Heart Rate In a Simulation
As I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, I participated to Problem Solving Leadership (PSL) course earlier this year. Out of the many things that I learned there, there’s one that I wanted to write about this time. Heart rate in a simulation The course lasted about 6 days. On one of the days there was quite long (6 hours) simulation. It was basically a group problem solving simulation which required people to choose roles and if you didn’t have any particular role, you had to find other ways to provide value for the whole group (24 people). Personally it was challenging for me as I didn’t have any particular role. Instead I helped when I saw an opportunity. Like asking if people had consider specific scenarios in their plans. These moments didn’t occur that often though during the first half of the simulation. This led to me being an observer numerous times. Which felt uneasy. Fortunately around middle of the simulation I was able to find a role in which I could provide value constantly until the end of the simulation. I was wearing my Fitbit Charge HR activity wristband during the simulation and it recorded my heart rate on that day. When I afterwards reviewed it, I was a bit surprised. It looked like this: Time is represented as 24-hour clock, where for example 15 is 3pm. We had several observers (4 or 5) for the simulation. They were focusing on observing us and making notes. Afterwards they gave an overall report of what they had seen. In my case one of the observers mentioned that: 3:15pm Aleksis starts to participate to groups with Sergei If you look at the heart rate, you can see that the heart rate starts calming down close to 3pm (15) and pretty much keeps stable until the end of the simulation (18 which would be 6pm). What could this mean? My personal conclusion is that being able to find your place on a group can affect on your heart rate. On the other hand not being able to find a way to provide value for your group, can cause your heart rate going up and down. It’s always possible that Fitbit wasn’t measuring correctly, observer recorded the time incorrectly or perhaps I was just nervous about the simulation regardless of had I found my place on the group. Or perhaps this is the effect that, not being able to provide value (constantly) can have on our heart rate.
Learn To Observe
Teams and organizations these days are focusing on continuously improving their way of work. Trying to adopt new development approaches, tools or ways to organize their companies. One crucial aspect is being forgotten often in the heat of the effort. That’s self-awareness and especially observation skills that can help you in achieving better self-awareness. Because, if you truly want to continuously become better at what you do, you need to be aware of what you are doing at the moment. What to observe and similarity to testing I recently wrote a blog post about Observation & Interpretation, where I discussed about the difference between observing and interpreting. I suggest reading that before going further in this post as I will continue writing from the perspective of that post. One challenge with observing comes on not knowing where to focus on. It’s a similar problem that you have if you are testing an application. I mean whole application. There’s so much to focus on that as a result you can end up wondering around without being able to gather enough concrete data about what you’ve learned. In testing you can try to structure your testing with heuristics. Using James Bach’s Heuristic Test Strategy Model, you could structure your testing to focusing on Function (Everything that the product does), Data (Everything that the product processes) or perhaps Time (Any relationship between the product and time). By structuring and focusing your approach, you will be able make more detailed observations. At the same time it’s good to note that skilled tester might explore freely an application without focusing and would still learn (a lot) about it. I would argue though that there’s some kind of structure often behind even that kind of exploration (e.g. focusing on what the product can do). What to observe when it comes to how people work with each other If you want to be aware how your team is working with each other, you need to be able to observe what’s actually happening. As with testing, you can structure your observations in several different ways. I learned couple interesting ways of doing that in Problem Solving Leadership course a while ago. MOIJ Model Jerry Weinberg introduced in the Problem Solving Leadership course (and I think in his book Becoming a Technical Leader) a model that consists of elements that are needed for a team to be able to solve problems effectively. This model can be used also for structuring you observing. Letters come from: M = Motivation Focus on your observations to notice e.g. supporting, encouraging, energizing, facilitating or peace-keeping O = Organization Focus on your observations to notice e.g. procedures, physical environment or time-keeping I = Information Focus on your observations to notice e.g. time to live of new ideas, summarizing, decision-making or clarifying J = Jiggling Focus on your observations to notice e.g. solving problems by going outside of boundaries of the rules or using jokes to defuse tension Other things to observe Besides MOIJ Model, there’s a ton of other things that you can focus on while observing. They are partly related to MOIJ Model, but approach from a different perspective. Styles of talking Are people using I, You or It statements? Questions? Declarations? Quotations? The way people talk to each other Do they wait that speaker has finished what (s)he has to say? Is subject being changed? How often? Do people answer to questions? Are everyone treated equally when it comes to listening and answering? Roles Who is being proactive? Who is being relied to? Who is being interrupted? Who is interrupting? Whose voice isn’t heard? Spacial observations How are people sitting? Do they