MC93 Knowing When to Move On - our final episode
Management Café
Yes, this is Tim and Pilar's last episode, so we talk about moving on and the importance of wrapping things up. Interview with Andy Gotts photographer that Pilar mentions: Find out more about Pilar and Bree’s book on loneliness in remote teams:
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MC92 Manager Mindset: Perfectionism
Management Café
In this episode, hosts Tim Burgess and Pilar Orti talk about the dangers of being a perfectionist when managing a team, and why it's different to being a perfectionist individual contributor. (And you'll hear for yourself how neither Tim nor Pilar are perfectionists...)
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MC91 Manager Mindset: Loyalty
Management Café
Hosts Tim Burgess and Pilar Orti have a good chat about the nature of loyalty, who we should be loyal to at work and what happens when we get the balance wrong.
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A quick thank you and we'll be back next year!
Management Café
Have an excellent start to 2025 - from Tim and Pilar.
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MC90 Manager Mindset: Pessimism
Management Café
Who knew that talking about pessimism could be so much fun... even if most of the laughter is self-deprecating. In today's episode, hosts Tim Burgess and Pilar Orti talk about what happens when we let our "inner pessimist" come through. For more information, visit
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MC89 Manager Mindset: Comparison
Management Café
The new series on Manager Mindsets starts with a discussion of comparison. Comparison is unavoidable, especially in the age of social media. It can feed difficult and unpleasant emotions like doubt, jealousy and imposter syndrome. Indeed, someone once said “Comparison is the thief of joy”. And if we aren’t careful comparison can even tempt us into mindlessly copying others, which takes us away from our own unique path. But in many aspects comparison can be helpful. It can be wonderfully motivating. It can show us what can be improved and help us understand what we value. It can even...
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MC88 Feedback, Mindset vs Cognitive Tendencies and Long-Covid Awareness
Management Café
As co-hosts Tim Burgess and Pilar Orti wrap up the Manager Emotions series, they explain why they're moving onto mindset, and how this is different from cognitivie tendencies (and why they might well be mixing the two up!). Plus, some feedback on our episode on Emotional Contagion, and Pilar shares an episode from Workplace Geeks where one of her connections talks about living with long-covid and how this affects her work life. Get in touch with Pilar and Tim through the
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MC87 Manager Emotions: Confusion
Management Café
Our hosts Tim Burgess and Pilar Orti talk about the many times they've been confused, the difficulties in feeling the emotion as individual and manager, and what happens when a team member becomes confused.
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MC86 Manager Emotions: Compassion
Management Café
For the sixth episode of our series on manager emotions, Tim Burgess and Pilar Orti talk about Compassion. Good leaders don't just remove obstacles and show their people the way forward. People also need to know that their leaders will support them in the hard times. And importantly, they need leaders to demonstrate compassion when they are in difficulty. This is distinct from sympathy - where the leader might acknowledge someone is suffering but not do anything to help or even really align with their emotions. Empathy is closer - it helps when leaders can demonstrate that they...
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MC85 Manager Emotions: Pride
Management Café
Welcome to the fifth episode of our series on manager emotions, where hosts Tim Burgess and Pilar Orti talk about Pride. We want to see good work, both in ourselves as managers and also in the teams that we lead. Pride creates a virtuous cycle that rewards and encourages healthy achievement. Do a good thing -> share this achievement with others -> receive recognition -> feel proud -> do more good things. But pride can be a tricky emotion in the workplace. Excessive displays of pride can turn people off. Pride can also clash with other attributes, most notably humility....
info_outlineWe hear a lot about tech. Tech disrupts businesses and creates unicorns. Tech changes workplaces and creates new ways to interact. But what about the impact of technology on our management practices?
Our hosts talk about the difficulties that come if we allow technology to dictate how we manage. And the unintended consequences if we don't align our technology tools with the problems we are experiencing.
00:30 mins Tim still writes everything into notebooks that he carries around and claims he is a "grumpy old man" with regard to technology - which is somewhat ironic given his previous company couldn't have existed without modern tech.
01:00 Pilar also prefers writing over typing but she uses a Remarkable tablet which makes it easier to share with others.
3:00 Over the last 15 years Tim has made the shift from early adopter to laggard.
5:30 It can be tempting to introduce technology "for technology's sake", using an application because it's popular or easy to implement. But if it's not solving a problem - what is the purpose? For example, several times Tim tried and failed to introduce Slack at his previous company. It only succeeded once the team had grown and the volume of internal emails became unsustainable. The moral is to not adopt something without first being clear on what problem you're trying to solve.
7:15 It's particularly important to remember as team leaders that a new piece of tech might solve a problem for us, but if it isn't also improving things for our team... adoption is going to be difficult.
8:20 Tim shares why some of the internal tools at Shield GEO were popular with staff even though the systems were ugly and clunky (hi Salesforce!).
9:00 Similarly technology, especially software, needs to be adapted to the needs of your team and the problem you're trying to solve.
10:20 Pilar gets us back on track by posing the question, "Did introducing technology change the way we managed people?"
11:15 Going back to Tim's memories of using Salesforce at Shield GEO, he talks about trying to drive behaviour in his team through using some default statistical reports. And finding unintended consequences, it drove the opposite behaviour to what was intended.
14:30 Slack changed how Tim managed his direct reports. It enabled much more structured and filtered communication.
16:15 Open communication tools like Slack can create their own set of problems. It can be distracting due to the volume of information flying past. It can lead us to get involved in discussions that don't need our input. And it can lead us to be more reactionary in communication.
18:25 How many likes are appropriate for a manager to sprinkle about? Pilar and Tim have differing views.
20:30 Overuse of the Slack "like" emoji pales into comparison with the horror of a reply-all email appreciation thread.
21:45 What are the impacts of your "like" strategy? If you are an intermittent liker, how will your likes be interpreted? And what will people think about the posts or comments you didn't engage with?
22:30 We've hit a nerve, stay tuned for a future episode on "managing by emoji".
What about you, dear listener? Has tech changed the way you manage? We'd love to hear from you!
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