PeopleStorming

PeopleStorming is a Substack focused on enhancing workplace culture through better collaboration, communication, and personal development. It offers practical advice on leadership, team dynamics, emotional intelligence, and conflict resolution, emphasizing people-centric approaches to productivity and growth within organizations.

Leadership Development Team Building Personal Development Communication Strategies Workplace Culture Emotional Intelligence Productivity Conflict Resolution Innovative Thinking

The hottest Substack posts of PeopleStorming

And their main takeaways

Making Values More Valuable

79 implied HN points • 17 Jan 24
💼 Business Values Tradeoffs Strategy Decision-making Consulting
  1. When developing company values, focus on creating a behavioral strategy rather than aspirational identity markers.
  2. Effective values highlight difficult tradeoffs between important elements like speed and inclusion.
  3. Frame values using the formula 'We favor X over Y' to capture key tradeoffs and promote decision-making alignment.

Breaking Free Of Endless Discussion Loops

79 implied HN points • 29 Nov 23
💼 Business Management Communication Productivity
  1. Consider setting a 'doc-time' protocol to convert lengthy, unproductive discussions into written documents to ensure clear progress and avoid wasting time.
  2. Include sections like context, why the problem matters, who is involved, discussion history, proposed alternatives, and decision-making process in the document.
  3. Encourage clear ownership and empower team members to drive the process of transitioning from discussion to document for more effective and efficient communication.

The Mirror To Excellence: Unleashing Your Potential Through Self-Reflection

39 implied HN points • 18 Dec 23
🏥 Health & Wellness Self-Improvement Coaching Journaling Reflection Mental health
  1. Self-reflection is a powerful tool for leaders to understand themselves, improve skills, make better decisions, and build relationships.
  2. Regular self-reflection by leaders correlates with being seen as effective, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment.
  3. Tools like Year Compass, Gibbs Reflective Cycle, and Journaling Prompts can help kickstart self-reflection, even without a coach.

Unlocking Engagement

19 implied HN points • 31 Jan 24
🏥 Health & Wellness
  1. Check-ins help create a safe space for meaningful conversations by encouraging individuals to authentically share before getting into the main topic of a gathering.
  2. The choice of check-in questions is crucial, considering factors such as group size, familiarity, duration of the gathering, and the purpose of the meeting.
  3. Check-outs, done effectively, help in wrapping up meetings with reflections rather than just logistical details, leaving a lasting impression on participants.

The People-Centric Approach to Personal Development Plans

99 implied HN points • 29 Aug 23
🏥 Health & Wellness Personal Development Self-Improvement Coaching
  1. A Personal Development Plan (PDP) is a structured approach to personal growth, focusing on goals, skills, and steps to achieve objectives.
  2. Traditional PDPs often lack personal ownership and end up neglected, leading to unachieved learning and growth aspirations.
  3. The PeopleStorming approach advocates for a self-driven growth plan, putting emphasis on personal choice, continual refinement, and simplicity in documentation.
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The Top Reasons High-Performing Teams Leverage User Stories

59 implied HN points • 26 Oct 23
💼 Business Communication Prioritization Visualization Validation
  1. User stories are concise descriptions of value from the perspective of the person who desires that value, helping to keep focus on end user needs and goals.
  2. Leveraging user stories can lead to improved communication and collaboration within teams, customer-centricity, and easier prioritization of workloads.
  3. An effective user story typically consists of three parts: the role, the output, and the benefit, enabling teams to articulate the purpose of their work and prioritize effectively.

Three psychological effects that screw with your team's productivity

99 implied HN points • 08 Aug 23
💼 Business Productivity
  1. The Planning Fallacy: We often overestimate the impact of work and underestimate its cost, known as the planning fallacy. To combat this, consider worst-case scenarios when planning.
  2. Sunk Cost Fallacy: We tend to continue investing in something because we've already put in time or resources, even if it's not the best decision. Regularly assess if the payoff aligns with the cost to avoid this.
  3. Complexity Bias: We often choose complex solutions when simple ones would suffice. Combat this bias by taking action, choosing practical systems, and simplifying mental models.

