To a More Humane Leadership with Ricardo Castelhano: Recent Episodes
Ricardo Castelhano
I remember when I had my first shot at managing a group of developers many years ago. I had my share of mentors and coaches to help me on that road. Everything I learned and all the advice I took will be shared in this podcast. You don't need to be a jackass boss; you can be a more humane and fantastic team leader. I believe Managers and Senior Managers have a great responsibility and should be accountable to enable a good work environment and foster the forever growth of their people. Join me on this path to more human leadership within the IT world.
In today's fast-paced and demanding work environments, stress has become an inevitable part of leadership roles. Leaders carry significant responsibilities, face constant challenges, and must make critical decisions that can affect their team's success. However, if left unmanaged, stress can have detrimental effects on both the leader and the team. In today’s episode, we will explore the importance of stress management skills for individuals in leadership positions, the impacts of stress on the leader, team dynamics, and team health, as well as the leader's everyday life.
leadershipdevelopment #mentorship #coaching #leadership #selfmastery #personaldevelopment #selfawareness #selfmanagement #stressmanagement #anxietymanagement #podcast
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If you belong to the club of those people to whom there are not enough hours in the day, or those whose daily tasks list is always increasing and reaching a mile long, or even those always putting out fires and struggling to keep up with the demands of work or school. … you're not alone. Welcome to the club!!
leadershipdevelopment #mentorship #coaching #leadership #selfmastery #personaldevelopment #selfawareness #selfmanagement #podcast
Resources Mentioned
- Eisenhower's Matrix for Time Management
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Have you ever wondered how great leaders encourage innovation in their organizations? Or how to foster innovation in teams? Maybe you're even wondering how coaching and mentoring can help individuals encourage innovation in their teams? Well, wonder no more because we have got all the answers for you!
leadershipdevelopment #mentorship #coaching #leadership #selfmastery #personaldevelopment #selfawareness #selfmanagement #podcast
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Have you ever been part of a team that just didn't work? A team where everyone had different ideas and goals, and no one seemed to be on the same page? I'm sure we all have. That's why building effective teams is so important, and we're here to help you do just that.
leadershipdevelopment #mentorship #coaching #leadership #selfmastery #personaldevelopment #selfawareness #selfmanagement #podcast
Resources Mentioned
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Have you ever tried motivating someone by constantly criticizing or pointing out their mistakes? Does it work? Perhaps not as well as we would like it to. But what if we focused on positive reinforcement instead?
In this episode, we will explore the effectiveness of positive reinforcement in leadership, how to incorporate it, and how coaching and mentoring can help individuals develop this technique.
leadershipdevelopment #mentorship #coaching #leadership #selfmastery #personaldevelopment #selfawareness #selfmanagement #podcast
Resources Mentioned
- The Power of Small Wins: Amabile, Teresa M.; Kramer, Steven J. - Harvard Business Review
https://hbr.org/2011/05/the-power-of-small-wins
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Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you're faced with a conflict and you don't know how to resolve it? Well, you're not alone. Conflict is a part of life, and it's essential to learn how to manage it effectively, especially in leadership roles.
n this episode, we'll explore the importance of conflict management in leadership, how to improve conflict resolution skills, and how coaching and mentoring can aid individuals in managing conflict.
leadershipdevelopment #mentorship #coaching #leadership #selfmastery #personaldevelopment #selfawareness #selfmanagement #podcast
Resources Mentioned
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Have you ever felt like you're not being heard or understood? Or struggled to get your message across to others? If so, you're not alone. In today's episode, we'll be discussing the significance of communication in leadership, how to become a better communicator, and how coaching and mentoring can help develop communication skills. So sit back, relax, and let's dive in.
leadershipdevelopment #mentorship #coaching #leadership #selfmastery #personaldevelopment #selfawareness #selfmanagement #podcast
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Are you curious about how emotional intelligence can help you become a more effective leader, improve your relationships, and enhance your overall well-being? If so, you've come to the right place!#leadershipdevelopment #mentorship #coaching #leadership #selfmastery #personaldevelopment #selfawareness #selfmanagement #podcast Resources Mentioned “Emotional Intelligence 2.0”https://www.amazon.co.uk/Emotional-Intelligence-2-0-Travis-Bradberry/dp/0974320625Discover MoreTo a More Humane Leadership for free tools, courses and a newsletterOpening theme "Slider" by Mr Smith
Have you ever felt like you're running in circles? You're working hard, but you don't seem to be getting anywhere? You may be struggling with setting realistic goals. Setting goals is an important part of leadership development, and it's essential to have goals that are achievable and measurable.
