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Less say you have a team, and you feel great about your work. You think you are on top of tasks, you think you are supporting the team and giving them the direction they need, you are crushing it. Yet something is off, your team may not have the initiative you wish and morale for some reason may seem low. Have you asked yourself if you are micromanaging your team? In you will learn 5 signs you are a micromanager and what to do about it.

Pre-order now your Hardcore Soft Skills for Managers course

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Let's face it. You are afraid of giving feedback. You'd rather tell someone else what you think about that person's behavior rather than just tell them. We make all sort of excuses such as "they should know its not my job to tell them" or it will be useless" So rather than tell the person you'd rather stay with the status quo. Or are you the person who give feedback yet it is not well received and the recipient ends up angry at you for your "helpful" comments?

Today you will learn some effective ways to give feedback.

Pre-order now your Hardcore Soft Skills for Managers course

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When you hire someone for your organization, you would have a contract that specifies scope of the work, what needs to be done to get the task done. In your company you also have the rules to abide to, where to do timesheets, reports. In today's work environment which is team-driven, regardless of location or time zones, how do we navigate those expectations for the people we will be working side by side with every day? Having a team contract can save you time and bad conflict.

Pre-order now your Hardcore Soft Skills for Managers course

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In this timely and compelling episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli welcomes back Rich Diviney, retired Navy SEAL Commander and bestselling author of The Attributes. This conversation focuses on Rich’s latest book, Mastering Uncertainty, and delivers insights highly relevant to leaders navigating today’s volatile, complex environment.

With more than 20 years of experience in the SEAL teams—including leading training within SEAL Team Six—Rich draws from intense operational settings to explain how high performers build the ability to stay composed, decisive, and effective when the plan breaks down. But this isn’t just about special forces. It’s a conversation about how CEOs and senior leaders can rewire how they think about pressure, performance, and leadership itself.

Rich introduces powerful concepts, including the brain’s need for Duration, Pathway, and Outcome (DPO) to maintain composure in chaos. He breaks down how stress affects decision-making, why “calm is contagious,” and how great teams shift leadership dynamically to the person best positioned to lead in the moment. These lessons are deeply human and directly applicable to organizational leadership.

This episode goes beyond resilience into practical training for leaders who want to move through uncertainty with clarity and help their teams do the same. Whether you're leading a fast-scaling business, a mission-driven nonprofit, or a complex enterprise under stress, this conversation offers actionable perspective and tools for performing when nothing goes as planned.

Actionable Takeaways

• Hear how Rich Diviney defines mastery of uncertainty—and why it starts with managing your own physiological stress response.
  
  
  
• Learn how elite performers prepare for unpredictable environments and why your team can develop that same capability.
  
  
  
• Discover why the brain’s search for Duration, Pathway, and Outcome is the key to clarity in moments of stress.
  
  
  
• Explore the concept of dynamic subordination and how the best teams allow leadership to shift based on proximity to the problem.
  
  
  
• Understand the limits of traditional planning—and why too much planning can become a form of leadership paralysis.
  
  
  
• Gain perspective on why attempts to control more tightly often erode trust, especially in high-stakes or ambiguous situations.
  
  
  
• Examine how the identities leaders carry—consciously or not—shape how they respond under pressure.
  
  
  
• Learn why building trust requires more than competence and consistency—and how character and compassion complete the equation.
  
  
  
• Find out how focusing your team on smaller, achievable horizons (instead of long-range uncertainty) improves decision-making and morale.
  
  
  
• Get practical strategies for applying these tools immediately—both in your own leadership and across your team.
  
  
  

Connect with Rich Diviney

The Attributes Website 

Rich Diviney LinkedIn 

Connect with Mahan Tavakoli:

Mahan Tavakoli Website 

Mahan Tavakoli on LinkedIn 

Partnering Leadership Website

🎙️ What’s really happening inside your engineering org?

We explore how leaders can stop flying blind and start leading based on facts from the field.

✅ Gemba Walks (Japanese term meaning “go to the real place”):

Why your assumptions about how work gets done are probably wrong

How spending even one hour a week in the mob or at the code level changes everything

The myth of managing solely through middle managers

Why high-fidelity information beats filtered reporting

Remote-friendly adaptations: mobbing, Lean coffees, and async insight gathering

✅ Mobbing (also known as ensemble programming):

How mobbing surfaces capability gaps and builds shared understanding

Growing capabilities without enforcing rigid standards

Real stories of capability fire drills, single points of failure, and org fragility

“Low and slow” growth as the only sustainable path to true skill development?

✅ Fixing Batch Size and WIP (Work In Progress):

How large batches lead to delivery waste, delays, and bugs

The surprising power of reducing ticket size to unlock flow

Socratic coaching at stand-ups to improve team work slicing

Giving permission to drop non-priority work and focus only on what matters

✅ Building a Learning Culture:

Why capability resilience > retaining every team member forever

Using “nudges” and peer pressure the right way

Investing in bright spots without ignoring skeptics

Cultivating environments where psychological safety and growth feed off each other

In this thought-provoking episode, we sit down with Tobias Mayer—author, coach, and longtime voice in the Agile world—to explore the journey from his early discovery of XP (Extreme Programming) in 1997 all the way to today’s debate around the death of Scrum.

