Tag: Communication

What is Courage?

Written by Andrea Brockmeier on October 30, 2012. Posted in Articles. 1 Comment on What is Courage?

The Quiet. The Unknown. The Courageous

The ability to influence others is a requisite skill for any project professional. It sure would be handy to be able to march around and dictate that people do this or that, but the fact is, when team members tell us “You’re not the boss of me,” more often than not, they’re right.

Unfortunately, influencing is one of those soft skills that doesn’t come naturally or easily for many of us.

In their new book, The Influencing Formula: How to Become a Trusted Advisor and Influence Without Authority, authors Elizabeth Larson and Richard Larson describe a “formula” for how to influence:

I = T + P * C
where
Influence = Trust + Preparation * Courage

They explain how influencing requires developing relationships in order to build trust, preparing to interact with others to change their thoughts, actions or feelings, and courage to try to influence others when they may not agree with you.

This certainly speaks to business analysts and project managers. We need things from people who often don’t report to us, or may be superior to us, or may not see our projects as worthy of support. Considerable time is spent dissecting and defining these elements. Of the three, it’s the courage piece that leads to the most challenging discussions with students.

What is courage?

As noted in their book, the Larsons observe that courage has always been a dominant theme in literature and movies, from the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz, to the Gryffindors in the Harry Potter series. Putting oneself in harm’s way to do what is right is an act we admire and see as courageous.

As they go on to explain, courage doesn’t necessarily involve the possibility of physical danger. In the classic To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch demonstrates moral courage in his opposition to racism in the American South in the 1930s. Note the Larsons, “Seen through the eyes of his young daughter, Scout, Finch shows courage throughout the novel: ‘I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.’”

When discussing what courage means in class, these types of examples come up and all coalesce into a generally agreed upon definition: The ability to face danger even when afraid in order to do what’s right.

It’s the “what is right” piece where I get stuck. As my very savvy students are quick to point out, what’s right to me may not be right to you. We get into this ultra-relativistic place where anyone who takes a risk for what they believe is right can be considered courageous.

Who, then, are the examples of courage? MLK? JFK? A military official who leads others into battle to win a war against tyranny? A candidate for political office who takes an unpopular stand on an issue about which they are passionate? A project manager who makes a tough call on scope change knowing it may alienate a key stakeholder?

To be sure, courage is the willingness to face danger or risk. But what did any of those examples expect to gain? Fame? Fortune? Wealth? A promotion? Does it matter?

I think it does.

Courage needs to be defined both by what one has to lose as well as by what one expects to gain. Yes, courage involves facing risks to do what is believed to be right, but it also includes doing so when the only thing that’s certain to be gained is the ability to look at yourself in the mirror when it’s over and say “I did the right thing.”

To do something utterly brave and take huge risks when the likely outcome will bring fame, wealth, or prestige may take a lot of guts, but not courage. It makes someone a risk-taker, but not courageous.

To say what others are afraid to say or do what others are afraid to do because you know it’s the right thing, knowing that it will likely bring privilege, celebrity, or fortune, may make someone a great motivator or leader, but it doesn’t make them an example of courage.

So who are the truly courageous? Does this definition make the list unreasonably short?

The list is plenty long, but it includes fewer names that are familiar and many more that will never be mentioned by those who didn’t know them or written in the pages of any book. Most of the truly courageous are the people who take risks, go out on a limb, and say what others are afraid to say without an audience, stage, or crowd to cheer them on or watch with anticipation to see how things turn out.

This is not to say that good fortune may not land on their doorstep after a courageous act. Indeed, they may be celebrated, admired, or emulated. They may inspire parades in the streets and holidays may be named in their honor.

But the greatest act of courage is one in which the only anticipated reward before going into battle, conflict, or danger is the satisfaction of knowing that what you are doing is right.

So the next time I find myself soliciting a list of examples of courage and it seems that every risk-taker or person who ever put themselves in harm’s way for what they perceived as right makes the list, I will apply a two-part litmus test: What did they have to lose, and what did they expect to gain? I suspect that will cull the list considerably.

