Category: Team Building

  • Leadership Meetup talk – Create the recognition your teams deserve

    Leadership Meetup talk – Create the recognition your teams deserve

    I had the opportunity to speak at the Engineering Leadership Meetup on 22nd May. Below are my notes from the talk. My talk was titled – Create the recognition your teams deserve. I’m certainly no expert on recognition but I do have a passion for building healthy tech cultures and I believe good recognition is…

  • Creating an Engineering Career Framework

    Creating an Engineering Career Framework

    A good career framework has many benefits for an Engineering team. It provides engineers clarity and visibility on the expectations of their and other roles. Frameworks are also for managers to as a guide for career conversations with their teams. Putting a framework together is not something you want to rush but, equally so, it…

  • Be creative with recognition

    Be creative with recognition

    Getting recognition for some good work you’ve done can make your day, even your week! It gives you extra energy and shows your work is valued. Yet, with so many positives it’s difficult to get right and too many times overlooked. However, by getting your creative juices flowing, you can create recognition that is not…

  • Resources for all areas of tech leadership

    Resources for all areas of tech leadership

    Do you have a list of articles you go back to that you find useful for guidance and reminders? I do, across all areas of tech leadership, there’s a lot of great resources out there! Mine are saved on github so it’s easy for me to find and update. I’m sharing it here in case…

  • A leader’s greatest strength is…

    A leader’s greatest strength is…

    Leaders exhibit many strengths to be successful in their role but I argue that self-awareness is the greatest strength a leader needs. Self-awareness is understanding yourself and the impact you have on others. Leaders need to adapt to different situations, often in a short space of time. Without self-awareness a leader could be causing more…

  • Having a perfectionist in the team

    Having a perfectionist in the team

    Is perfectionism a strength or weakness? In interviews, I hear many candidates use it as a weakness but subtly intend it as a strength. The reality is, someone who is on the far end of the perfectionism spectrum can find it debilitating, even causing mental health issues, so care must be taken with any perfectionist…

  • Are you bringing your team up or down?

    Are you bringing your team up or down?

    Do you have those days when you wake up in a good mood then on your commute you have a bad experience with someone and it ruins your happy vibe? Or maybe there are meetings you don’t look forward to because you know someone attending will bring the tone down? I’ve had many of these!…

  • Meetup talk: Building a Tech Culture at Medidata

    Meetup talk: Building a Tech Culture at Medidata

    As part of the TechHeads meetup on 30th July I gave talk titled – Building a Tech Culture at Medidata. It was followed by a YouTube Live Q&A. A tech culture can be hard to define and even harder to build. My talk covers some of the approaches used to build a tech culture at…

  • The results will take care of themselves

    The results will take care of themselves

    TL;DR – Bill Walsh, an ex-NFL coach, had a leadership approach that transformed the success of the San Francisco 49ers. His ‘Standard of Performance’ covers a wide range of leadership traits that apply across industries. Each point offers learning relevant to leading tech teams today. There’s no hiding from the fact that results are important.…