Paul Glen
Contributing Columnist
Paul Glen is the CEO of Leading Geeks, an education and consulting firm devoted to improving collaboration between technical and nontechnical groups and people.
‘So, what do you do?’
Your happiness can be affected by how closely you identify with what you do for a living.
Buffooning yourself: Are you jargoning and acronyming your audience to death?
Those are two of the ways we misuse language and undermine our own credibility.
Addressing ambiguity on your IT team: A meeting of the minds
Some people have a high tolerance for ambiguity when they tackle projects, and others want all the answers before they do anything. But it is possible for them to get along.
Who are your customers?
You think you know, but it can be trickier to determine than we tend to think. Here’s some guidance.
Did your boss make a stupid decision, or do you lack data?
A lot of decisions that might seem downright crazy to you make more sense than you suspect. You just don’t have all the facts.
Knowing the manager you really are
We all have distorted self-perceptions, but that can be especially harmful in a manager.
IT workers aren’t cogs in a machine
Organizing IT work flows with an assembly-line model can lead to dispirited, demotivated and bored workers and dysfunctional teams.
Retention, by stages
One-size-fits-all policies don’t recognize that people at different stages of their careers want different things.
Troubled versus toxic teams
It can be hard to tell the difference in the midst of day-to-day activities, but it’s important to know the level of your team’s dysfunction.
Lessons for leaving
The parting of employees and employers can be a revelation about what each values.
Is anyone listening?
In IT, we’ve all had the sensation that business people haven’t really heard what we’ve told them. Here’s how you can be sure to grab their attention.