What is learning? This series of posts is about how to learn people skills, and dialogue skills in particular. So what does it mean to learn something? I fear our education system gives us the wrong idea of what learning is about. It’s easy to finish one’s days as a student, and leave with the impression that learning… Read More
Don’t be fooled by Myers-Briggs The Myers-Briggs personality test classifies you as Introvert or Extrovert, Thinker or Feeler, and so on. It gives you a four-letter type like “INTJ”. The catch is, Myers-Briggs is kind-of bad. If you’ve ever felt that Myers-Briggs seemed promising, but failed to deliver long-term benefits, here’s why. Reason 1: Labeling ourselves is harmful Myers-Briggs gives you… Read More
More on the ladder of inference In my recent conference talk I mentioned the “ladder of inference” as a thinking tool, and described how it can help us understand the views of those who disagree with us. The end result may be that, having understood the basis for their views better, we find those views more persuasive that they first appeared.… Read More
Be Real Ten years ago I had a false start in learning dialogue skills. It was one of several false starts, in fact! In this particular instance, I read a book on technical leadership. Unlike the books I now recommend, this older book was based more on opinion than research. It seemed to be telling me that,… Read More
Skilled Dialogue Last week I spoke at a conference on People Skills for IT Professionals. Like some of my older talks on the topic, this one included a semi-autobiographical account of how workplace people skills are learnable. But unlike my talks of a few years ago, this one also included some fairly solid details on what those… Read More