Talk: Responsibility and the Dolphin Model
Speakers directory
Speaker:
David Legge
Talk description
Title:
Responsibility and the Dolphin Model
Short synopsis:
My Grandma used to say “If you can’t manage yourself, you can’t manage anyone”. This talk is all why we should take responsibility and participants will learn how they might go about it; learning not to blame circumstances or other people, but acting with confidence to get the best outcomes. We will look at a number of different approaches for taking Responsibility; and introduce the Dolphin Model, which is helpful for taking responsibility for dealing the inevitable difficult people.
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Long synopsis (optional):
Responsibility starts with yourself; “If you can’t manage yourself, you can’t manage anyone” my Grandma used to say. When something goes wrong there are a number of ways in which you can respond. “The Dog Poop Initiative” [1] is a book written as if for children, by Kirk Weisler. This describes a dog doing its business in a park and contrasts the common reaction of just “Pointing” at the mess, with that of someone who takes the lead by sorting it out straight away by “Scooping”. Begging the question, are you a Pointer or a Scooper? Do you take responsibility and sort problems out, or wait for someone else to take the lead? The Six Stages of Debugging [2] (a play on Kubler-Ross’s Five Stages of Grief [3]), describes different attitudes to the process of investigating a problem in software (or hardware) starting from “That can’t happen”, to “That doesn’t happen on my machine”, through to “How did that ever work?”. This gives us an easily imaginable demonstration of different levels of (not) taking Responsibility, leading us to... Christopher Avery’s book ‘The Responsibility Process’ [4] outlines seven stages and using debugging as an example, we will walk through each stage: Quit (can be reached from any other state) Denial Blame Justify Shame Obligation Responsibility It’s referred to as a process as you can find yourself in any of the stages at any time, but the trick is to move your mental state to Responsibility as soon as possible so you can deal with the problem. The Responsibility Process is a tool only for self-management, if you try to ‘give’ responsibility and the recipient does not fully accept it, they can just end up in the state of (begrudging) Obligation. Taking responsibility is the only way to tackle a mess in a codebase; if you wait for someone else to sort out your mess it will fester in the meantime? The Law of Entropy says that unless you actively work against it disorder takes over your code, killing your project like the proverbial boiled frog. Is it going to be you that tackles it, or are you going to kick back and let someone else? Leading by example will often mean others will start to take more pride in their work - and more satisfaction too. As well as code, we can look at how to take responsibility for dealing with people. We will look at the Dolphin Behavioural Model, visually mapping 4 types of behaviour (Passive, Aggressive, Passive-Aggressive and Assertive) and what kind of outcomes they look for. We can then show how you might deal with each of the types of behaviour - not that it makes it easy, but at least it gives you a shot. The Dolphin Model allows you to recognise someone acting in an un-ideal way. We can then take Responsibility for your relationship with them. The model provides a framework for how you might approach an encounter with them. It is tempting to just write them off. By taking Responsibility and some effort you can often turn around a difficult relationship and and build a constructive one - being more Dolphin is about seeking Win-Wins. This talk is about taking Responsibility for yourself, which will be leading by example - when people see you act like this, it will build trust and encourage others to do the same, setting a professional standard. Timings: 5 mins - Introduction 5 mins - Dog Poop Initiative 5 mins - Stages of debugging 10 mins - Responsibilty Process 10 mins - Dolphin Model 5 mins - Tie up & Conclusions 5 mins - Questions Extra Material if required: There are a few obvious parallels with Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits, Being Proactive and Seeking Win-Wins. John Gottman’s 4 Horsemen: Blaming, Defensiveness, Contempt and Stonewalling. [1] - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dog-Poop-Initiative-Kirk-Weisler/dp/1932280839 [2] - http://plasmasturm.org/log/6debug/ [3] - https://grief.com/the-five-stages-of-grief/ [4] - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Responsibility-Process-Unlocking-Natural-Ability/dp/099774720X
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