--- title: "Self Improvement: articles" url: "https://www.5whys.com/articles/category/Self%2BImprovement.md" canonical: "https://www.5whys.com/articles/category/Self+Improvement" tags: [] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "Posts on improving yourself as a leader or developer, from listening modes, fear of failure and being approachable to TDD katas and going mouseless." usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # Self Improvement: articles Posts on improving yourself as a leader or developer, from listening modes, fear of failure and being approachable to TDD katas and going mouseless. HTML: https://www.5whys.com/articles/category/Self+Improvement · 11 linked entries (each is plain Markdown) · Site index: [llms.txt](https://www.5whys.com/llms.txt) - [Video: Lejla Giske on Listening Modes and Techniques](https://www.5whys.com/articles/video-lejla-giske-on-listening-modes-and-techniques.md) (2012-09-14): A video interview with Bouvet consultant Lejla Giske about listening modes and listening techniques, recorded by Roy Osherove in Norway. - [Five Questions to ask yourself when getting advice about team leadership](https://www.5whys.com/articles/five-questions-to-ask-yourself-when-getting-advice-about-tea.md) (2011-09-13): Questions for testing any team leadership advice against the three team maturity stages, plus bonus questions about the author's hidden assumptions. - [The Fear Of Failure And What To Do About It](https://www.5whys.com/articles/the-fear-of-failure-and-what-to-do-about-it.md) (2011-06-30): Using a Milton Glaser video on the fear of failure, a look at why team leaders must take personal risks and how timed experiments can lower them. - [How to influence others](https://www.5whys.com/articles/how-to-influence-others.md) (2009-11-30): Two books for team leaders who want to drive change: How to Win Friends and Influence People for one-on-one influence, and Influencer for the macro level. - [Be more approachable in five minutes](https://www.5whys.com/articles/be-more-approachable-in-five-minutes.md) (2009-10-28): Links on being a more approachable manager and the Daily Five Minutes habit of giving at least one employee five minutes of no-agenda time each day. - [Check-in: sharing emotions in an effective way](https://www.5whys.com/articles/check-in-sharing-emotions-in-an-effective-way.md) (2009-10-23): Yves Hanoulle explains the Check-In protocol from The Core Protocols, using mad, glad, sad and afraid to share emotions at work and at home. - [The Core Protocols Introduction](https://www.5whys.com/articles/the-core-protocols-introduction.md) (2009-10-16): Yves Hanoulle introduces The Core Protocols, team rules Jim and Michele McCarthy distilled from their team-building workshops, and invites you to try them. - [How to measure programmer productivity using TDD Katas](https://www.5whys.com/articles/how-to-measure-programmer-productivity-using-tdd-katas.md) (2009-09-30): How repeating a TDD kata daily builds muscle memory, and how timing it measures programmer productivity and mastery of shortcuts, snippets and tools. - [Leading Through Learning: The Responsibilities of a Team Leader](https://www.5whys.com/articles/leading-through-learning-the-responsibilities-of-a-team-lead.md) (2009-09-30): Cory Foy argues that the core responsibility of a team leader is growing people, creating learning opportunities with the team as a safety net. - [Be Productive and Go Mouseless](https://www.5whys.com/articles/be-productive-and-go-mouseless.md) (2009-09-25): A short video on YouTube about being a more productive developer by going mouseless and working from the keyboard. A companion to the Stop Using XML video. - [Manifesto for Continuous Improvement](https://www.5whys.com/articles/manifesto-for-continuous-improvement.md) (2009-09-24): A photo shared by Andrew of 21apps, plus a one-line take on continuous improvement: when asked whether you are happy with things, the answer is always no. --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/