The Blog

Emotional contagion

published January 4, 2010

Did you know that emotions are contagious? Well, they are. How does this affect your job as a leader? Well, a lot. Generally, people transmit their feelings to one another, especially group leaders with high nonverbal expressiveness are likely to bring out emotions in others. Since it is also plausible that a pessimistic or a negatively toned group will dissolve over time, you as a leader, should pay close attention to your own feelings.

Personally I see pessimism and negativity always as a bad choice. It is not a sign of a solid leadership nor it is wanted personality on a working team. Since positive feelings are also contagious, why not to improve the mood of your work group by keeping up positive emotion?

Samuli @ 22:01 (No Comments)

tags: Group dynamics, Leadership, Social psychology

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Passing a Scrum master role forward

published December 18, 2009

My coaching week is almost over. During this week I have been working as a developer while mentoring our temporary Scrum Master. We decided to change roles as it was OK with a customer and team member had interest in working as a Scrum Master. Week has been a success and I have learned lot about my assets:

• I still have skills to work as a developer :)
• I have ability to work as a coach.
• I am pretty good at grasping big pictures.
• I have an intuition about upcoming problems.

Also by watching Scrum Master to work, I clearly see a lot of value in keeping daily scrums short, focusing on impediments, and keeping the team on a sprint track. If you have not tried changing roles, I recommend you try it.

Samuli @ 21:52 (One Comment)

tags: Coaching, Leadership, Scrum

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The co-worker effect

published December 8, 2009

How many of you study on your free time? I do, but you only have so many hours in a day. This is where your active work environment and skilled co-workers come into play. If you are working for an employer that does not employ the best of the best you are not pushed to your limits. Adding the fact that equally skilled people tend to cluster, you are not growing as fast as you could if your co-workers are below average.

This brings us to an inner circle. Especially when leading, you need an excellent inner circle. Purpose of the inner circle is to bring the best out of you and to compensate on your weaknesses. In a return you help your inner circle members to fully reach their potential. Since an working inner circle is not built by accident and all good things are done together, you need to focus on building it.

That is why you should always aim to work with the best.

Samuli @ 21:00 (No Comments)

tags: Group dynamics, Leadership

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