Archive for January, 2009

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Simple Steps To Becoming A Better IT Manager

Wednesday, January 14th, 2009
Becoming A Better IT Leader Requires Hard Work

Becoming A Better IT Leader Requires Hard Work

A question that I often get asked by both new and old IT leaders is “how can I become a better manger?” The question is a simple one that has complex answers. What all IT leaders want is to become one of those leaders who has the ability to get all of our employees to light up when we show up. We want to be able to get them excited about us and about their jobs. How hard could that be?

Bad news here, it’s actually fairly difficult to transform yourself into one of those very charismatic leaders if you are not already one. If you can’t cause staff to naturally respond to you, then sometimes we try to make self-conscious efforts to display leadership traits. This can backfire on you and it can come across as forced. This is not going to get you where you want to be.

Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis have written an article in the Harvard Business Review in which they report that if you really want to become a better IT leader, then you are going to have to undertake the hard work of actually changing your behavior.

What these researchers are really talking about is that to really break through what is holding you back as an IT manager, you are going to have to become socially smarter. We’re not talking about MBA book knowledge here, but rather learning to interact with people better.

As an example of this, consider the case of a manager who just didn’t know when to back off on an issue. She received feedback that this was her problem and she made several social changes. First she started anticipating how people would react to her. Next, she came up with different ways to present her opinion or information in a way that would not be so aggressive. Finally, she came up with a program that would allow her to change.

Another good way to develop the social skills that you need as an IT manger is to spend time with an IT leader who does a good job of managing. What will happen is that your brain will start to mirror what this leader is doing and this will allow you to become a better leader.

It’s important for you to realize that your brain is constantly creating new neural networks. This means that the way you are is not the way that you will be. You are not a prisoner of your genes or previous management experiences. You can change and improve if you are willing to put the time and energy in to do so.

One final note, developing the social skills that you need to be a great IT leader is especially important when a crisis situation arises. Business conditions like a take over, merger, or even layoffs can create a great deal of stress among IT workers. IT Leaders who have good social skills can keep the team together and get high performance out of them even during times like this.

Do you feel that you have the social skills needed to be a great IT leader? What skills are you still lacking? Do you have a plan for developing these needed skills? Do You have an IT leader who has the skills that you need and can you work with them to find out how they use them? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Are You A “Tuned In” IT Manager?

Friday, January 9th, 2009
Great IT Leaders Know How To Resonate With Their Staff And Make Gut Decisions

Great IT Leaders Know How To Resonate With Their Staff And Make Gut Decisions

Just how do great IT managers go about making decisions? We all have different ways of doing this, but many of us talk about making “gut decisions”. What this is really a way of saying is that an IT leader who has good business instincts is a great value to the company that they work for.

Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis have written an article in the Harvard Business Review in which they call this type of leadership as being the ability to recognize patterns. We’d all like to have more of this kind of accurate decision making ability – so where does it come from? Bad news here – it comes from extensive experience.

If you want to become known as someone who can make good, quick decisions, then start trusting your gut; however, also make sure that you get as many inputs from others as possible. The time that it requires to get inputs from others can often take too long to collect. What’s an IT leader to do?

It turns out that you can probably trust your gut. This is because in your brain you have a class of neuron cells that are called “spindle cells”. This type of neurons both attaches to other cells easier and transmits information to them quicker.

The ability to quickly connect and transmit judgments, beliefs, and emotions creates what scientists like to call our “social guidance system”. This system gets used whenever we have to make a choice among several different alternatives.

This system also helps us to make up our minds as to if someone that we meet is trustworthy. It turns out that within 1/20th of a second these spindle cells will fire and we’ll decide how we feel about someone. Studies have shown that these quick decisions actually turn out to be quite accurate.

What all this means is that as long as you can “tune in” to your staff’s moods, you should feel comfortable trusting your gut instincts. There is a physical side to all of this that can impact your staff.

It’s called “resonance”. Researcher Annie McKee says that this is similar to what you see when you see people dancing together, getting ready to kiss, or when they are playing musical instruments together. Teams that are being lead by a skilled IT leader are often physically coordinated in how and when their bodies move together during meetings.

Give this some thought and start trusting your gut more. It appears as though your first thought is more often then not the right decision!

Do you trust your first impressions? Do you ever seek inputs from others in order to confirm what your initial impression was? Do your first impressions turn out more often than not to be right or wrong? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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5 Characteristics Of Hard Core Gamers That IT Managers Need

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009
Gamers Are Joining Your IT Department - Are You Ready For Them?