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Managing Conflict and Managing Emotions

Written by George Pitagorsky on October 30, 2012. Posted in Articles. 2 Comments on Managing Conflict and Managing Emotions

A recent incident reminded me of how important it is to stick to the content of conflicts and how difficult it is to deal with emotions disruptive behavior.

As I point out in my recent book, Managing Conflict in Projects, there are two major categories of conflict – content based and emotionally based conflict. It is best to avoid emotionally based conflict and focus on the content. This is easier said than done for a number of reasons. For one, emotionally based conflict is often disguised as content based conflict. For another, emotions are extremely powerful and often hidden behind a wall of rationality, particularly in organizations.

Many people are so identified with their positions and with the need to win that anger comes up whenever anyone confronts them with opposition. Others are frightened into submission or lack the self confidence to engage in a content centered conflict. Often the individual is so habituated to emotional reactivity that they do not consciously recognize what is driving their behavior. They just act without reflecting on the impact of their actions.

To effectively manage conflict one must address the content through a communication and decision making process. The process is affected by emotionality and, often unconscious, conflict styles.

The content can be anything from decisions about vendor selection to estimates, to the cause and cost of a change in requirements. Content centered conflict is a good thing. It is an opportunity to find optimum resolutions that improve project results. For example conflict over a design or over a tactic in selecting a vendor can lead to an optimal resolution that would not have been found had one party’s position prevailed without opposition.

But, when the communication process is disrupted the ability to come to an effective resolution that is in the best interest of a project and organization is diminished. Anger leads people to turn to rhetoric, personal attack, even violence and lose track of the content and the mutual desire for a win-win resolution. Fear leads to people withholding their information and avoiding a healthy exchange of ideas and facts. People get lost in their emotional reactions. Satisfying personal agendas becomes the focus.

When faced with a conflict that moves into the realm of emotionality and disruptive behavior the healthy flow of dialogue, debate and decision making is disrupted. It is necessary to take action to avoid this and if it is occurring to address it and return to a healthy process.

Most organizations and many individuals do not do well in addressing their communication process, particularly when it comes to interpersonal exchanges and emotions. It is necessary to reflect on the cost of allowing emotionality to impact effective conflict management and to address the issue on a personal and organizational level.

On a personal level an individual can make it his or her responsibility to monitor emotions and manage them so as not to disrupt the communications process and distort the decision making. This means stepping back and being self reflective and disciplined enough to recognize the rising of emotional charge and taking control of one’s words and behavior to avoid displaying emotions in a way that would change the focus of the conflict from the content and work against the goals of a win-win resolution and healthy relationships. This is hard work that requires the cultivation of sufficient mindfulness and concentration to manage oneself and one’s situation. The individual must increase his or her level of emotional intelligence.

On a team or organizational level, the group must be made aware of the nature of dysfunctional conflict management and its cost. The organization that ignores this dysfunction is bound to perform less effectively than one that sets as a value for rational and effective decision making and then supports that value by teaching it’s members how to manage conflict so as to obtain optimal resolutions for individual conflicts or disputes while building and maintaining healthy relationships.

Emotions are a fact of life. They are to be acknowledged and not suppressed. At the same time reactive, emotionally driven behavior is to be avoided to achieve personal health and optimal performance.

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The Broken Telephone Game of Defining Software and UI Requirements

Written by Martin Crisp on October 9, 2012. Posted in Articles.

The broken telephone game is played all over the world. According to Wikipedia, the game is played as follows: “one person whispers a message to another, which is passed through a line of people until the last player announces the message to the entire group. Errors typically accumulate in the retellings, so the statement announced by the last player differs significantly, and often amusingly, from the one uttered by the first.”

This game is also played inadvertently by a large number of organizations seeking to define software and UI requirements by using information passed from customers to business analysts to UI/UX designers and then to developers and testers.

