TL;DR

It was time to switch the context from listening mode to engagement mode. Between five excellent workshops, I chose Fiona Charles Boost Your Leadership With Heuristics.

I love Fiona’s workshops. At CAST 2016, I attended How To Say No workshop. That workshop helped me a lot in my freelancing/consultancy business. I acknowledge Fiona for that. What I especially like about Fiona workshops? You first get an introduction into the Workshop topic, then you get work to do in groups. She listens and observes, and we do the job. Sometimes asks to follow up questions or tells something from her experience to boost the group work.

We were asked to provide our definition of heuristic. I have hardwired in my mind

“Rule of thumb.”

and I always need time to get back into my head Bach and Bolton definition:

A fallible method that could help us to solve the problem.

Some heuristics are hardwired into our heads. Fiona gave a jig puzzle example when we do not think when we first start with the edges. My example is that when I hear pitch noise from my refrigerator, I know that it is cleaning time. I do not need to keep a schedule for that.

Fiona explained further fallible part of B&B definition because this is very important. It comes from the learning technique of trial and error. Same as when we create a model of the application that we are testing.

All models are wrong, but some are useful [James Bach].

Next, we needed to define leadership and management. The manager needs to create a safe working environment, and we listed for leadership:

communicate
do by example
set goals
feedback
motivate
teach
support
listen
set boundaries
external communication

As group assignment, we picked one of those attributes and discussed in groups what are at least three examples that could work or not work. My group picked Feedback, and I worked with Sumit and Crystal (@CrystalMbanefo). Later I found out that Crystal is giving a talk on providing feedback. 🙂

Here is our white sheet: