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Contents of

Becoming a Technical Leader:
An Organic Problem-Solving Approach

by Gerald M. Weinberg
foreword by Ken Orr

ISBN: 978-0-932633-02-6  
©1986  304 pages   softcover  
$29.95 (plus shipping)

Subject(s): Technical Leadership

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Preface vii
Foreword xi

PART ONE: DEFINITION

1. What is leadership, anyway?

The reluctant leader
Facing the leadership issue
A conventional but flawed view of leadership
Contrasting models of the world

Explanation of an event
Definition of a person
Definition of relationships
Attitude toward change

An organic definition of leadership
Questions

2. Models of Leadership Style

Motivation
Ideas
Organization
The MOI model of leadership
What technical leaders do
Faith in a better way
Questions

3. A Problem-Solving Style

Understanding the problem
Managing the flow of ideas
Controlling the quality
Questions

4. How Leaders Develop

Practice makes perfect
The great leap forward
Falling into the ravine
Growth in the real world
How growth feels
The metacycle
Questions

5. But I Can't Because...

I'm not a manager
I'm not the leader type
I'll lose my technical skills
I'm in grave danger of growing
I don't want that much power
Questions


PART TWO: INNOVATION

6. The Three Great Obstacles to Innovation

Are you aware of what you had for dessert?
Self-blindness: the number one obstacle
No-Problem Syndrome: the number two obstacle
Single-Solution belief: the number three obstacle
Summary
Questions

7. A Tool for Developing Self-Awareness

A test of your motivation
Your initial reaction
Your personal journal
What to write about
What the journal does
Questions

8. Developing Idea Power

The problem-solving leader's central dogma
Creative errors
Stolen ideas
Corrupted stolen ideas
Copulation
Why ideas seem wicked
Questions


9. The Vision

The career line
The events don't matter
Can success breed failure?
The central role of the vision
Why the vision creates an innovator
Finding the vision in yourself

Questions

PART THREE: MOTIVATION

10. The First Great Obstacle to Motivating Others

Testing yourself
An interaction model
The manifest part of an interaction
The hidden parts of the interaction
Satir's interaction model
Understanding why communications go awry
A way to start clearing communications
Questions

11. The Second Great Obstacle to Motivating Others


An unpleasant task
Lessons from a task-oriented style
Is a people-oriented style better?
Weinberg's Target
Planning and the future
The second great obstacle
The leader as a person
Questions

12. The Problem of Helping Others

Help should be natural
Trying to be helpful: an exercise
Some lessons about helping
Helping and self-esteem
Questions

13. Learning to Be a Motivator

Always be sincere (whether you mean it or not)
Survival rules
Meta-rules
Transforming rules into guides
Becoming genuinely interested in other people
Why and when you should read Dale Carnegie
Questions

14. Where Power Comes From

Power as a relationship
Power from technology
Expertise as power
Keeping power
Questions

15. Power, Imperfection, and Congruence

A mechanical problem
Mature patterns of behavior
Dealing with your own mechanical problems
I must always be natural and spontaneous
I must always be perfectly effective

The payoff for being congruent
Questions

PART 4: ORGANIZATION

16. Gaining Organizational Power

Converting power
Edrie's example of power conversion
Collecting points
Using power
Questions

17. Effective Organization of Problem-Solving Teams

A spectrum of organizational forms
Individual scores and voting
The strong leader
Consensus
Mixed organizational forms
Form follows function
Appendix: scoring the ranking
Questions

18. Obstacles to Effective Organizing

First obstacle: playing the Big Game
Second obstacle: organizing people as if they were machines
Third obstacle: doing the work yourself
Fourth obstacle: rewarding ineffective organizing
Organic organizing
Questions

19. Learning to Be an Organizer

Practice
Observe and experiment
Look for incongruence: they're doing the best they can
Look for crossed wires
Legitimize differences
Use yourself as a model of the team
Change as you succeed
Questions

PART FIVE: TRANSFORMATION

20. How You Will Be Graded as a Leader

The professor's first day of class
The fatal question
Multiplicative grading for leaders
A strategy for improvement
Can teaching and leading be learned?
Grading on the first day
A possible solution
Questions

21. Passing Your Own Leadership Tests

A top executive test
The ability to withstand tests
How to handle an intruder
Arnold's approach
Ramon's approach
What's the right way?
Using and abusing tests
Questions

22. A Personal Plan for Change

An experiment
The mental climate for change
A personal achievement plan
Can it make a difference?
Elements of a plan
Questions

23. Finding Time to Change

Staying on target
Doing two things at once
The cheapest tuition
Questions

24. Finding Support for Change

A support system
Technical resource support
Support through criticism
Support for growth
Support for recovery
Emotional support
Spiritual support
Support to maintain leadership
Questions

Epilogue
Bibliography
Index

Features
Reviews
Table of Contents

Downloads
Dorset House Catalog
This Book's Flyer

By this Author
More Secrets of Consulting: The Consultant's Tool Kit
The Psychology of Computer Programming, Silver Anniversary Edition

Also Recommended

Dr. Peeling's Principles of Management, by Nic Peeling

Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations, by Robert D. Austin

Quality Software Management, Vol. 3: Congruent Action, by Gerald M. Weinberg

Roundtable on Technical Leadership: A SHAPE Forum Dialogue, edited by Gerald M. Weinberg, Marie Benesh, and James Bullock

Understanding the Professional Programmer, by Gerald M. Weinberg

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