Allison Matlack

487 points
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Raleigh, NC

Allison is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer turned communications lead at Red Hat who is known for her enthusiastic speaking style and passion for helping other leaders inspire their teams. She's an experienced Agile practitioner and coach of software engineering teams in various stages of maturity, as well as a comms specialist with a change-management style steeped in the tradition of the Open Decision Framework. She's honored to have been an Open Organization Ambassador since 2016 and loves helping others find ways to put open principles into practice.

Authored Comments

Hey, Sam!

This is interesting stuff, but I'd like to challenge you to flip the script. You hit on what I think is the key here:

"Bosses should consider the situation from their associates’ perspectives. What can you do to keep them engaged and get the benefit of that engagement?"

If an associate doesn't recognize her value or how her work contributes to the success of the department/company, I don't think that's a failing of the associate, nor do I think it's her responsibility to figure out the strategy and how she connects to it. I think it's a primary responsibility of leadership to provide the context, tools, and training to empower associates to do their best work, and that includes helping associates recognize their value and how their work contributes to the success of the team, department, and company.

So now that you've got me thinking about this and I find I actually have more to say, I think I'll offer a counterpoint with some of my experiences in a separate article, if you'd be interested. :-)

Thank you, I appreciate it!