Hey there, leader in software!

Do you ever feel:

• Hesitation to start the changes you know you need to make?
• Concern that your changes will blow up in your and your team’s face?
• Uncertainty about how to determine whether your changes are succeeding or going off the rails?
• Difficulties maintaining focus and motivation?
• Overwhelm from the impact your team is having on you, and you are having on them?
• That you are spending all your time and energy fighting your systems and trying to make them work for you?

Does any of this feel familiar?

I started where you are

Well, you are not alone.

I have experienced each of these myself.

Time after time, I was assigned projects in which I had no interest.

Nothing about these projects lit me up.

At the same time, others on my team were champing at the bit to take them on.

Why didn’t I feel I could speak up about this?

Why didn’t my teammates?

I started experimenting with personality typing assessments. These showed me how to describe what I loathe and what I love.

I started examining why I felt I couldn’t speak up about what I wanted. I removed block after block.

I started learning techniques for helping others hear me. I practiced these techniques. A lot.

As I took all these tiny steps and performed all these tiny experiments, I realized:

• I felt less friction starting the changes I knew I needed to make.
• I was less concerned that my changes would blow up in my and my team’s face.
• I felt more confident in determining the results of my changes.
• Maintaining focus and motivation was becoming easier.
• I was better at handling the impact my team had on me, and I had on them.
• I spent more of my time supported by systems that worked for me.

I realized I was navigating change with confidence and clarity.

I started helping others

My teammates noticed. So did my friends and family.

They started asking me to help them do the same.

They weren’t, however, precisely sure how I had changed.

So, they didn’t outright ask, “Michael, help me navigate change with confidence and clarity.”

They asked me to help them find solutions to problems.

They asked me to help them finetune their approach to this and that situation.

They asked me to help their teams find solutions to problems and finetune their approach to this and that situation.

I started writing about what I had learned, and how I was helping people.

At first, I focused on the processes, techniques, and tools I used.

Eventually, I realized the processes, techniques, and tools weren’t the point.

The transformations wrought through these processes, techniques, and tools were the point.

That shift in understanding enabled me to move from helping people find solutions and finetune their approach to helping people change.

I refined patterns into practice

All this work on myself and helping so many others helped me identify patterns in what did and didn’t work.

Over time, I’ve refined those patterns into the Uncommon Teams System:

First, we convert any hesitation, reluctance, or uncertainty you might feel into confidence by making lots of small changes safely and securely.

Through this myriad of tiny steps and tiny experiments, you build a solid foundation from which to make changes.

Second, we convert any apathy, confusion, or overwhelm you might feel into confidence by determining your definition of success.

Through clarity on your way of managing your motivation, you experience ease and balance as you make changes.

Third, we optimize the process by converting any frustration, friction, or exhaustion you might feel into confidence by optimizing how you engage the world.

Through clarity on your way to sustain your relationships, you refine your ability to optimize the changes you make.

Through practice sustaining your relationships, you build consistency in optimizing the changes you make.

It’s a journey

This journey is never complete.

You can always strengthen the foundation from which you change.

You can always become more easeful and balanced as you change.

You can always further refine your way to optimize how you impact others through your change.

And isn’t that a great thing?

We always have more to learn.

Hooray!

P.S. If you enjoy rhymes and puns, you might enjoy this explanation of various personality-related tools I wrote years ago.