Tobias shares his personal transformation from developer to Scrum Master, his resistance to early XP, and how he learned great practices from developers he managed. We unpack his reflections on Agile’s semantic drift, the role of Scrum Masters as change agents vs. bean counters, and what happens when teams do Agile without even knowing the Agile Manifesto.

🔍 Topics we dive deep into:

We also dig into mob programming (aka mobbing)—what it means, why the name matters, and whether or not new metaphors like “ensemble programming” or “teaming” (à la Amy Edmondson) better reflect how high-performing teams really work.

💡 Plus:

Tobias brings rich context from classics, theology, and history—yes, even turning a conference t-shirt into fashion—to challenge how we think about building products, teams, and businesses.

🛠️ Whether you're into XP, Scrum, Mob Programming, Lean, or simply want to rethink your metaphors and language at work, this episode delivers grounded insight, sharp critique, and fresh perspectives.

👉 Subscribe for more conversations at the intersection of agile thinking, real teamwork, and modern product development.

 In this episode, we explore how to escape the outdated factory model of software development. We discuss traditional bureaucratic software development, why it fails, and how Agile was meant to fix it by removing departmental silos and liberating talent,  only for managers to turn it back into siloed development in sprints. 

We discuss a successful Agile transformation at a digital agency and use that example to show that good leadership, structural transformation, and a commitment to learning can drive real, successful change. Tune in if you're ready to break the cycle and change things for the better.

David Lykken, a 51-year veteran of the mortgage industry, is the Founder, President & Chief Transformational Officer of Transformational Mortgage Solutions (TMS). With decades of expertise, Lykken and his team of industry veterans are revolutionizing the way mortgage professionals conduct business through consulting, executive coaching, and strategic communications.

Recognized as a leading voice in the mortgage sector, he has been a frequent guest on FOX Business News, as well as making appearances on CNBC & CBS Evening News, where he shares invaluable insights on market trends and industry developments.

Mr. Lykken is also the host of the widely acclaimed weekly Lykken on Lending podcast, heard every Monday at 1 PM ET. Additionally, he leads the Lykken On Leadership podcast, where he provides leadership strategies tailored to the mortgage and housing industries.

Beyond his work in podcasting, Mr. Lykken extends his reach into television, hosting two TV shows: Your Home Business and Your Home Coast to Coast, both airing on Your Home TV. His multifaceted career reflects a deep commitment to educating and empowering professionals in an ever-evolving industry.

Topics of Discussion:

[4:50] David's early career challenges with dyslexia.

[5:55] Learning about virtual assistants.

[7:38] Current AI Tools and Usage, including large language models, Blockchain, and private GPT.

[9:57] Twin protocol and AI avatars.

[13:02] AI in Recruiting and Communication, introducing ELO GPT tool for automated outbound calling and personalized recruitment strategies.

[19:27] AI Mistakes and Challenges, discussing the importance of training AI tools and avoiding generic, potentially inaccurate content.

[24:10] Evolution of business assistance, comparing current AI tools to previous technological shifts like typewriters and word processors.

[26:52] The continued importance of human relationships in business, emphasizing that AI cannot fully replace human empathy and connection.

[31:10] The future of AI, predicting increased productivity and scalability for businesses through AI technologies.

Mentioned in this Episode:

Clear Measure Way

Architect Forum

Software Engineer Forum

Programming with Palermo — New Video Podcast! Email us at [email protected].

Clear Measure, Inc. (Sponsor)

.NET DevOps for Azure: A Developer's Guide to DevOps Architecture the Right Way, by Jeffrey Palermo

David Lykken LinkedIn

Transformational Mortgage Solutions

Lykken on Lending

YHBTV with David Lykken

Your Home Coast to Coast TV

The Coming Wave: AI, Power, and Our Future, by Mustafa Suleyman and Michael Bhaskar

Twin Protocol (AI) tool

ELO GPT

ElevenLabs

Perplexity

Vibe Coding

Opus Clip

Want to Learn More?

Visit AzureDevOps.Show for show notes and additional episodes.

watsonx.ai is an enterprise-grade AI studio. Developers can get started in the watsonx Developer Hub.

We published a technical behind-the-scenes look at watsonx, as well as a Q&A on why it’s business-ready. 

Find Maryam on LinkedIn. 

Congrats to Stack Overflow user Michael Kolber, who earned a Lifeboat badge with a straightforward and effective answer to Is it possible to download a website’s entire code, HTML, CSS and JavaScript files?.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The new Salesforce Developer Edition includes access to Data Cloud and Agentforce, Salesforce’s platform for building, customizing, and deploying autonomous AI agents. Developers can sign up here to start building.

Connect with Christophe on LinkedIn. 

Instead of a badge, we have a question for you:  If you are a developer who is working with AI agents, what are you building? What tools are you looking for? What problems are you interested in solving with AI tools? Send us an email at [email protected]. 

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.