Navigating Manager Training for Startups: A Strategic Approach

39 implied HN points • 14 Nov 23
💼 Business Legal Compliance Scaling
  1. Evaluate organizational complexity to determine the necessity of leadership training, focusing on skills like change management and decision-making.
  2. Identify leadership challenges related to team motivation and communication to assess the need for training in conflict management and psychological safety.
  3. Align manager training with strategic goals for growth and market penetration, emphasizing skills like vision setting and strategic planning.

Building a Conflict-Resilient Team

79 implied HN points • 11 Jul 23
💼 Business Conflict resolution Team Management Leadership Workplace dynamics Professional development
  1. Building a conflict-resilient team involves empowering leaders to foster a positive work environment.
  2. Addressing conflicts constructively and with a long-term perspective can improve the overall work environment.
  3. Recruiting everyone in the team to actively participate in resolving conflicts is key, and principles like showing empathy and encouraging open communication play a vital role.

The Inspiring Team Spirit Behind Apple TV's Ted Lasso

79 implied HN points • 27 Jun 23
🎭️ Culture Inspiration Leadership Diversity Collaboration Teamwork
  1. Passionate and dedicated individuals inspire and unite a team to achieve remarkable outcomes.
  2. Promoting humble leadership and recognizing the contributions of team members is key to fostering a positive work culture.
  3. Encouraging diverse contributions and allowing individuals to explore different roles can lead to unexpected strengths and richer results.

Building more Psychological Safety on teams using the power of fish!

39 implied HN points • 03 Oct 23
🎭️ Culture Teamwork Psychological safety Workshops
  1. The Stinky Fish exercise is a tool to help teams surface worries and fears in a safe space, promoting open dialogue and confronting concerns.
  2. The exercise, rooted in cognitive behavioral therapy, can be used at the start of projects to create psychological safety in the team.
  3. Steps include providing context, allowing team members to jot down 'Stinky Fish', sharing in a circle, and emphasizing the value of open communication for team success.

10 Ways for Leaders to Build World-Class, Healthy Teams

39 implied HN points • 30 May 23
💼 Business Leadership Team Building Innovation Professional development Feedback
  1. Create a safe space where team members can take risks, share ideas, and acknowledge errors to encourage collaboration and innovation.
  2. Form diverse teams with varied backgrounds and skills to ignite creativity, challenge norms, and create products that appeal to a wider audience.
  3. Support team members' growth by offering learning opportunities, mentorship, and skill-building, resulting in a stronger and more capable team.

How to handle critical feedback

39 implied HN points • 16 May 23
🏥 Health & Wellness Feedback Emotions Coaching Self-awareness
  1. During feedback conversations, focus on being curious and open-minded rather than defensive.
  2. Ask yourself 3 important questions when emotionally triggered during feedback: Check the story you're telling yourself, understand the actual feedback, and identify your feelings.
  3. Criticism triggers cortisol production in our bodies, while praise triggers oxytocin; understanding this can help rationalize reactions to feedback.

Building a Strong Team Culture

19 implied HN points • 13 Jun 23
💼 Business Communication Accountability Leadership Productivity
  1. Effective communication, active listening, and shared accountability are key in building a strong team culture.
  2. Creating spaces for open dialogue and using tools like retrospectives can help team members express thoughts and concerns.
  3. Establishing clear agreements, defining values, and fostering continuous conversation can empower individuals to drive change in the team culture.

Emotions Wheel 🎡

19 implied HN points • 31 May 22
🏥 Health & Wellness
  1. Emotional literacy is important for expressing emotions and forming strong relationships.
  2. We have a wide range of emotions beyond basic feelings like happiness and sadness.
  3. An interactive emotions wheel can help pinpoint specific emotions and expand emotional vocabulary.

Your Top 5 Development Areas Backed By Research 🧪

19 implied HN points • 10 May 22
💼 Business Career development Skills Professional Growth
  1. McKinsey identified 56 key elements essential for professional success across cognitive, interpersonal, self-leadership, and digital categories.
  2. Research showed that qualities like confidence, adaptability, deliberateness, motivation, and synthesis are crucial for employment, high income, and job satisfaction.
  3. Skills from the world of improvisation, such as adaptability, confidence, and synthesis, are highly valued in the business world and can be beneficial for personal and professional development.