change their place? What kind of furnitures are there (e.g. square table vs. round table)? How far are people from each other? Is there someone that is not close to anyone else? Are there noticeable groups formed? Who is sitting next to whom? Does it change? Non-verbal communication What kind of facial expressions people make when talking? How about when someone else is talking? Can you notice differences in tone of voice depending on whose question or comment is being responded to? What kind of posture people have? Do you notice laughter? Loud voice? Gender differences? Ethnic differences? Other differences? (e.g. consultants vs. in-house) Be careful when reporting observations Reporting observations is a delicate matter. Mainly because we haven’t got used to it. But also because people tend to give feedback that includes mind reading (read my blog post Observation & Interpretation) As a thumb rule, I would recommend not inflicting observations. Instead ask first if others would like to hear your observations. And then offer them if they want to hear them. That way there’s optionality which brings psychological safety especially in the future. Simple approach to structure your ways of reporting (one that I learned in PSL) is to divide it into Description (“This is what I observed…”) Interpretation (“This is how I interpreted what I saw…”) Significance (“This is how I felt about my interpretations…”) I haven’t asked from Jerry (Weinberg), but one can see similarity to Satir Interaction Model on those reporting styles. Knowing a bit about Satir Interaction Model, you realize that you need to be aware of the possibility of interpreting incorrectly what you have observed, which will lead to interpretation being incorrect. Or perhaps you observed something that just wasn’t there. That’s why it’s often really important to check the intake (What did I see or hear or smell or taste or feel… - also known as Data Question). As I mentioned on the blog post that I kept referring earlier, this is a skill that takes lifetime to hone. Perhaps the first step is though to acknowledge that we are not aware of what we are doing. That’s why we need observation skills to uncover what we are not aware of.
Observation & Interpretation
Observation & Interpretation I participated to Problem Solving Leadership course a month ago in Albuquerque, New Mexico, US. You could write several blog posts about the course but there’s one particular learning that I want to write about. That’s the difference between observation & interpretation. Before going further, let’s define what I mean by those words. Oxford Dictionary can handle the definitions this time: Oxford Dictionary https://www. oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/observation Observation A remark, statement, or comment based on something one has seen, heard, or noticed Oxford Dictionary https://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/interpretation Interpretation The action of explaining the meaning of something In our everyday life these to tend to get mixed. When we comment what we have seen, we have a habit of jumping to interpretations. We see a colleague closing a door in such a way that there’s a loud noise. And perhaps later we mention to him: I noticed you were angry. For me this comment would have been an observation earlier. But not anymore. Because you need to be able to read minds to make such a comment. And as far as I know, we can’t read minds. You don’t know what goes in other persons head. Even if that person is a person who you have lived with 30 years, you still don’t know. Sure. You can be right often, but that’s still different from actually knowing and making an objective observation that someone is angry. You cannot not interpret @jcoplien https://twitter.com/jcoplien/status/715885126681542656 @al3ksis You cannot not interpret @JerryWeinberg I felt after PSL that I will focus more on observations instead of jumping into interpretations. But then James Coplien tweeted that one cannot not interpret and it put my thoughts spinning again. We exchanged couple tweets but I moved the conversation quite quickly to email discussion between me, James & Jerry. This was one of those discussions I didn’t want to have on Twitter because of the character limitations. Based on our email discussion, I think James was trying to emphasize that our mind has a habit of interpreting, even when we are trying to focus on making observations instead of interpretations. Satir Interaction Model was also tightly integrated to our discussion as observations (Intake) and interpretations (Significance) are part of it. Jerry mentioned Virginia Satir on his own reply and how she had always pointed out we could not “not do something”. Don’t think of an elephant. Don’t tell me you thought of an elephant? That’s fine. As Jerry pointed out how Virginia always talked about accepting what is and building on it. We are humans. It’s normal that we jump to interpretations. We can still choose our response. Which is what I think Viktor Frankl has also spoke about: Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search For Meaning They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms - to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way Interpretations will happen, but you can build on that as Jerry mentioned. Asking the Data Question can help: What did I see or hear or smell or taste or feel that led me to those interpretations? or you can open yourself to possibility of other interpretations existing: What other interpretations I could make based on what I saw or hear… What next From now on I will still focus on making observations (which I need to write a separate blog post about) instead of interpretations. But I will not blame myself of jumping into interpretations. Instead I will try to slow down the process between seeing or hearing something and responding based on that. Asking the data question. Trying to come up with several interpretations. And being patient with progress. I’m never going to be perfect in it.