EP 204 | You Started Out an Octopus. | Michael Hunter
You started out an octopus. Curious, full of wonder, eight arms reaching in eight directions at once. Then the system folded you down to a grain of sand, coated the irritation layer by layer, and called the result beautiful. Michael Hunter spent 40 years debugging software before he discovered the bug was always in the people. Your team engages with whoever is inside that pearl. How do you crack the pearl open?
ABOUT MICHAEL HUNTER
Michael Hunter debugged software for 40 years at Microsoft, Tableau, and Salesforce. Somewhere in those 40 years he discovered that every technical problem he solved was actually a squishy people problem. So he switched to debugging people. That worked out about as well as you would expect. Now he helps people leaders debug themselves.
Michael founded Uncommon Teams and wrote The Resilient Tech Leader, which is for a lot more than tech leaders. He works with people leaders on the gap between who the system trains them to be and who they really are. He calls the return from that gap resilience. He treats resilience as a journey rather than a destination.
Michael gives the Work Positive community a free copy of The Resilient Tech Leader at theresilienttechleader.com, along with a complimentary 30-minute first conversation about where you are, where you want to be, and why that gap matters.
Key Insights
- Michael spent 40 years debugging code before he discovered every technical problem was actually a people problem
- Everybody qualifies as a people leader. Every person leads themselves at minimum
- The world compacts a curious octopus into a grain of sand, then encases the irritation in a pearl the world calls beautiful
- Tasha Eurich's research finds 95% of people believe they possess self-awareness. Roughly 15% score well on both the inward and the outward measure
- A people leader who releases one layer shifts the room that same week, even before anyone names the shift out loud
- The most common stall is inviting feedback out loud and then ignoring what comes back
- An uncommon team holds the grain of sand, the glass, the sandpaper, the fuzzy bunny, the goofy seahorse, and the Martian rather than papering everyone into one snare drum
- Flexing out of your preference costs energy, so Michael flexes toward structured colleagues on purpose and names the trade out loud
- Setting the container is the people leader's job, which includes telling a poor fit honestly that a better team exists for them
- Resilience means returning to yourself again and again, a journey rather than a destination
Your Do One Thing Challenge
Michael Hunter gives the Work Positive community three moves for today:
- practice noticing where you are
- be curious about why that matters
- do one tiny thing to learn more about what you noticed
Michael names the trap himself. "It seems like it's way too simple to actually work. Yet when we put it into practice, I often find it is way more complex and challenging than these simple words might lead us to believe."
Connect with Michael Hunter
Website: https://uncommonteams.com/
Free copy of The Resilient Tech Leader: https://theresilienttechleader.com/
Book page: https://uncommonteams.com/the-resilient-tech-leader/
The Resilient Tech Leader on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4yjxLjy
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/humbugreality/
Michael offers the Work Positive community a free PDF of The Resilient Tech Leader and a complimentary 30-minute first conversation about where you are, where you want to be, and why that gap matters.
Connect with Dr. Joey & Work Positive
Work Positive Podcast: workpositive.today/podcasts
Free Work Positive Newsletter: workpositive.today/newsletter
Free Work Positive Culture Assessment: https://workpositive.today
B.R.A.V.E. @ Work: Five Practices That Transform How Your Team Engages releases September 15.
A.L.I.G.N. @ Work: Five Practices That Transform How Your Team Collaborates: https://amzn.to/3SWRhTO
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