Articles covering psychology, neuroscience, coaching, and human behaviour in agile contexts.
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Leadership
The Ladder of Leadership is a framework for understanding how to get people to take more initiative, and why they sometimes don’t. Autonomy and why it matters for motivation and effectiveness. Hero culture: what it is, why it happens, and how to address it. The original post, revisited, and the subject of a recent book.
Psychological Safety
An overview of psychological safety. The science: the SAFETY model and the neuroscience behind it. Why it matters for high-performing teams: Project Aristotle, Google’s landmark research. And what happens when we don’t have it.
Motivation & Behaviour
Motivation and self-determination theory; what actually drives people. Amotivation; what happens when motivation disappears entirely. Systems 1 & 2: how your brain actually makes decisions. And a practical question: why aren’t my people participating?
Neuroscience
The neurotransmitters that drive our behaviour. The science of stress and anxiety: Polyvagal Theory and the anti-anxiety toolkit. Why your brain needs idle time for powerful insights. And an introduction to cognitive bias.
Language & Coaching
Logical Levels: why coaching at the wrong level doesn’t work is the most-read article on this site. Clean Language, a specific coaching technique with excellent practical application. The perils of asking “why?”. And why the words we choose matter more than we think.
Retrospectives
Six Thinking Hats applied as a retrospective format. Moose on the Table: a LEGO-based retrospective that’s actually fun. Constraints enable creativity. The facilitator’s role. What can we share from a retrospective?. Larger retrospectives. For a deeper dive, my video course Retrospective Magic.
Recommended Reading
I’m often asked for book recommendations; see my reading list.
Personal Coaching Videos
Many of the concepts covered here, such as anxiety and behaviour change, also apply outside of a team context. If you’re dealing with these challenges personally, I produce short videos aimed at individuals rather than organisations, available on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.
If you’d like to work one-on-one on these topics, I also offer personal coaching, which is separate from my agile coaching work.
Articles in this category:
| Article | Date |
|---|
| The vacation test | May 25, 2026 |
| The team that wrote perfect code | May 24, 2026 |
| Neuroception: Why knowing you're safe isn't enough | May 14, 2026 |
| Cascading failures | May 4, 2026 |
| Cognitive load and AI | April 12, 2026 |
| When "make it visible" is the wrong approach | March 15, 2026 |
| Controlling emotions | February 21, 2026 |
| Choice blindness | January 31, 2026 |
| The first problem is rarely the problem | January 13, 2026 |
| Growth vs Fixed mindsets and the influence of AI | January 5, 2026 |
| Tacit knowledge | December 5, 2025 |
| Motivation and deadlines | November 23, 2025 |
| Sometimes we just need to pick up the fax machine | November 18, 2025 |
| LEGO Serious Play and Threat Modeling | November 11, 2025 |
| What can we share from a retrospective? | November 9, 2025 |
| Larger retrospectives | November 2, 2025 |
| Appeal to authority and GenAI | October 26, 2025 |
| Secondary Gain and Work in Progress (WIP) | October 7, 2025 |
| A decade with LEGO Serious Play | September 17, 2025 |
| When we don't have safety | September 16, 2025 |
| Constraints enable creativity | September 3, 2025 |
| A tale of two teams | August 26, 2025 |
| Thinking we want more documentation | August 20, 2025 |
| Book: Shatter the Hero Culture | August 12, 2025 |
| Optimizing for our own effectiveness | August 5, 2025 |
| Improving learning with neuroscience and LEGO | June 3, 2025 |
| Knowing when to Quit | May 20, 2025 |
| Hero culture revisited | May 13, 2025 |
| Mental Health and GenAI | May 10, 2025 |
| What aren't we hearing? | April 29, 2025 |
| Cross training | April 25, 2025 |
| Getting out in nature | April 22, 2025 |
| Using dates to motivate | April 8, 2025 |
| Orientational metaphors and WIP | January 20, 2025 |
| AI and Critical Thinking | January 10, 2025 |
| Social proof in meetings | January 3, 2025 |
| Eisenhower Matrix | December 11, 2024 |
| Mob mentality podcast | November 27, 2024 |
| Survivor Bias | November 19, 2024 |
| Cognitive Bias | November 10, 2024 |
| Perceptual positions & Halloween | September 5, 2024 |
| Should remote workers have cameras on? | August 24, 2024 |
| Fixation errors | August 23, 2024 |
| All we are is change | August 19, 2024 |
| Validating assumptions | August 14, 2024 |
| Fairness | August 9, 2024 |
| Getting out in nature | July 27, 2024 |
| Stages of competence | July 25, 2024 |
| Agile Within Podcast | July 24, 2024 |
| Why your brain needs idle time for powerful insights | July 21, 2024 |
| Workplace stress and anxiety | July 18, 2024 |
| Outcome bias (Resulting) | July 7, 2024 |
| "Assume positive intent" | June 27, 2024 |
| Perverse Incentives: Coffee Badging | June 24, 2024 |
| Improving Psychological Safety | June 14, 2024 |
| Tuckman model of team development | June 9, 2024 |
| Playful learning with LEGO | June 3, 2024 |
| Ladder of Leadership | April 25, 2024 |
| Dopamine and Learning | April 15, 2024 |
| Autonomy | March 30, 2024 |
| Team working agreements with LEGO | March 20, 2024 |
| My people aren't participating | March 11, 2024 |
| "This is a safe space" | February 25, 2024 |
| Six Thinking Hats Retrospective | February 17, 2024 |
| Inattentional blindness | February 4, 2024 |
| Cognitive load | January 28, 2024 |
| Coaching to Logical Levels | January 25, 2024 |
| Polyvagal Theory: Understanding safety | January 14, 2024 |
| World Hypnosis Day | January 4, 2024 |
| Attribute substitution | December 27, 2023 |
| Hero Culture | November 18, 2023 |
| Not motivated to do anything | November 12, 2023 |
| NLP Meta Model | October 14, 2023 |
| Systems 1 & 2: how your brain actually makes decisions | September 17, 2023 |
| Perils of Why | August 5, 2023 |
| Logical Levels: why coaching at the wrong level doesn't work | May 27, 2023 |
| Motivation & Self-Determination Theory | May 21, 2023 |
| SAFETY model of psychological safety | May 13, 2023 |
| Neurotransmitters that drive behaviour | April 9, 2023 |
| Pre-requisites for Continuous Improvement | January 21, 2023 |
| Presentation: Neuroscience of psychological safety | February 22, 2022 |
| Power of words | July 10, 2021 |
| Neuroscience of psychological safety | June 14, 2021 |
| Book recommendations for Agile Coaches | June 13, 2021 |
| The millennial whoop and our brain as a prediction engine | June 1, 2021 |
| Google's Project Aristotle | May 31, 2021 |
| Code coverage is a perverse incentive | May 30, 2021 |
| What's wrong with the common Scrum questions? | May 28, 2021 |
| Retrospective Magic | January 18, 2021 |
| Collocated vs Distributed Teams | April 27, 2020 |
| Six Thinking Hats | April 25, 2020 |
| Moose on the Table: a LEGO-based retrospective that's actually fun | July 12, 2019 |
| Exploring the Anti-Anxiety Toolkit | June 21, 2019 |
| Brain Talk | April 3, 2019 |
| Links | May 20, 2018 |
| Body Language | February 18, 2018 |
| Apex Problem | August 21, 2017 |
| Teddy Bear Effect | June 29, 2017 |
| Leveraging the Doorway Effect | June 17, 2017 |
| Clean Language | June 4, 2017 |