Building trust

How to build trust while challenging the status quo

How To Lead When You Have No Authority

This article takes everything I have learned over the past 15 years on the topic of leading through influence and distills it down into four actionable principles (or pillars). I have applied these pillars for a long time and they have empowered me in so many situations.

Building Bridges as a Technical Leader

Finding a sponsor, seeking to hear and understand the needs of people high and wide across your organization, finding your people to support your journey, nurturing all these relationships… it’s a constant learning curve, but these are some of the practices that I’ve found helpful in communicating effectively across the company.

7 tricks to influence a team resisting to change its technical habits

There are many ways to manage team resistance to change habits and practices. Here are 7 of the technical agile coach’s tricks that influence: Gemba, Patience, Experiments, Training mindset, testimonies, creative brainstorming, finding another coach. Try them before quitting!

The Patient Change Agent

So…right or not, when what we’re trying isn’t working…well, it isn’t working.

It is easy to frame this as fixed vs. growth mindset (recently under fire), change resistance/risk aversion, office politics, a power-hungry manager, Theory X vs. Theory Y, pathological vs. bureaucratic vs. generative (Westrum), and good old “they just don’t understand!” Frame away. The reality remains: what you’re trying isn’t working. It doesn’t matter how good your intentions are, how selfless you are (or think you are), how passionate about continuous improvement you are, and/or how inclusive or empowering you’re trying to be…it isn’t working.

Trust in High Performing Teams

High-performing teams flourish in a culture of trust and safety. It’s important that trust come both from within and outside of the team, in order to avoid isolating teams from their stakeholders. Stephen Janaway shared his experience with trust in high performing teams at Qcon London 2020.