High-Performing Teams Need Psychological Safety
The highest-performing teams have one thing in common: psychological safety — the belief that you won’t be punished when you make a mistake.
^ADJ: So important in organisations who want to truly out perform.
The Gourmet Chef's Guide to Giving Feedback
The ability to give constructive feedback is a key communications skill. This article uses the metaphor of preparing and serving a gourmet meal to illustrate how this can be done most effectively.
^ADJ: Love this quote: "The meal is prepared to best suit the needs of the diner, not the chef. You want to encourage diners to come back for more."
Research: Do People Really Get Promoted to Their Level of Incompetence?
According to the Peter Principle, organizations manage careers so that everyone “rises to the level of their incompetence.”
^ADJ: Good reminder about promoting based on one attribute.
Bouncing, not breaking: resilience as the foundation of safety
An engine explodes, peppering the wings and fuselage of a wide-body airliner with turbine fragments propelled out of its core at Mach 2.6. Some systems are eviscerated, some disabled. Of the aircraft’s 22 different systems, 21 are damaged, and 650 wires and network cables are severed. Less than 50 per cent of its electrics and hydraulics are operational but the aircraft stays in the sky and remains controllable. On the flight deck, its crew use the first shocking seconds to take stock of the situation, first determining that the aircraft will still fly.
^ADJ: QF32 was an extreme event and demonstrated the flight crews ability to recover - fast. ‘There are eight elements of resilience that people can develop,’ de Crespigny says, ‘knowledge, training, experience, teamwork, leadership, crisis management, decision-making and risk.’ - worth thinking about how you apply this in an organisational context.
A microbiome-dependent gut–brain pathway regulates motivation for exercise
Exercise exerts a wide range of beneficial effects for healthy physiology1. However, the mechanisms regulating an individual’s motivation to engage in physical activity remain incompletely understood. An important factor stimulating the engagement in both competitive and recreational exercise is the motivating pleasure derived from prolonged physical activity, which is triggered by exercise-induced neurochemical changes in the brain.
^ADJ: The gut–brain connection is fascinating - the what and how you eat impacting on motivation for exercise explains those not so great days.
The Ukraine-Russia Drone War Is Crowdsourced and Made in China
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion, I knew two things for sure. First, that Ukraine was going to stun the world with what it could do with small do-it-yourself and consumer drones, a skillset that their drone hobbyists and tech experts had been tirelessly expanding ever since Russia’s earlier invasion in 2014 – efforts led by now-famous volunteer drone organizations like Aerorozvidka, whose members had become some of the world’s premier experts on building, modifying, and using small, cheap drones in warfare. Second, I knew that as an expert in both consumer and hobby drones, I was going to do my best to document what happened next.