A Reframing Resource

19 implied HN points • 22 Sep 20
🏥 Health & Wellness Wellness Mindfulness
  1. Reframing involves turning challenges into growth opportunities. It's a valuable skill in current times of change and growth.
  2. The game 'Fortunately, Unfortunately' can help stimulate reframing. It involves turning negative situations into positives.
  3. Seeing situations from different perspectives can also help in reframing and changing your outlook on life.

Great facilitation relies on making many, deliberate choices

19 implied HN points • 25 Aug 20
🚌 Education Facilitation
  1. Great facilitation relies on making many deliberate choices to support a group effectively.
  2. Facilitators need to be conscious in their decision-making, considering the specific needs of the group they are working with, whether it's a simple or complex situation.
  3. Facilitators must constantly assess and adjust their approach, like turning buttons and dials, to ensure the group's conversation is productive and constructive.

Always be learning and growing 🌱

19 implied HN points • 16 Jun 20
🎙 Podcasts Learning Recommendations Newsletters
  1. Always find time for learning by incorporating podcasts into your daily routine like when you're in the shower, cooking, or in bed.
  2. Listen to podcasts that cater to your interests and needs to make the learning experience more valuable and enjoyable.
  3. Consider selecting newsletter topics that are relevant to you to receive content that aligns better with your preferences and requirements.

Virtual Games for Teams (and friends!) 🎲

19 implied HN points • 31 Mar 20
🏥 Health & Wellness
  1. Playing games can help reduce depression and anxiety, according to research using heart rate and alpha wave monitoring.
  2. Virtual games for teams and friends can be a fun way to connect with others from anywhere in the world.
  3. Take time to relax and play games to spread some light during challenging times.

The World's Worst Organizational Culture 😱

0 implied HN points • 30 Mar 21
🎭️ Culture Organizational Culture Team Building Workshops
  1. Organizational Improv workshops sometimes play a game called World's Worst to envision the worst possible versions of things. This game can help teams understand what 'best' should look like in various aspects of their work.
  2. Participants in the game can creatively come up with vivid examples of utterly horrendous cultures or practices in organizations, which can be both entertaining and insightful.
  3. Teams can apply this game to different scenarios within their organization, such as identifying the world's worst brand for marketing, product launch for the product team, or customer service representative for the support team. It can lead to fun and enlightening discussions.

Rituals To Help You Avoid Time-Pudding ⌚🍮

0 implied HN points • 02 Mar 21
🏥 Health & Wellness Rituals Self-care Mental health Well-being Stress management
  1. During the pandemic, the concept of time has become homogenous and it's easy to feel adrift without routines or plans.
  2. To combat the feeling of time blending together, create new daily, weekly, and monthly rituals to set boundaries and differentiate moments.
  3. Rituals can include themed meal days, walking commutes, bedtime wind-down routines, intentional connection and disconnection from work, and monthly reflections.

The Essence Of Virtual Connection 🙋

0 implied HN points • 16 Feb 21
🎭️ Culture Connection Virtual Discussion Activities
  1. Invest in small discussion groups for genuine and intimate connections.
  2. When organizing virtual discussions, set clear goals, construct groups thoughtfully, and onboard everyone properly.
  3. Provide conversational guidelines, create a structured conversation format, and encourage openness and active participation within small groups.

Control 🎮 Your Room

0 implied HN points • 02 Feb 21
🚌 Education Facilitation Workshops Exercises Activities
  1. Facilitators need a comprehensive toolkit and confidence in improvisation skills to adapt to different engagements.
  2. When designing workshops, facilitators can use lenses like reliability, freshness, and efficiency to choose activities that serve the ultimate purpose of the session.
  3. Efficient activities break traditional workshop phases and accomplish multiple goals at once, enhancing the flow of the session.

