Your employee is struggling. You’re genuinely invested in their success, and spend more and more time and attention on trying to help them. But they are not making progress!

How do you decide whether to continue supporting them or to let them go?

I present to you a simple framework for how to think about this in the latest issue of my newsletter:

https://www.sudarkoff.blog/p/the-4-conditions-for-improvement?sd=pf

Cameras on or off?

Developers onboarded remotely never had an opportunity to meet their teammates in person, according to a recent study done by Microsoft Research.

Which made building strong social connection incredibly challenging for those developers.

The authors make a few recommendations in the paper, so it’s worth reading the whole thing.

But one recommendation in particular they felt strong enough about to put in the title:

Please Turn Your Cameras On https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/please-turn-your-cameras-on-remote-onboarding-of-software-developers-during-a-pandemic/

A client/reader asked: "Is there ever a time when your perceived authority is not a good thing?"

Here was my answer, I'd love to hear what I missed or got wrong:

I can think of a few times when being perceived as having less authority might be a good thing:

• When you're not the smartest person in the room (which is always).
• When you want more creativity.
• When there's a disagreement and you want their honest opinion.
• When you question other people's assumptions.

Wanna be a great leader?

First Principles thinking is great, truly powerful stuff. And rare too!

But you know what’s even more rare?

Second Order thinking! Understanding that despite our best intentions, our actions often cause harm.

Taking responsibility for that? Vanishingly rare!

Do that, if you wanna be a truly great leader.