Setting goals is a critical component of leadership.
leadershipdevelopment #mentorship #coaching #leadership #selfmastery #personaldevelopment #selfawareness #selfmanagement #podcast
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Let me ask you, have you ever heard the saying, "You can't see the forest for the trees"?
It's a common metaphor that means you are too close to something to see it objectively.
Well, self-awareness is the key to stepping back and seeing the bigger picture.
leadershipdevelopment #mentorship #coaching #leadership #selfmastery #personaldevelopment #selfawareness #selfmanagement #podcast
Have you ever made a decision without much thought and later regretted it?
Or perhaps you made a choice that seemed good at the time, but left you feeling unfulfilled?
Well, in today's episode, we're going to explore the fascinating world of stress mechanics and how our limbic system influences our decisions.
leadershipdevelopment #mentorship #coaching #leadership #selfmastery #personaldevelopment #selfawareness #selfmanagement #podcast
Key Points
- Our limbic system is responsible for our emotions and social behavior, and it includes the "all-powerful" amygdala.
- The amygdala is always ready for action, while our neocortex, which is where logical thinking resides, takes time to process information.
- As a result, we often jump to conclusions and make decisions based on our emotions rather than logic.
- While this can be helpful in dangerous situations, it can also lead to regrettable decisions when emotions overrule rational thinking.
- To avoid making hasty decisions, it's important to take a step back, breathe, and allow time for logical thinking to catch up with our emotions.
- Ultimately, our decisions define who we are and what we become, so it's essential to approach them mindfully and intentionally.
Resources Mentioned
- "The Role of the Amygdala in Decision-Making" by Agustin Ibáñez et al. (Frontiers in Neuroscience, 2011)
- "The role of the amygdala in emotional processing: A quantitative meta-analysis of functional neuroimaging studies" by Paul J. Whalen et al. (Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 2008)
- "Emotions and Decision Making, Revisited" by Jennifer S. Lerner et al. (Annual Review of Psychology, 2015)
- "The Influence of Emotion on Cognitive Control: Relevance for Development and Adolescent Psychopathology" by Monique Ernst et al. (Frontiers in Psychology, 2015)
- "Emotional Decision Making in Neurodegenerative Disease" by Jennifer C. Walter et al. (Neurocase, 2011)
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Have you ever seen yourself in that awkward moment when people are arguing, and you will say something when, all of a sudden, everybody stops talking right before you speak?
That moment where your statement will sound loud as loud can be, even if you speak in a low voice?
I will share with you some easy-to-follow tricks to better decide when to speak.
Key Points
- Learning when to speak is all about self-management.
- To be able to self-manage yourself, you should develop your self-awareness.
- Evaluate if your thought needs to be shared.
- Evaluate if you are the right person to speak.
- Evaluate if the moment is proper.
- Evaluate how much time can you postpone that message.
Resources Mentioned
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Silence!
In today’s society, this is, without a doubt, a privilege.
Can SILENCE be harmful, or should we fight vigorously to have it?
We cherish silence, but sometimes noise is the best way to understand what is happening.
So…in today’s society, what should we strive for? To have quiet times with silence, or should we look for more noise to work as a reality check?
Key Points
- Silence is good.
- Silence is also dangerous.
- In a new formed team, silence is a sign that something is not well.
Resources Mentioned
- “Using the Stages of Team Development”; MIT
- https://hr.mit.edu/learning-topics/teams/articles/stages-development
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Since several leadership styles exist, how can we know them by heart at such a tender age?