Fewer Social Cues = More Storytelling

0 implied HN points • 24 Nov 20
🏥 Health & Wellness Mental health Self-care Mindfulness
  1. Having fewer social cues can lead to more storytelling as we try to make sense of situations
  2. During times of uncertainty, we may construct negative stories about ourselves, so it's helpful to consider different perspectives
  3. Practicing gratitude during challenging times, like the holiday season, can help shift focus to positive aspects of life

When does Win-Win compromise the greater good? 🤔

0 implied HN points • 09 Nov 20
💼 Business Workplace dynamics Team Collaboration Strategic Planning
  1. Win-win solutions may not always serve the greater good because they could lead to suboptimal results for all parties involved.
  2. Optimization comes from maximizing 'winning' for all parties over time, not just at a single point in time. Wise compromises consider consequences in the long run.
  3. Teams facing conflict in prioritization may benefit from zooming out and strategically considering trade-offs holistically to resolve conflicts.

Facilitation Q&A

0 implied HN points • 20 Oct 20
🚌 Education Facilitation Meetings Leaders Communication Development
  1. Facilitation Week is a time for facilitators to celebrate and promote their craft worldwide.
  2. When dealing with quiet individuals in meetings, it's important to consider their value in listening, the source of their fear, and if there are tools to help them feel safer.
  3. Changing old school meeting cultures of large meetings and decisions by committee requires resetting the culture to one of clear accountability, having well-paced meetings with accountable facilitators, and clearly assigning decision accountability before discussions.

Festival Of Failure

0 implied HN points • 06 Oct 20
💼 Business Workplace culture Team Building Psychological safety
  1. Teams need psychological safety to thrive, where members can be open, vulnerable, and embrace failure as part of learning.
  2. The Festival of Failure is a ritual that helps teams create closeness and trust by sharing past mistakes, normalizing failure as a learning opportunity.
  3. Acknowledging and discussing failure openly in a team can boost resilience, courage, humility, and empathy among team members.

Are your decisions above or below the water line? 🚢

0 implied HN points • 08 Sep 20
💼 Business Decision-making Team Dynamics Conflict resolution Workplace dynamics
  1. Decisions can be categorized as above or below the waterline, where those below may have more damaging consequences that are harder to fix.
  2. Teams and individuals often exhibit biases towards either high-speed or high-quality decision-making, which can lead to conflicts that need to be addressed.
  3. It's important for teams to embrace diversity in decision-making styles and biases to ensure healthy debates and respect for each other's differences.

Thinking About Thinking 🧐

0 implied HN points • 11 Aug 20
🚌 Education Metacognition Learning Facilitation Thinking Decision-making
  1. Metacognition, or thinking about thinking, is vital for the learning process. When learning something new, considering different strategies and decision-making is an example of metacognitive activity.
  2. As facilitators, understanding individuals' thought processes is crucial to guiding productive discussions. Facilitators delve deep into how participants think to facilitate positive outcomes.
  3. Good facilitation requires deliberate focus on thinking at various abstraction levels, similar to the focus needed for complex tasks like software development. Facilitators are seen as essential for guiding effective conversations.

Freshen Up Your Meetings - Virtual Lean Coffee ☕

0 implied HN points • 14 Jul 20
💼 Business Meetings
  1. Virtual meetings can be made more effective by using a structured and democratic discussion format like Lean Coffee.
  2. A structured meeting format can help teams focus discussions, make deliberate choices on time allocation, and keep conversations relevant.
  3. Implementing a timer can ensure discussions remain concise, preventing irrelevant digressions and prompting self-awareness.

A better way to check in on your colleagues 👋

0 implied HN points • 21 Apr 20
🏥 Health & Wellness Mental health Relationships Communication
  1. Different types of check-in questions are useful for different situations: fun & inconsequential, personal & connected, deep & valuable.
  2. Consider factors like group size, group familiarity, conversation duration, and context of relationship when choosing questions for check-ins.
  3. Choosing the right check-in question can help deepen connections and strengthen relationships with colleagues.

International Facilitation Week

0 implied HN points • 07 Oct 19
🚌 Education Facilitation
  1. The International Association of Facilitators hosts an annual Facilitation Week to celebrate and promote the power of facilitation worldwide.
  2. Facilitation skills are believed to have the potential to make the world a better place by helping individuals feel acknowledged and valued.
  3. PeopleStorming offers valuable resources like essential facilitation tips and a meeting planner for free to enhance gatherings.