Category: General
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The 4 BEPS Axes of a Leader
The 4 axes of a leader emerged from conversations in which I was trying to explain what a manager is not expected to do. The attempts to tell people that they should not split the work items, or distribute the work between the team members were leading to a lot of incomprehension. With the help…
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Celebrating the First Season!
Yay! The first season of Le Podcast comes to an end! It is time to celebrate and thank the guests and the listeners! Season One is composed of 15 episodes covering leadership and team building. The top 3 (in terms of audience, I love them all equally
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The Motive
Why so many leaders abdicate their most important responsibilities? The sentence above is the subtitle of The Motive, a book by Patrick Lencioni, the famous author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The Advantage. The first part of the book is a business fable. If you read I am a Software Engineer and…
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The Culture Map
The Culture Map is an excellent book by Erin Meyer. As my current team evolves in an international context, I had the idea to use the culture map as an icebreaker to start one of our quarterly meetings. The team is composed of people from France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, and The Netherlands. The team has…
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What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful is a book by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter published in 2007. The trouble with successful people is that they tend to believe that their “bad” habits are not so “bad.” They have proof of that. They are successful. So,…
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April’s Fool
Michael Doyle and I are launching a new book in May 2020. The book is I am a Software Engineer and I am in Charge: The book that helps increase your impact and satisfaction at work. Some people told us that it was not the perfect timing as people surely have other things on their…
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Chief of Staff in the Tech Industry
In this article, I would like to provide information and pointers to information on the Chief of Staff’s role in the tech industry. As a member of the Engineering Leadership Team at Red Hat, I have been in that kind of role for almost three years for the SVP of Engineering. People instantly connect the…
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A very special dinner
In May 2011, Isabel and I had the pleasure of organizing the first edition of TEDxBordeaux. The theme we chose was Together. The underlying idea was, as I said in my introduction to the event, We can rediscover our power to change things. Together. When I read about 15 Toasts in Priya Parker’s book, The…
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The Art of Gathering
I have been asked thousands of times to facilitate small or large gatherings. When I worked on Changing Your Team From The Inside, I wanted to make clear that self-organization is the most powerful way for people to organize, but that based on their history, you will need to help them get there. You will…
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Time matter for a team
The fact that time matter for a team is not a controversial matter. I think we would all agree on that. The other aspect of time that we will all agree quickly on is that, not all time will matter the same way. We will not value an hour stuck in a traffic jam the…
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How do we Communicate?
How do we communicate is a really important question to ask when the team is up to define its Team Agreements. Valve, the game company published its Handbook for New Employees in 2012. The subtitle provides information on how their approach to communication will have to be different: A fearless adventure in knowing what to…
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Team Awards Retrospective
Everything is awesome, everything is cool when you are part of a team! The LEGO Movie Even if a lot of people would genuinely like to think that way, not everything is awesome when you are part of a team. The great thing about this is that it leaves room for improvements which a regular…