Are Boy Or Girl IT Leaders Better At Multitasking?

So this may push a few buttons, but it’s probably a good question to ask in these times IT downsizing and increasing responsibilities for everyone: are men or women better at juggling multiple tasks at the same time? Traditionally, everyone seems to think that women do a better job of this than men, but are … Read more

5 Steps To Help An IT Manager Find A Mentor

Mentoring is sorta like that networking thing. You know that it’s probably a good thing to be doing. However, you’re not quite sure how to get started with it and so it seems to always end up on your “should do” list where, of course, it never gets done. Whenever you read about someone’s success … Read more

How Can An IT Leader Change An Engineer Into A Team Player?

At my core, I am an engineer. I recognize this, I accept this, I am proud of this. However, during my career many mentors have been kind enough to hold up that damning mirror of self-vision and have allowed me to see myself as I was: an engineer’s engineer. One key characteristic of this part … Read more

How An IT Leader Can Manage Competitive Arousal In Their Team

It’s great to have an IT team that is full of go-getters. However, as with everything in life, sometimes teammates can be too competitive. When we let the heat of battle overcome our better judgement, then we’ve got a real problem. When this happens, we stand a very good chance of starting to make very … Read more

An IT Leader’s Guide To Managing “A-Type” Personalities

So we’ve talked just a bit about the dangers of having players in your department / on your team who get so caught up in something that winning becomes everything to them. It’s almost as though you were attending an auction and it got down to the last two bidders on something and they both … Read more

IT Leaders Have Two Of These But Do They Use Them?

About a year ago I had a chance to sit down with a member of an IT team that was working for me in order to have a heart-to-heart with him. We’ll call him Tim. Tim was a project manager on one of my teams and so far he had been a steady performer. I’d … Read more

IT Leaders’ Secret Techniques For Motivating Staff

Now that we’ve discovered that all humans, including those in in your IT department / on your IT team, respond to four basic drives, we are now faced with the really big question: how does an IT leader use this knowledge to motivate his/her staff? It turns out that there are actually a number of … Read more