We can have some traits that our current society associates with a Leader, but there is more to it than that.
A leader should be adaptable, switching their leadership style accordingly with the teams, the organisations and the living moment.
Key Points
- Using DiSC to know more about profiles helps to understand how to be adaptable.
- There are many leadership styles, but none is THE best.
- Authoritarian Leadership
- Participative Leadership
- Laissez-Faire Leadership
- Transactional Leadership
- Transformational Leadership
- Charismatic Leadership
- Bureaucratic Leadership
- Servant Leadership
- Study all leadership styles and understand where and when to use them.
- “Leaders aren’t born, they are made” - Vince Lombardi
Resources Mentioned
- Episode9: A Team is Made Up of People
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When it is time to analyse our staff performance, three questions demand an answer.
- Which employees were above the standard performance and should be promoted or deserve a bigger bonus?
- Which employees had a standard performance and deserved the standard bonus as well?
- Which employees were below standard and deserved an action plan?
Unfortunately, some companies don’t give much thought to this process.
Managing underperformance is always a stressful situation.
Pushing someone to success sometimes fails, and we should be expecting that to happen. It is always a possibility. And sometimes, even the more humane approaches hurt people.
When you have a clear, transparent, and humane process, the harsh parts of managing underperformance should be minimised.
It will not become easier with time, but nothing is wrong if you need to “share your employee with the competition”.
Key Points
- Have your employee write a Game Plan.
- Schedule follow-up sessions for steering.
- Have a proper deadline.
- What is at stake if the game plan fails should be crystal clear to both parties.
- Please just keep the entire process written; it will be useful if you need proof of accountability.
Resources Mentioned
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There’s an old thought that a person to be a good employee must always be busy, always running, and always putting out the next fire.For an Engineer Manager, we expect that person to switch contexts easily and recurrently. That context switch happens multiple times daily with today's comms' velocity. Sometimes even at the same hour.And you, as a good employee and a strong professional, are always busy. You might think that no one can throw a stone at you. No one will ever catch you off-guard. Is that so?As an Engineer Manager, you wear two pairs of shoes, the Manager and the Leader. Both roles demand some thought process happen, with full intention recurrently.Are you asking the right questions about what is happening? Are you blocking your “thinking time” in your schedule and guarding it in an almost religious way?Key Points An Engineer Manager needs to have a weekly time slot to think and ask these questions: What happened this week? Where are we struggling? Can we improve something? Should we try a new approach? How is the team? How to bring out the best in each individual? Do I have the right people in the correct positions? What does the team need to be stronger? Is the definition of success well understood by everyone on the team? Is the team in a strong and good place? Resources MentionedDiscover MoreTo a More Humane Leadership for free tools, courses and a newsletterOpening theme "Slider" by Mr Smith
What does it mean to provide feedback?
This is not something we think about on a daily basis.
I have seen too many managers using feedback to complain about something or request course corrections. But it seems to me that they don’t see the real meaning of feedback.
Our primary and sole purpose as a leader is to grow our people, enabling the entire team’s success. That said, I will share seven tips to help you improve your feedback moments, and in between, I will do callouts to some hidden dangers.
Key Points
- Three feedback types: Positive, Constructive and Negative
- Four Hidden Dangers:
- Danger #1: The sole deliverer
- Danger #2: The public criticism
- Danger #3: the loose-lipped
- Danger #4: The sandwich
- Seven Tips to Supercharge your Feedback
- Tip #1: Timely feedback
- Tip #2: Be ready.
- Tip #3: Be precise
- Tip #4: Be mindful of the receiver.
- Tip #5: Keep a positive “bank account”.
- Tip #6: Watch out for hidden bias
- Tip #7: Keep yourself humble
Resources Mentioned
- E3 - What is the biggest trait of a leader? - learn more about the Johari Window
- Experience sampling mood and its correlates at work - Andrew G. Miner, Theresa M. Glomb, Charles Hulin
- Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs - Verywell Mind
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We can do a great service to our teams if we only try to learn more about each person as an individual.
Applying personality tests to our people is something that we should be cautious about.