Here’s a typical example:

The BA or product owner elicits requirements from a customer and writes them down, often as a feature list and use cases.
The use cases are interpreted by the UI/UX team to develop UI mockups and storyboards.
Testing interprets the storyboards, mockups, and use cases to develop test cases.
The developers then interpret the use cases, mockups and storyboards to write the code.

As with the broken telephone game, information is altered with each handoff. The resulting approach includes a lot of rework and escalating project costs due to combinations of the following:

Use cases don’t properly represent customer requirements.
UI/UX design is not consistent with the use cases.
Incorrect test cases create false bugs.
Missed test cases result in undiscovered bugs.
Developers build features that don’t meet customer needs.

The further down the broken telephone line the original requirements get, the more distorted they become. For this reason, UI storyboards, test cases and code typically require a lot of reworking as requirements are misunderstood or improperly translated by the time they get to the UI and testing teams.

How Can We Reduce the Broken Telephone Effect?

The good news is that there are some reasonably simple changes to processes and deliverables that will decrease the broken telephone effect. The following techniques share the goal of reducing handoffs and translations.

Interview the customer with cross-discipline teams

One method is to involve the BA, UI/UX and quality assurance people directly in the elicitation process with the customer. You can even make a case to include the lead developer as well. Having all disciplines represented during the interview process lets each party hear requirements directly from the customer, reducing the reliance on BA documents alone. An equally important benefit is that each discipline brings a different perspective, which can lead the interview process down different paths of conversation and requirement gathering.

For example, the QA resource may ask more questions about the requirements related to edge or error conditions than the BA or UI/UX resource. Putting a UI/UX member in front of the customer will provide a chance to understand features that are frequently used to manage the cognitive load of the end user.

Combine and evolve use cases, UI mockups, and UI storyboards into an integrated deliverable

Another approach to reduce the broken telephone effect is to avoid creating use cases, mockups and storyboards as separate deliverables by combining them into one “integrated deliverable.” To create an integrated deliverable, start with the use case and attach UI mockups to each step. This automatically creates a UI storyboard that has the same steps (including main and alternate flows) as the use case, and means they don’t get out of sync. Also, since the UI mockups are attached to each step, you know they will be consistent with the purpose and requirements outlined in the step.

Often, new requirements or changes to existing requirements emerge, and if your storyboards and mockups are separate from the use cases, the original use cases are not updated. This creates confusion for your developers, testers and stakeholders. Combining your use cases, mockups and storyboards into one integrated deliverable makes it much easier to keep all three in sync, dramatically reducing the potential for conflicting requirements.

The integrated deliverable approach encourages collaborative and combined authoring and review of use cases and UI/UX design by your BA and UI/UX teams, resulting in more accurately defined and understood requirements.

To bring this concept to life, here’s an example that starts with the use case defined by the BA or product manager, without any mention of UI-specific requirements.

Use Case: ATM Cash Withdraw

The steps with the Y-shaped symbol are steps with alternate flows.

Alternate Flows

When the UI/UX team starts attaching UI mockups to each of the steps, a UI storyboard is created that uses the same exact main flow and alternate flows as the use case. A UI storyboard expressed in terms of a main flow and alternate flows has the benefit of reducing the number of traditional linear storyboards. If you were to create traditional UI storyboards for each of the unique paths through the use case above, you’d have 11 in total, with duplicated steps across them. UI storyboards with main flows and alternate flows reduce rework and errors that pop up in linear UI storyboards.

You can do this in Word by inserting UI mockup images created in a different UI mockup tool, but keeping the UI mockups up to date in the will become time-consuming and error-prone. Products such as PowerStory (a plugin for PowerPoint) make this easier by enabling you to combine use case steps with UI mockups to create UI Storyboards.

In the following screen shot you will see that PowerStory adds a panel specifically designed for creating main flows and alternate flows of use cases, and associates the steps in these flows with typical slides in PowerPoint.

As before, the steps with the Y-shaped symbol beside them indicate an alternate flow. When you hover over the icon you can view and enter the alternate flows associated with that step.

