Articles

Earn trust and lead inclusively

A great leader does everything a good leader does and also leads with equity and diversity in mind. The process of earning trust involves a series of conscious investments over time.
Posted on November 18, 2022 by Sarah Tobin and Elle Meredith

On Imposter Syndrome

Many people in the dev community experience or have experienced imposter syndrome at some point, including me. Self-doubt keeps us from seeing ourselves as we truly are. However, we can control our perceptions and reframe our thinking.
Posted on July 22, 2022 by Elle Meredith

What's in a toxic culture?

A toxic work culture can have profound long term negative impacts on individuals as well as the business. Healthy culture needs work to grow and flourish. It requires clearly defined values, creating a psychologically safe work environment, and implementing sound DEI policies.
Posted on July 19, 2022 by Sarah Tobin

Providing valuable feedback

As a leader, giving feedback is part of your job and doing it well is a skill you need to develop and exercise regularly. We should focus on improving our communication efforts to achieve positive outcomes for all, and on developing a high performance environment where respect for each other is the norm by practising actionable, specific, and kind feedback.
Posted on September 14, 2021 by Sarah Tobin

Growing your leadership style

Introducing different ways to lead and motivate your team by choosing a leadership style that best addresses the demands of a particular situation. Also suggesting a few things for you to try at home
Posted on May 27, 2021 by Elle Meredith

The five levels of pay transparency

Gender and racial pay gaps are still a common problem in the workplace. Having any structure around salaries is a positive thing, even if it is not all full disclosure.
Posted on March 17, 2021 by Elle Meredith

Let's focus our attention

When was the last time you felt absorbed in a task or in a state of flow? These days we all feel busier than ever, but at the same time are much less productive. Instead give yourself more space and time
Posted on February 15, 2021 by Sarah Tobin

Organisational culture to foster creativity and innovation

Organisations should implement a flatter hierarchy structure, with broadly defined roles, and low power distance culture. Furthermore, organisations should encourage risk tolerance within limitations, psychological safety, availability of resources, flexibility with time, freedom, and autonomy
Posted on February 12, 2021 by Elle Meredith

Why you should build distributed teams

There are many benefits to why you should build a distributed team, and with the increasing online tools to enable us to do so, we should embrace the new future of work and increase our overall productivity and happiness
Posted on January 13, 2021 by Sarah Tobin

Introducing new services

We have been working on a few new offerings, which we would like to introduce today. Mainly, we have been working on technical leadership coaching, culture and technical workshops, an Associate Developer onboarding program, and codebase reviews.
Posted on November 30, 2020 by Sarah Tobin

Benefits of workshops

Workshops provide a fun, interactive, open, and collaborative environment for continuous learning and to meet like minded people.
Posted on November 23, 2020 by Sarah Tobin

Blackmill Book Club

Friendly conversations about concepts and topics we are interested in that intersect with our work
Posted on January 10, 2019 by Lachlan Hardy

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Would you like to improve team effectiveness and productivity? Got a project you think we can help with? Interested in leadership coaching or engineering training? Basically, want to work with us? Get in touch: gday@blackmill.co and we will be in touch in a jiffy.

We live on, and benefit from, the colonised lands of the Arakwal and the Minjungbal peoples of the Bundjalung nation, and those of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of these lands and recognise their enduring connection to land, waters, and culture. We pay our respects to their elders, past and present.