Personal Improvement

Tutorials

MD Giving Great Presentations: The Art of Stage Presence NEW

James Whittaker, Microsoft

Mon, 06/02/2014 - 8:30am

Every hour of every day in every country where business is conducted, the same scene plays out―dozens of well-paid people sitting in a conference room being bored senseless. Death by a thousand slides. This mind numbing, soul crushing, grotesquely expensive experience ends here and now! James Whittaker reveals the secrets to conceiving, building, and delivering a great presentation. Whatever your level of presentation skills, this tutorial will hone them. Learn how to build a compelling story from the ground up. Receive advice on how to remember and recall that story as you deliver it.

MH What’s Your Leadership IQ?

Jennifer Bonine, tap|QA, Inc.

Mon, 06/02/2014 - 8:30am

Have you ever needed a way to measure your leadership IQ? Or been in a performance review where the majority of time was spent discussing your need to improve as a leader? If you have ever wondered what your core leadership competencies are and how to build on and improve them, Jennifer Bonine shares a toolkit to help you do just that.

TC Leadership and Career Success—On Purpose NEW

James Whittaker, Microsoft

Tue, 06/03/2014 - 8:30am

Line up all the successful people in the world. Take away the pedigreed and the prodigies—you know the people who are going to succeed no matter what. Remove the brown-nosers and right-time-right-place lottery winners. And who do you have left? People who succeeded on purpose. Study these folks carefully, and you’ll find theirs paths to the top have common themes. James Whittaker exposes the career strategies of the ultra-successful and analyzes them in detail.

TM Congruent Coaching: Choosing the Right Approach NEW

Johanna Rothman, Rothman Consulting Group, Inc.

Tue, 06/03/2014 - 1:00pm

We have opportunities to coach people all the time. Much of what we think of as coaching is actually undercover training. Real coaching is richer—offering support while exploring options. In this interactive session, Johanna Rothman invites you to experience coaching, regardless of your position in the organization. Teaching is just one type of coaching. You have many other options, depending on your coaching stance. You may select a counselor’s stance if you are managing up or a partner’s stance if you are a peer.

TN Innovation Thinking: Evolve and Expand Your Capabilities NEW

Jennifer Bonine, tap|QA, Inc.

Tue, 06/03/2014 - 1:00pm

Innovation is a word frequently tossed around in organizations today. The standard cliché is “Do more with less.” People and teams want to be innovative but often struggle with how to define, prioritize, implement, and track their innovation efforts. Jennifer Bonine shares the Innovation Types model to give you new tools to evolve and expand your innovation capabilities. Find out if your innovation ideas and efforts match your team and company goals. Learn how to classify your innovation and improvement efforts as core (to the business) or context (essential but non-revenue generating).

Concurrent Sessions

BW3 This Is Not Your Father's Career: Advice for the Modern Information Worker

James Whittaker, Microsoft

Wed, 06/04/2014 - 12:45pm

In an era where college drop-outs run successful companies and creative entrepreneurs out-earn corporate vice presidents, working smart is clearly the new working hard. James Whittaker turns on their head the career rules that guided past generations and provides a new career manual for working smarter that speaks to the need for creativity, innovation, and insight. James teaches a set of skills designed for the modern era of working for companies, big or small. Learn how to avoid a one-sided relationship with your employer and ensure your passion is working for—and not against—you.

BW5 You’re Not as Smart as You Think: Improve Your Decision-Making Skills

Brandon Carlson, Lean TECHniques, Inc.

Wed, 06/04/2014 - 2:15pm

We all think of ourselves as pretty smart. After all, we sent a man to the moon and can instantly send a message across the world. Unfortunately, we suffer from a nasty little thing known as the Overconfidence Effect, a bias that applies to almost everything we do, including judging our own intelligence. Overconfidence is one of the dozens of documented biases and shortcomings in human judgment and decision making.

BW11 Speed-Reading Your Colleagues and Bosses for Understanding

Jennifer Bonine, tap|QA, Inc.

Wed, 06/04/2014 - 3:45pm

Effective communication is one of the most critical factors for success in the workplace. For software professionals, it is critical to understand how best to present information to your target audience in a way that they will understand and then take the action you want. Jennifer Bonine presents ideas on mastering politics, reading your colleagues and bosses perspective on how they want to receive information, and techniques to use if you’re not getting the action you want from your interactions.

BT9 Helping Others Take Ownership of Conflict Resolution

Tricia Broderick, Pearson

Thu, 06/05/2014 - 2:15pm

Healthy conflict helps build stronger teams. This should not come as a big surprise. Yet, leaders are all too familiar with the struggle to get members of teams to appropriately resolve their own conflicts. Tricia Broderick faced this challenge until she stopped taking ownership of the conflict and its resolution. Although conflict situations can be dramatically different, underneath most conflicts is a misalignment between perceptions and intentions.