PowerPoint is an extremely powerful tool for creating UI Mockups that can support more UI design ideas than typical wireframe mockup tools, especially with plugins like PowerMockup and Microsoft’s upcoming storyboarding plugin.

Write use cases and UI storyboards with testing in mind

Test cases typically include a “user action” followed by an “expected result.” If you spend a little more up-front time defining which steps are “user actions” and which steps are “expected results” when creating your use cases and UI storyboards, you can save your testing team time. Use cases are well suited for this approach by defining the principle actor for each step. Any step where the actor is a system should be classified as an “expected result” step for the test case, and any step where the actor is an end user should be labeled “user action.”

One of the test cases derived from the combined use case defined above is shown below, following the rule that a step with an end user actor is an action and a step that has a system actor is an expected result.

Automate the creation of your test cases directly from your use cases

Using tools that will automatically generate test cases from your use cases and UI storyboards will save you a significant amount of time and money typically spent by your testing team creating manual test cases. In the context of this article, it also eliminates a handoff and thus mitigates the broken telephone effect. When QA teams interpret requirements and translate them into test cases, they might misunderstand requirements and create faulty test cases and/or miss requirements and their corresponding test cases.

Key Points to Take Away

Developing software requirements, UI designs, and test cases can mirror the broken telephone game we all played as kids. Every time we pass information on, it gets changed and misinterpreted, leading to increased project costs and the delivery of the wrong solutions to your customers. Following the steps outlined above, you can reduce the broken telephone effect and follow a more streamlined process to clear and lucid product development.

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8 Conversation Tips for Checking Your Understanding

Written by Gil Broza on September 11, 2012. Posted in Articles.

Think back to a time when you observed two colleagues in an important conversation. Did it appear like a true exchange of information and ideas, or was one person:

Interrupting the other?
Putting words in the other’s mouth?
Raising her voice if the other did not seem to understand something?
Checking her mobile phone?
Giving her planned answer, regardless of what her colleague said?

The two sides probably didn’t gain anything useful from this exchange. In fact, they likely hurt their relationship somewhat, because the impatient listener was not respecting the interaction. Her conversation partner might have felt frustrated, ignored, looked down upon, or annoyed.
The active listening technique is much more than basic manners (e.g., don’t interrupt, don’t raise your voice). With active listening, you demonstrate that you’re listening and verify what you think you heard. Use it to improve your conversations’ results, to enhance your ability to influence and negotiate, and to sustain long-term relationships.

In active listening, you focus attention on what the other person says, with both his words and his body language. The central tactic is that of feeding back the message. It comes in three degrees: repeating (using the exact words you heard), paraphrasing (using similar words), and reflecting (using your own words).

Suppose you are having a conversation with Vijay, a team member:

Vijay: “Our defect count has been trending up this year. I don’t think it’s a matter of testing better and discovering more defects; we’re simply introducing more than we’re fixing.”

You (repeating): “So you’re saying we’re introducing more defects than we’re fixing, and that makes our defect count trend up?”

You just demonstrated that you’ve paid attention to Vijay’s words, which invites him to contribute further:

Vijay: “I think that’s the reason. The code we develop each iteration is not perfect, but we’re so busy building new features, we don’t dedicate enough time to fixing defects from that iteration or previous ones.”

You might respond to Vijay’s concern at this point. If his argument isn’t clear to you, or you have doubts about its validity, you could feed it back to him:

You (paraphrasing): “Let me see if I understand. We’re paying so much attention to coding new features that we don’t have time to clean them up, which makes the defect count go up. Right?”

Or:

You (reflecting): “Hmm. So you’re saying that new development is out of balance with defect fixing, which is why our quality is going down?”

Repeating retains the most of Vijay’s original intent, while paraphrasing retains less, and reflecting may even lose it entirely. When you reflect a message, you inject your beliefs into it. In this case, you’ve posited that defects trending up means quality going down, and that maintaining quality requires a balance between new development and fixing. This might be quite different from Vijay’s intent, which is why it’s so important to voice your interpretation of his words before responding to them.

