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Why We Need to Stop Calling Them Soft Skills People often focus on hard skills for career development, but soft skills are just as important—if not more. Soft skills require practice and they are crucial for professional success, so we should stop referring to interpersonal skills as soft. They’re hard, human skills, and they can set you apart in your job. |
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6 Ways to Build Strong Relationships on Your Project Team When you form a new team to tackle a major project, the project's success hinges not just on the technical savvy of the team members, but also—and especially—on how well the team members get along. How everyone communicates and collaborates can make or break your project. Here's how to build strong team relationships. |
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To Be a Good Leader, Become a Better Servant Wanting to serve others—not wanting them to serve you—is one of the best signs of an effective leader. Being a leader is also not about doing more of the work or being the most technical person on your team. Rather, it's actually about giving up some of your work to help others grow. Here's what else good leaders do. |
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Testers as Disciplinarians As testers, are we disciplinarians? We shouldn't fall into the trap of controlling quality or becoming quality police. Instead, we should be true facilitators of quality, enabling the product team to own it in their own right at every stage. Isn’t this what teachers do, too, in the learning process? What is our role? |
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Beware Confidence Masquerading as Competence Self-confidence is essential to tackling difficult problems. Where we need to be careful is not being falsely overconfident. What’s behind that overconfidence can either help or hinder your solving issues and achieving a good result. Here's how to make sure that confidence is backed up by competence in your team. |
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Are Headphones Hindering Your Office Communication? With all the chatter going on in offices, people often turn to headphones to block out the noise and be able to concentrate. Noise-canceling headphones block out distractions, but they can also block out communication. It may be a good idea to set some boundaries for their use so employees can still collaborate. |
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Standing Up Your Product Help Desk Great technical support is an integral part of any software commercialization plan. But how can you get high-quality tech support without breaking the bank? Here are some ways to economically provide technical support that adds value and educates customers on using your product correctly, safely, and effectively. |
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Brainstorming 2.0: Generate Better Ideas with Brainwriting For decades brainstorming has been our go-to method for ideation, yet it holds back our success when the environment doesn't encourage everyone to contribute. Instead, try brainwriting—writing ideas on paper and letting teammates iterate on them. It improves not only the quantity of ideas you get, but also the quality. |