Mary Czerwinski  is a principal researcher and research manager at Microsoft Research in Redmond, US. Mary shares some great experiences about her role as a manager and how she plays this out practically in enabling and protecting people, and establishing a culture in a group. She also talks about some of the key insights from her own research work on stress and how to manage stress, from email management strategies, to designing technology interventions as well as some very easy practical interventions that we could all try out. A theme throughout is the importance of getting to know yourself and your values, and of planning– this is the work to do good work.

“How you choose to look at stress...” “Honouring your calendar”

She talks about (times approximate) …

01:45 Her current work and background

04:20 Managing and leading a research group

07:15 Establishing a group culture, dealing with issues, conflict resolution, one-on-ones

11:10 Insights from research on stress, managing email, choosing how you look at stress

17:00 Knowing the rhythm of your day, your priorities, and planning

18:20 Personal interventions, the ‘tools in the toolkit’ e.g., deep breathing, mindfulness techniques, new work on DBT, Pop Therapy

25:05 Challenges now with escalating pace, needing to say no more often, importance of prioritizing based on knowing what are your values

28:50 Wish for the younger generation: prioristing the important things and still having time to accomplish what you want to in work, needing to make time for family and self

30:08 End

Final notes:

Pop Therapy - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/pop-therapy/

Mindfulness – loads of resources https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/mindfulness

http://www.umassmed.edu/cfm/

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy

http://behavioraltech.org/resources/whatisdbt.cfm