Active listening is suitable for many kinds of conversations. It is particularly powerful in emotionally charged situations, where it is extremely important that the other party know you are engaged, that she feel heard, and that you know what she is saying and thus are not responding to the wrong message.

To get the best results from active listening:

Minimize distractions. Your phone, email, and open door are obvious invitations to interruption. If something repeatedly tugs at you (such as your mobile phone vibrating), turn it off and say that you’re doing that. If it’s the other person’s, ask him respectfully to turn down the notification.

Face the speaker. Eye contact (not staring) is best. If it makes you uncomfortable, at least have your body roughly angled toward the other person. Move away from your computer or other electronics. While looking downward or averting your eyes is hardly an optimal response, at least she will feel less slighted than if you were still typing on your computer.

Stay focused on the conversation. If your mind keeps trying to pull you toward other mental pursuits, don’t just check out mentally. Either force yourself to focus or gracefully back out of the conversation. You could say, “I’d like to give this matter the attention it deserves, and I’m having trouble concentrating right now. Can we resume this conversation in ?”

Supplement your words with simple acknowledgments Nod for acceptance. Smile. Talk with your hands. Say “Uh-huh,” “OK,” “Hmm…,” or “Right.” Use “Interesting!” and “Really?” sparingly, since they have the potential to sound fake.

Use preambles. Before you feed back the message, say something that signals the feedback. “What I’m hearing is…,” “So are you saying that…,” “Sounds like you’re referring to…,” “If I understand you correctly….”

If you don’t understand what they said, slowly repeat it word for word. That will help you comprehend what the other person said or it will encourage him to rephrase.

Don’t prepare your counterargument before the other person has finished talking (even if she says more than you think is needed). Otherwise, you’re clearly showing that what she says isn’t all that important to you.

Offer the occasional recap. It can be quite useful to summarize your understanding of the conversation to that point. Don’t worry about taking longer to interact; making sure that you’re both agreeing to the same thing can be more valuable.

About the book and the author

The book The Human Side of Agile: How to Help Your Team Deliver, from which this article is excerpted, will be released tomorrow, September 12th. With this book, Gil Broza has created a practical, universal guide to navigating the least manageable, understood, and appreciated asset in an Agile environment: its human side. Even if your customers are reasonably happy and your developers seem to be doing okay, you know your team is capable of more: delivering great products and staying ahead of ever-changing demands. You want to feel good about using Agile and to create the conditions for great results, but the skills you honed in traditional environments don’t always apply to the role of Agile team leader. The Human Side of Agile fills this gap, guiding you to:

· Establish yourself as a confident and capable leader who adds value

· Build and lead an engaged team that can handle almost any challenge

· Cultivate collaboration and a continuous improvement mind-set

· Reap the full benefits of Agile in the real world with real people

Gil Broza has mentored more than 1,500 professionals in 40 companies within the last 10 years who then delighted their customers, shipped working software on time, and rediscovered passion for their work. Gil offers much-needed services (beyond basic education) to help ScrumMasters and other Agile team leaders grow in their roles. In addition, he provides workshops, consulting, facilitation services, and enablement programs to fix lackluster Agile attempts and support ongoing Agile improvement efforts.

Click on www.TheHumanSideOfAgile.com to discover the “virtual loot bag” you’ll receive from Gil’s network of collaborators and experts for ordering your copy on the 12^th.

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Being “Authentic” Doesn’t Give One License To Be An Ass

Written by Peggy Klaus on June 11, 2012. Posted in Articles.

Disclaimer: Please note the following article contains strong language that some may find offensive but the message is one I feel is far too important to not relay. The following article was published in Chief Executive taking on the leadership lessons of Steve Jobs.