The biggest risk is putting someone into a specific box and thinking that the person IS that. The person is not that. The person can be showing that trait at that moment in time because multiple reasons.
nderstanding that each trait demands a different way to communicate or a different way to handle a conflict, is key.
That will help you as a leader to navigate the team dynamics.
This show will provide an easy and fast way to detect where the other person is coming from, using a small framework of questions.
Key Points
- People has the four personality types at any given time
- DiSC: Dominance / inducement or influencer / Submission or Stable / Compliance or Conscientious
- Select by Elimination:
- is the person more Extroverted (D, I) or more Introverted (C, S)?
- Is the person more prone to be Task-Oriented (D, C) or People-Oriented (I, S)?
- Seinfeld and the TMNT TV shows can show us these traits at play.
Resources Mentioned
- https://www.tonyrobbins.com/disc/ (free DiSC assessment)
- https://discpersonalitytesting.com/free-disc-test/ (free DiSC assessment)
- “Emotions of Normal People”, a book by William Moulton Marston
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“There is no amount of time I could say is enough. And with all my demands, my teams could improve to give fewer worries. That’s the bare minimum. If only I could have a 48h day.”
The higher you get, the higher the pressure. And I can sense that in some way or another, you, too, one day had a similar internal monologue.
And that’s common. At least it was something that the Daniel Goleman’s team discovered in one of their studies:
“Many leaders told us they don’t have the time in this high-pressure economy for the slow and tedious work of teaching people and helping them grow.” - Daniel Goleman
Key Points
- Coach your people to help them learn how to solve the situation.
- Mentor your people if they want to learn through your experience.
Resources Mentioned
- “The Coaching Habit”, a book by Michael Bungay Stanier.
- https://www.mentoring-club.com/ The Mentoring Club is a free online mentorship platform for various professions, connecting over 3500 mentors with mentees from various organisations worldwide.
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When, for the first time, we land the role of team leader or engineer manager, we are en route to a great trap. You see, that opportunity probably appeared because:
a) you were probably the best individual contributor from that team;
or
b) you found yourself looking at the pitfalls of the systems in place and you wanted to be part of the solution
None of these options implies that you have the right tools or the right mindset to start leading people. So we fall into the first big leadership trap: to be a people-pleaser.
Key Points
- You should be friendly with your people.
- But you shouldn’t need to be a pal.
- See yourself as a fatherly figure, a teacher, a mentor and a coach
- A Servant-Leader knows how to love his people
- To love is to fulfil their needs and not their wants
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We are educated and trained to think that what differentiates us from other animals is our rational capacity. We are rational beings, they say. But will it be so?
I don’t say this lightly, but I had the opportunity to attend firsthand some meetings in which the participants, supposed leaders of departments, screamed and insulted each other.
If we are primarily rational beings, why are there times when we have reactions or actions that are not easily explained?
The explanation is found when we study the Cycle of Stress and its ways and doings.
Key Points
- Cycle of Stress comprises four phases.
- Phase1: Exposure to a stressor
- Phase2: Emotions
- Phase3: Reactions
- Phase4: Behaviours
- Self-awareness is key.
- Therapy work is important to understand the emotions we feel and why they are triggered the way they are.
- Coaching work is important to fast track into the future, without excuses.
Resources Mentioned
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Much has been said about what started to happen last year.
We saw voices raised against the new generations – Millennials and GenZ. But there has always been a clash of generations because they differ in who is occupying leadership positions. Should we finger-point them for it?
Others say the culprit was the pandemic that we went through.
If the former was ever present, the latter was indeed the disruptor.
However, an investigation published by Harvard Business Review showed that the real reason is the managers. And I agree.
Everybody knows the motto – “employees don’t leave companies. They leave managers”.
Key Points
- Employees don’t leave companies, they leave bad managers.
- Build trust by being transparent.
- Build trust by working on your work relationships.
- Build trust by improving your knowledge of your job - to be a leader and a manager.
- It’s not difficult to gain trust, is easier to lose trust, is way harder to recover trust.