Gamers Are Joining Your IT Department - Are You Ready For Them?

As yet another generation comes to work in the IT department, IT mangers are being confronted with another management challenge. More and more of the new wave of workers are coming from the world of multi-player online games.

These games consist of large, complex, social systems that are constantly evolving. Games like World of Warcraft and Eve Online are able to capture and hold the attention of their players because they are always new.

Hold on – before you throw you hands up in the air and give up on dealing with yet another type of new employee, you need to realize that this “gamer disposition” is exactly what you should be looking for in your department’s workforce.

John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas have done research in this area and they have discovered that that this type of experienced game player can bring 5 types of character traits to your workplace. These traits will help them to not only thrive but to also succeed in today’s modern workplace:

  1. Focus On The Bottom Line: In the games that these online players are playing, each player is constantly being measured and assesed. Each player is ranked and compared to other players using systems of rankings, points, and titles.
  2. Diversity Is Good: Gamers realize that they can’t do it all themselves. In order to be successful in a game, players need to build a strong team. The teams that are the most successful are the ones that consist of a strong mix of both abilities and talents.
  3. Change Is Good: Gamers thrive on change. The worlds in which they play are constantly changing – nothing is constant. Their actions transform the world in which they are playing. Gamers have come to expect this type of massive change.
  4. Learning Is Seen As Fun: The games that players are participating in consist of complex challenges that have to be overcome. These challenges make the game fun. Discovering the tools that are needed and creating the knowledge that is need to overcome challenges is what turns problem solving into a fun activity.
  5. Innovation Is A Lifestyle: Gamers are willing to explore new ideas and ways of solving problems. Even when the solution to a problem is known, gamers are willing to search for new solutions that will solve the problem quicker or by using fewer resources.

If you can learn to be supportive of the gamers who come to work as members of your team, then you’ll have a workforce that is both flexible and willing to overcome stale ways of doing things.

Do you have any gamers on you staff now? Have you noticed that they seem to solve problems in different ways from other workers? Do they seem to respond to they way that they are being manged? Do their accomplishments need to be evaluated in a different way then other workers are? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Mirrror, Mirror On The Wall, Who’s The Best IT Manager Of All?

Friday, January 2nd, 2009
It Turns Out That An IT Leader's Emotions Are Often Reflected By Your Staff

It Turns Out That An IT Leader's Emotions Are Often Reflected By Your Staff

Those boys who get locked up and do work on behavior neuroscience continue to come up with new and interesting discoveries all the time.  This time around they’ve made a stunning discovery that will have a long lasting impact on how IT managers do their job. Do I have your interest yet?

Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis have written an article in the Harvard Business Review in which they describe what’s been going on in the world of neuroscience. Neuroscientists have discovered something called “mirror neurons” that are spread out all over our brains. Our brains have lots and lots of neurons. This newly discovered type appear to mimic (or “mirror”) what someone else is doing.

These neurons were discovered by Italian neuroscientists who were studying one particular type of cell in a monkey’s brain. This cell only fired when the monkey raised its arm. One day an assistant in the lab raised some food to his mouth and the cell in the monkey fired.

What this all means is that when we detect someone’s (consciously or unconsciously) emotions by observing their actions, these newly discovered mirror neurons reproduce the emotions that we believe that they are feeling. Taken all together, these neurons allow us to create a virtually instant sense of having a shared experience.

Why do we care about all of this brain stuff? It’s the key to being a great IT leader. It turns out that your emotions and your actions are what your department / team are going to be mirroring. If you can activate the mirror neurons in those who are following you, then you will have tapped into a very powerful force.

Additional studies that have been done on groups to measure the effects of activating these neurons has revealed even more. It turns out that when you are addressing your department / team, HOW you communicate is much more important than WHAT you communicate.

This means that if you want to get the best performance out of your team, you need to be demanding (of course) but do in in such a way that creates a happy positive mood in you team. This is all based on the simple fact that when your people feel better, then you’ll get better performance out of them.

Which now brings us to the subject of laughter. I’m not talking about having your team laugh at you (they may already be doing this). Instead, I’m talking about how often you get your team to laugh with you. Studies have shown that the best IT leaders got their employees to laugh on average three times as often as did midperforming IT leaders.

When you are in a good mood, this helps the people who work with and for you to both take in the information that you are providing as well as react quicker and with more creativity.

How often do you make your team members laugh? Have you found that your emotions cause your team to feel the same way that you do? Do you often find yourself feeling the same way that your boss is feeling? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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