Meg Whitman lives by it. Hilary Rodham swears by it. Steve Jobs ruled by it.
These days everyone is touting their authenticity. What I call “Popeye’s ‘I yam what I yam'” school of self-management is in full swing. Far too often, however, this cry of authenticity has become nothing but an excuse for bad behavior. In short, it’s giving people—particularly those who think they’re geniuses— license to act like assholes.

In a recent Harvard Business Review cover story, Walter Issacson appeared to rationalize and legitimize this type of behavior in his essay on the true leadership lessons of Steve Jobs—
the poster boy for the movement. Last year Issacson wrote a bestselling biography on Jobs. His purpose in writing the article now? To set commentators straight “who fixate too much on the rough edges of Job’s personality (especially those with no experience in entrepreneurship).”
According to Issacson, Jobs’s behavior can be explained away thusly:

“Jobs was famously impatient, petulant, and tough with the people around him. But his treatment of people, though not laudable, emanated from his passion for perfection and desire to work with only the best.”

And by Jobs himself, who, when pressed by Issacson on whether he could have gotten the same results while being nicer, replied:

“Perhaps so. But it’s not who I am. Maybe there’s a better way—a gentlemen’s club where we all wear ties and speak in this Brahmin language and velvet code words—but I don’t know that way, because I am middle-class from California.”

Now that’s what we used to call back in the 70s a “cop out!” Did Jobs really think we’d buy into the notion that you’re either someone who is telling it like it is with brute force and honesty, civility be damned, or you’re a stiff, tight jawed, mealy-mouthed leader who is unwilling and unable to tell the truth? How ridiculous. Is there no middle ground for a leader who respects those around him and provides both positive as well as critical feedback in a thoughtful, direct, manner?

As well, did he really have the audacity to pin his bad boy behavior on his middle class Californian roots? While I wasn’t raised in California, having lived here now for over 25 years, I know of a lot of successful business leaders who spent their formative years in this state, in the very same middle class as Mr. Jobs and his family, who haven’t resorted to the kind of behavior that Jobs was famous for. Indeed there are numerous examples of leaders everywhere—Howard Schultz of Starbucks, Ursula Burns of Xerox, and Daniel Vasella of Novartis, who were exposed to poverty and sometimes abuse as children and emerged as compassionate and respectful leaders.

Many of us—myself included—love the story of how Jobs re-built Apple by cutting through the BS, winnowing projects down and getting rid of people who did not share his vision. No doubt that incisiveness and directness are behaviors to be valued and developed. But was it really necessary to take those behaviors to the extent he did, exposing a shameful level of scorn, rudeness and even cruelty to colleagues and fellow workers? In others words, could he still have succeeded without being such a jerk?

Absolutely he could have. Jobs got away with it because he could. Yes, the guy who told us to “Think Different” , who strived for perfectionism, scrutinizing his products along with everyone around him, never really turned the lens inward on himself because he didn’t have to. While I never met the man, it’s clear from the hundreds of people that Issacson interviewed that his genius was so revered that many people just wanted to be near him, no matter how difficult or demeaning the interaction. In fact, after one such episode where Jobs said to an employee, “You asshole, you never do anything right!” the response was “Yes, he was an asshole but I consider myself the absolute luckiest person in the world to have worked with him.”

It’s curious why we need studies to tell us what many of us know instinctively: people respond better and are more successful in environments where people are civil and respectful to one another. For those who miss the point, though, thankfully there are hundreds of social scientists who remain gainfully employed ready with reams of research results that demonstrate how an uncivil culture deleteriously affects the bottom line through loss of motivation, collaboration and high turnover. Furthermore, no corollary has been found between creative, productive employees and workplace abuse.

After years working on the front lines coaching professionals in some of America’s toughest, most demanding industries, no one will ever convince me that being a bully is excusable due to someone’s ingenuity, title, longevity, company size or success. The simple truth is that, like our playgrounds, bullies have no place in corporate America. If your definition of being authentic involves being cruel, disrespectful, amoral or running roughshod over people, then I’d say that there are a lot of words to describe your personality but authentic isn’t one of them.

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