Resources Mentioned
Quiet Quitting Is About Bad Bosses, Not Bad Employees
https://hbr.org/2022/08/quiet-quitting-is-about-bad-bosses-not-bad-employees
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New Year’s Eve.
People are looking tired after a long, long year. Some people need help verbalising where all the stress came from.
While others are ready to point and shoot at their work, they are like smoking guns, but truth be told, they probably don’t know for sure either.
This year, during the new year’s eve party, we were chatting about resolutions, and we had a good laugh when a friend joked, “after midnight, life will be different”.
This idea kept me thinking for more than a couple of days.
Why do people wait for the new year to have a fresh start?
Why do people expect to switch their lives inside-out after midnight?
Key Points
- Your Resolutions will be answering your Human Needs.
- My need is different from your need. Even if the resolution is the same, they can’t be compared.
- Using the Coaching Wheel will help to gain awareness of which area of life needs to be improved.
- Assess each Wheel slice from 1 (worst) to 10 (best).
Resources Mentioned
- Maslow Human Needs
- Coaching Wheel - free template and instructions
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I have picked one that I know for a fact that many people see as THE characteristic – Self-Management.
However, in today's World, people live in a rush, always thinking about the next bill, the next meeting, the next meal, the next paycheck, the subsequent performance evaluation, the following weekend, the following holidays, the next…the next...
With such speed and tons of things on our heads to juggle, we must remember to think about ourselves. How can we regulate emotions and thoughts if we live through the motions?
The first and primary trait of a leader is Self-Awareness.
Key Points
- Ask about what you don’t see
- Tell what others don’t know about you
- Discover what no one knows about you
Resources Mentioned
Luft, J.; Ingham, H. (1955). "The Johari window, a graphic model of interpersonal awareness". Proceedings of the Western Training Laboratory in Group Development.
List of adjectives:
Able; Accepting; Adaptable; Bold; Brave; Calm; Caring; Cheerful; Clever; Complex; Confident; Dependable; Dignified; Energetic; Extroverted; Friendly; Giving; Happy; Helpful; Idealistic; Independent; Ingenious; Intelligent; Introverted; Kind; Knowledgeable; Logical; Loving; Mature; Modest; Nervous; Observant; Organised; Patient; Powerful; Proud; Quiet; Reflective; Relaxed; Religious; Responsive; Searching; Self-assertive; Self-conscious; Sensible; Sentimental; Shy; Silly; Spontaneous; Sympathetic; Tense; Trustworthy; Warm; Wise; Witty.
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In the previous episode, we talked about “Impostor Syndrome”. The Dunning-Kruger effect is the other side of the coin when people have more confidence than awareness of their true capabilities.
Every person is faced with this situation in one way or another. It is inevitable. But most probably you didn't have a conscience about it.
Having “Dunning-Krugers” on our teams is something we can not avoid. It will be a tough challenge but one that is not impossible to undertake.
Key Points
- Don’t dictate, don’t point fingers, instead coach them
- Use as many measurable performance standards as possible.
- Encourage the debate to overcome divergence.
- Any team must have a true senior.
- Keep asking questions, keep probing, and keep the discussion flowing
Resources Mentioned
Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments - David Dunning & Justin Kruger
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Ever wondered why there are people so focused on the quality of their work, and even in the face of superb quality, they always consider it a failure?
And other people used to get things easily. When they face some hard times, they perceive themselves as being less capable of?
And what about those whose primary concern is knowing everything and having all the answers? Yet they consider themselves a fraud?
In today’s topic, we will be talking about an old friend, the “Impostor Syndrome”. I will share my story with the intention to trigger your story. I will tell you about the two moments of truth, that made me take a hard turn on the events and design a game plan for the win. And I will share with you the game plan I designed.
Key Points
- Acknowledge the rate at which technology is changing
- Acknowledge that programming consists of near-constant failure
- Accept positive feedback and not attribute success to pure luck
- Keep a journal of my successes and failures
- Embrace humbleness and accept successes as much as failures
- Expose yourself
- Looked for mentors
Resources Mentioned
The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer from the Impostor Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It by Dr. Valerie Young
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