Recent reads: Manage Oneself
Today I am writing about two books I read earlier this year around managing oneself (and others): Managing Oneself by Peter F. Drucker and Managing Yourself and Others by Gerald M Weinberg.
This topic was first brought up when I was discussing how to grow others in my 1:1 with my manager. And he said, “I cannot grow you but I can create the environments that you need for yourself to grow. Growth only comes from yourself. ”
I am since then largely influenced by this concept: create environments so that smart people can solve problems creatively and grow themselves.
Managing others starts with managing ourselves. Helping others grow starts with helping ourselves grow.
Over the past 2–3 years, I am gradually forming and updating the following development cycle for myself.
1. Be true to yourself
2. Continuous Improvement towards next target condition
3. Reaccess current condition and update next target
4. Make deliberate choices and repeat.
Combined with what I learned from working with my manager on the Toyata Coaching Kata, I have my following drawing of the day: continuous improvement to a meaningful life.
First and foremost is to understand myself more, specifically what feeds me and gives me energy, what drains me and practice saying No.
Know ourselves more (notes from the Drucker book)
What are my strengths?
The only way to discover your strengths is through feedback analysis.
Have a hypothesis. Make a key decision or action, write down what you expect will happen. 9–12 months later, compare the actual results with your expectations.
How do I perform?
Just as people achieve results by doing what they are good at, they also achieve results by working in ways that they best perform. A few common personality traits usually determine how a person performs.
Some relevant questions to think about on how do I perform: How do I learn? Do I perform well under stress, or do I need a highly structured and predictable environment? Do I work best in big organizations or a small one? Do not try to change yourself but work hard to improve the way you perform. And try not to take on work you cannot perform or will only perform poorly.
What should I contribute?
Think about this in the context of what does the situation requires. Given my strengths, my way of performing, and my values, how can I make the greatest contribution to what needs to be done and what results have to be achieved to make a difference? The results should require “stretching”, meaningful and measurable.
Responsibility for relationships
The first secret of effectiveness is to understand the people you work with and depend on so that you can make use of their strengths, their ways of working and their values. The second part is taking responsibility for communication. Ask people what they are doing, how they do the work, what contribution they are concentrating on and what results they expect.
While Drucker’s book is about managing oneself in a general context for knowledge workers, Gerald Weinberg’s book is very targeted to software engineering managers. It is a very enlightening read for me.
Managing yourself
Jerry models software development as a cybernetic system, to manage an engineering system by feedback control, a manager as controller needs to:
1. Plan what should happen
2. Observe what significant things are really happening
3. Compare the observed with the planned
4. Take actions needed to bring the actual closer to the planned
By Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety, the action taken by the controller must be congruent with the situation. When people are not tapping their full variety of potential actions, they are coping incongruently, especially under stress, which leads to incapable of controlling the system.
In order to act congruently, managers must be able to consider self, other, and context, and balance their requirements all at the same time; otherwise, it will lead to incongruent coping styles, including blaming, placating, being super reasonable, loving/hating, or acting irrelevant. These behaviors usually are based on a behavior effective in some survival situations, and may even have a genetic component, they are the misapplication result when survival is not at stake.
The examples used in the book to demonstrate moving from incongruence to congruence resonate with me on identifying and reframing limiting beliefs to move forward optimally. It is my choice to choose a perspective and choose what I want to focus on. I can choose an interpretation that move me forward in the direction that I want to go. I can also transform my rules into guides. Congruence means feeling good enough to use the full variety of action possibilities.
Underlying rule: I must always make a good impression.
Incongruent: They will think I am no good.
Congruent: Even if someone thinks I am no good, I can survive.Underlying rule: I must always be perceived as perfect.
Incongruent: They will think I am not perfect.
Congruent: Since I am not perfect, I don’t need to be seen as perfect.Underlying rule: I must always be liked by everyone.
Incongruent: They might not like me.
Congruent: I agree or disagree because I really do.
Managing others
The other section of Jerry’s book talks about managing others where how we understand each other’s preference and temperament differences, and how we learn and grow from our differentness. Another core chapter (10) describes the incongruent patterns we can identify in organizations so that we can steer towards congruent behaviors.
Leadership is the ability to create an environment in which everyone is empowered to contribute creatively to solving the problems. The manager’s job may be evaluated by one and only one measure: the success of the people being managed.
