Leadership

I write about my journey from technical person to a leader, covering following topic within category Leadership: leadership development, leadership skills, management techniques, team building, communication skills, decision-making, problem-solving, time management, strategic planning, employee engagement, conflict resolution and remote work.

The Power of the Retrospective Mindset

Piotr Zagorowski
November 12, 2020April 5, 2023
Leadership, Podcast

It is easy to be busy. Every one of us has plenty to do. We start marching towards our goals, and after some time we can’t catch the breath because we are already running. When we run, it is not easy to stop. It is also easy to run too far in the wrong direction. That’s why retrospective mindset is so important. It goes far beyond the professional context of our lives. It should be the default mode for our endeavours.

The career shift from technical roles to leadership

Piotr Zagorowski
November 10, 2020April 5, 2023
Leadership, Podcast

Do you remember when you made the career shift from technical leader to technical people leader? Do you remember your challenges and the “identity crisis”?

How to Baseline Remote Team Culture

Piotr Zagorowski
September 24, 2020April 5, 2023
Leadership, Podcast, Remote work

I was recently a guest in The Align Remotely podcast, where Luke Szyrmer, the host, focuses on leading distributed teams and everything associated with that subject, like leadership and operations to help achieve together. It is particularly relevant now when nearly everyone works from home. It was a broad-ranging conversation, but we mainly focused on the topic of how to baseline the remote team culture.

3 lessons from The Unicorn Project

Piotr Zagorowski
September 3, 2020December 7, 2023
Leadership, Remote work, Technology

I try to read (listen) one book per month. It’s been mainly self-development books. And to be honest I got a bit tired. However, recently I talked to a friend and a colleague who recommended me a fiction book with a unicorn in the title… I read the full title and immediately started to listen. I could not stop, I emerged completely. Today I would like to share three main lessons I learnt from The Unicorn Project book. Let’s go!

How to nail the job interview?

Piotr Zagorowski
August 6, 2020January 24, 2022
1 Comment
Leadership

You have written an outstanding CV, and you made it to the next level. It’s is going to be the first job interview. But what is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the phrase “job interview”? I think for most of us it’s a quite stressful event. Some folks, including recruiters, will refer to it as a “grilling”. There used to be some sophisticated methods to check candidates and to break them so that we can see how they behave under stress. I heard of the stories where interviews were conducted in a small, hot room for hours to check where is the breaking point of the particular candidate…

The secret to well-written CV

Piotr Zagorowski
July 30, 2020January 23, 2022
1 Comment
Leadership

Your goal for the CV is to end up on the “next step” stack. Do it wrong and it will end up in a shredder. There are tons of material on the interwebs in the topic of the Curriculum Vitae preparation. I am going to write about my personal experience. It’s going to be a subjective opinion from someone who does recruit and who likes to recruit. So, what is the secret to well-written CV that will help you with the next dream job?

There are no bad teams, just bad leaders

Piotr Zagorowski
July 23, 2020December 4, 2023
Leadership

It was during the most difficult training. The task was simple; row the boat and compete with other teams. The challenge was to do it over and over again in cold weather. One team in one boat was consistently bad, coming as the last one. The instructor decided to implement risky manoeuvre – swap the leaders of the winning and losing boats. The result surprised everyone. However, the experienced instructor just said: “there are no bad teams, just bad leaders.“

When technology fails – how people managed to travel in the old days

Piotr Zagorowski
June 25, 2020April 5, 2023
Leadership, Technology

We now have a couple days left on our dad and son trip. Zurich was the most distant place on our journey, and we are now going back to Memmingen. Today we stop in another beautiful place, Saint Gallen. It is known for the beautiful cathedral. We are well prepared. We stay here for just one night, so everything is planned; parking, self-checking hotel in the center of the town. We should have nice, easy and relaxing day. What we didn’t plan for was the situation when technology fails.

I propose a leadership lesson from a visit to the zoo

There are many things we can learn from kids. There are many things we can learn as parents and implement to our leadership toolset. And finally, there are many things we learn as leaders and can and should apply to our parenting skills. One common theme is the language that we use. There are many situations and aspects that use of language matters. In this coffee journey, I am going to focus on one. We learned it during our last year trip to Zurich Zoo. I propose a leadership lesson from a visit to the Zoo. Wait. What?!?

Hiking in the Alps during a thunderstorm – sunk cost fallacy in practice

Piotr Zagorowski
June 11, 2020April 5, 2023
Intentional life, Leadership

Have you ever experienced a proper storm? How about a thunderstorm in the mountains? It usually starts with small rain. However, in the high mountain like the Alps, it can quickly escalate to the dangerous scenario. I continue the series of blog posts about the son and dad journey from last year. We went on a week-long trip to Europe. And today we experienced something that business language calls “sunk cost fallacy”. We were so excited and committed that it was hard to assess the real situation. Let’s roll to the full story, as the lesson learnt is significant.