a moment. Rain is comind down in sheets, hitting the pavement in waves. Trees are being whipped by the wind, testing the strength of the branches as they flail around. Lightning is momentarily brightening the evening sky as the bassline of thunder plays against the percussion of rain striking roof, windows, wall, and ground. The wind howls through the air, playing a melody against the back drop of rain and thunder.

Both trees and houses are subjected to the same stresses of a storm, namely powerful wind, but each has a different relationship with those stresses. A house is built to withstand certain wind speeds. Exceed those speeds, and shingles and other parts of the home will suffer damage. A house can either withstand wind or be harmed by it.

Trees have a different relationship with wind and other environmental stressors. Trees aren’t built, but are living, growining, adapting plants. As they grow, they are exposed to external forces like the wind. Far from making trees weaker, these stresses make the trees stronger and help them reach maturity. In the Biosphere 2 study done in the 90s and popularized by the Pauly Shore movie “Bio-Dome”, trees grown in the controlled environment would eventually collapse if they were not exposed to wind.

Our leadership grows the same way. While we grow personally in good times and bad, our skills as leaders are put to the test when things go sideways on us. Anyone can sail a ship underway in a calm breeze, but it takes a skilled sailor to navigate in a storm. Likewise, a crisis requires leaders to leverage their full arsenal of leadership skills to navigate and resolve, often under time pressure.

The stresses of the bad times are what grow us. When things are going well, when we have the luxury of time, how much easier is it to consider the optimal approach to take an action? Yet here in the good times, we’re comfortable. As former CEO of IBM Ginni Rometty once stated, “Growth and comfort do not coexist.”

We all will face good and bad times in our careers. Seek discomfort in the good times to force yourself to grow so that you are ready for the bad times. And when you are in the middle of the bad times, think of yourself as a tree blowing in a storm. You may feel whipped around, uncomfortable, and stressed, but remember to bend, not break and that you will grow stronger from this experience.

As a leader, ensure what you say and what is heard aligns with what you intend

“Lean in”. This phrase has permeated my organization in the past few years. Originating from Sheryl Sandberg’s book of the same name, it was intended as a rallying cry for women in the workplace to be bold and lead. In the original context, this is a powerful message, encouraging women to stand up in the organization and lean into the opportunities in front of them.

This powerful message is diluted, even twisted when used in different contexts. The key context I hear it is a call for people to be engaged, work harder, and not check out, as if just telling people to ‘lean in’ is an antidote to disengagement in the work place. To those already over-taxed with daily demands and tasked with doing more with less, this can sound like a motivational message from the manager in Office Space.

As leaders, its our duty to communicate clearly to our team, often in the form of motivation. But with any communication, it’s crucial that we verify that what we say and what is heard aligns with what we intended to communicate. Communication is hard.

For leaders, it is the most important thing that we do. And yet, communication is more than some pithy phrases repeated over and over. We must continually hone our skills and as with any skill, seek feedback. Otherwise we risk coming off as an out-of-touch leader.

On a cold, winter day, my family moved in to our newly constructed house in the suburbs of the Midwest. Despite the brisk weather we were enjoying, the front yard had recently been coverred with sod - grass expertly grown on a farm. The side and back yard was mud and rocks, and remained that way until late spring, when the builder finished the yard by smoothing the dirt, laying grass seed, and covering it with straw.

While both the front and back of the house appear as one yard, seven years later they still retain different charecteristics that reveal their origins. The front yard requires a regimen of weed and feed fertilizer, to prevent weeds from growing and to strengthen the lawn. The back yard still requires grass seed, fertilizer, and a healthy dose of water while I struggle to fill in stubburn bare sponts in the back yard. The front yard gets mowed weekly, while the back yard can go 2 weeks in between mowings. The front yard is green and almost completely devoid of weeds, while the back yard contains clover, dandelions, and other weeds alongside the fescue grass common to the midwest.

As coaches or leaders, at some point, we will find ourselves nurturing two or more teams at once. It’s common to assign a Scrum Master two teams, expecting them to form, facilitate, and coach for them both. These teams are like my two yards. Their needs, while based on the same science, are ultimately different. As much as I want to treat the yards consistently, they will need different levels of care, different levels of attention, and different methods and solutions to address their unique problems. And the same applies for your teams.

Coaching teams is like caring for a yard. You must observe what is missing, diagnose the problem, and apply a fix. Then you must wait patiently as the fix takes effect, changes the situation, and re-observe so you can decide what further changes are needed. Every yard, and every team, is different. But with experience, we can learn to be effective gardeners of our yards and our teams.