Better Software West 2018 - Career & Personal Development
Monday, June 4
Agile Managers: Nurture Your Teams to Thrive
For most managers Agile is a totally different way of work that requires a particular style of leadership. However, agile transitions often fail to provide adequate guidance on how a manager fits into an agile organization. Your role and responsibilities need to change as the organization changes. You must learn to coach, remove obstacles, and model new styles of communication. In this interactive session, learn how you can flourish as an agile manager as you nurture your teams to thrive. Join seasoned leadership coach Selena Delesie as she discusses the differences between traditional and...
The Lost Art of Live Communication: Get Connected to Your Customers
Have you ever been in the same room with co-workers and sent them a Slack or text message instead of having a live conversation? Many people are starting to prefer virtual or instant chat messaging to live conversations, but live communication can get better results at work—and with your customers. As technology professionals, we often focus more on technical skills and ignore the important communication skills. Join Jennifer Bonine to see how to make the most of—and get the best results from—your live conversations. Jennifer shares a toolkit to help you assess your core communication...
Tuesday, June 5
Leaders: Getting Real without Getting Fired
Are important words often left unsaid at your place of work? Do you feel like you're navigating a complex maze in conversations? Does your message tend to miss the mark with co-workers, who increasingly seem to be impediments to your reaching your goals? Trust and communication issues within the workplace can hollow out an organization. When organizations suffering from a lack of trust, it costs them speed, productivity, and collaboration. Join Allison Pollard and Marcus King as they share models to evaluate your own behaviors and facilitate activities to help you find your voice for...
Wednesday, June 6
Five (Oops! I Mean Six) Mistakes Leaders Make
PreviewThe world of work is transforming at an unrelenting pace. Product development is increasingly more complex and uncertain while the speed of decisions and delivery is escalating at an exponential pace. Many of us are unaware of how our thoughts and actions work against our own objectives and our organizations’ goals and needs. Pete Behrens illustrates how leadership agility improves self-awareness, amplifies decision-making, improves outcomes, and grows resilience and capacity in highly complex and fast-paced environments. Sharing stories from his two decades of personal experience—...
Create Influence, on Demand
PreviewThe effectiveness of agile approaches are built on influence rather than authority. Practices like collocation and stand-ups actually amplify influence, leveraging behavior patterns built into humans through biology and social conditions. In this workshop, Bernie Maloney will show you how to unpack some fundamental influence patterns, gleaned from typical collaboration ceremonies, and turn them into conscious tools for leadership. Through interactive exercises, you’ll amplify and practice your ability to influence by quickly establishing and building rapport via all forms of active...
Thursday, June 7
It's All In Our Heads: Using Neuroscience to Improve Performance
Understanding how our brains take shortcuts to process all the data they take in can help us recognize when its happening, take measures to correct our course, and use that information to build stronger teams. This talk sprang from my curiosity about the intersection of neuroscience and organizational behavior. It is my hope that attendees will leave with the ability to recognize when they and their teams are using processing shortcuts, as well as some techniques for mitigating their impact. Learning Objectives: - Identify several ways in which our brains short cut processing in order to...
Impostor Syndrome: The Innovation Killer among Us
PreviewAs an agile community, we talk a lot about innovation and failure. But we often forget to talk about the head games that keep us from innovating. Billie Schuttpelz unearths those internal dialogues that prevent us from taking risks that drive innovation. Become a part of breaking open the conversation around impostor syndrome—yes, it exists, and it's stealing far too many of our authentic voices. Join Billie to get insights into how imposter syndrome is holding you back. You'll learn three ways to unleash your creative ideas, break free of the swirling thoughts and inactivity that...
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Brewing Great Agile Team Dynamics: No More "Bitter Beer Face" Communications
Ever find yourself making a sour face after talking to a coworker? Wishing your team meetings felt more like an engaging social hour? There is hope. Those everyday conflicts where something seems “off” after a conversation are often related to differences in communication styles. When team members understand themselves and others, there’s less conflict, more collaboration, and better working relationships. The DiSC model can help you understand why your team behaves the way it does and how to build trust for a more agile team. In this interactive session, agile coaches Allison Pollard and...
Three-Minute Improv Games to Improve Your Teams
The problem with many agile teams is that they simply never become a team. This often manifests itself as team members feeling unsafe or not quite trusting each other. This workshop will show you how the same techniques improv theater troupes use to improve collaboration, creativity, and communication can be used to help agile teams, too. The three-minute improv warm-up games Wayde Stallmann will lead you through in this session—including improv's famous "yes, and" technique—will help you learn to establish trust, improve collaboration, and learn how to provide a safe environment for your...