Learning
Practical Leaders workshops boost the effectiveness of your entire team, from individual contributors to senior leaders.
Our techniques are based on extensive experience in leadership roles. We have spent over 20 years helping leaders and teams develop skills that lead to excellent outcomes at every level.
Approach
Simple and memorable. Visual models make new ideas easy to understand and apply.
Accessible and approachable. New tools and techniques are introduced by linking to familiar ideas.
Engaging learning experience. Intensive and immersive content is delivered at the right pace to drive deep learning. Interest and focus are sustained through a variety of topics and activities.
Skills
We help your team develop essential skills including:
Clarifying objectives
When goals are unclear and constraints are assumed or implied, individuals and teams waste time working on the wrong thing or designing suboptimal solutions.
These skills help individuals clarify their purpose, enabling them to make decisions aligned with the organisation’s goals with lighter oversight and reduced management intervention.
- Differentiating between stated objectives and the underlying organisational benefits. That is, between the “what”, which usually has some flexibility, and the “why”, which is likely fixed.
- Identifying constraints and distinguishing between soft and hard constraints.
- Recognising the importance of making context explicit.
DISC personality profiles
Others’ actions can seem illogical, irrational, or plain wrong-headed if we don’t understand why they are acting as they do.
By understanding ourselves better, we can actively mould our behaviours. And by understanding others better, we can communicate and collaborate more effectively.
- How DISC personality profiles can be used to understand yourself and others better.
- The concept that DISC profiles are the result of combining two axes: task-oriented vs relationship-oriented and extroverted vs reflective.
- The idea that while everyone thinks they are normal, what is normal is different for each personality profile.
- Explore specific, detailed characteristics typical of each personality profile.
Handling crucial conversations
When opinions differ, the stakes are high, and emotions are strong, we rarely handle the conversation well, leading to us withdrawing or the exchange becoming heated.
Being able to handle high-stakes, emotional conversations effectively prevents relationship damage and drives better outcomes in challenging situations.
- How to identify when a conversation is turning crucial (opinions vary + stakes are high + emotions run strong).
- Behaviours when we move to silence (withholding information, sugar-coating, avoidance) or violence (forcing opinions, raising voice, exaggerating).
- How to determine what level of conversation you should have: content, pattern, or relationship.
- Start with heart: focus on what you want for yourself, others, and the relationship.
- STATE your path: Share facts, Tell your story, Ask for others’ paths, Talk tentatively, Encourage testing.
- How to identify and name emotions precisely.
- The danger of clever stories that absolve us.
- How to make it safe: restore safety when others move away from dialogue.
Relevance of leadership skills to individual contributors
Individual contributors often undervalue or do not appreciate how important non-technical skills are to building influence and delivering results.
Framing leadership skills as essential to individual contributors helps participants engage with the learning.
- Difference between leadership and management.
- Importance of being able to influence peers and more senior colleagues.
- Importance of communication in delivering results.
Tailoring complex messages to the audience
Technical architecture is often poorly communicated, with too much extraneous detail, while failing to communicate the information most important for each stakeholder.
Using these techniques, engineers can build better shared understanding and improve collaborative problem solving.
- Principles of effective architecture diagrams.
- Using appropriate levels of abstraction.
- Making diagrams accessible to non-specialists.
- Designing for the audience and their specific needs.
Feature slicing and iterative delivery
Engineering teams often fall back to delivering technically-focused horizontal slices that delay value delivery and increase the risk of building the wrong thing.
A strong focus on delivering in vertical slices reduces risk, shortens time to value, and accelerates learning.
- Difference between vertical and horizontal slices when breaking down work.
- Principles of effective feature slicing.
- Benefits of small vertical slices.
Coaching and mentoring skills
Leaders who lack experience with coaching and mentoring techniques can default to giving direct instructions or delegating without support. These miss opportunities to harness the individual’s abilities and develop their capabilities.
These skills help team leads to harness their team members’ capabilities and promote their development through better coaching and mentoring.
- Four leadership modes and situational leadership.
- Differences between coaching and mentoring.
- GROW coaching model.
Priority management and decision-making
Leaders and individuals don’t always focus their own time and their team’s efforts on the most important work, getting caught up in urgent but less important tasks.
By adopting a structured approach to prioritisation, team leads can focus their time and their team’s efforts on high-impact work while effectively managing competing priorities.
- Introduction to the Eisenhower Matrix (urgency/importance) for bringing focus on the right tasks.
- Thinking vs doing: when to break problems down and analyse vs when to take action and experiment.
- Course correction and iterative delivery.
Performance management and career development
Leaders sometimes lack the skills to have impactful and empathetic conversations about performance and career growth, leading to disengaged individuals and missed development opportunities.
Using these techniques, team leads can have better conversations about performance and career development that address concerns, motivate team members and align individual growth with organisational needs.
- Introduction to the Radical Candour framework.
- Distinguishing between “rock stars” and “superstars” and recognising the importance of both.
- Career conversation framework.
- Providing feedback that is honest and balanced, and drives growth.
Bottom-line up front
The natural communication style of subject matter experts sometimes fails to drive the action they want, especially from busy senior colleagues.
Detail-oriented colleagues and technical specialists particularly benefit from these techniques to communicate more concisely and effectively.
- Importance of starting with a clear statement of what you need from the recipient.
- Difference between chain-of-reasoning structure and progressive drill-down structure.
- Utility of these techniques, both in written and verbal communication.
Techniques to bridge differences
Differences of opinion can lead to disputes that get in the way of progress.
The ability to bridge differences and turn potential conflict into informed consensus is a powerful tool to get things done in all organisations.
- There are always good reasons behind others’ views, even if they seem surprising or strange.
- Differences cannot be bridged by pushing your ideas harder. They should be explored through active listening and respectful questioning.
- The importance of body language and tone.
- Consensus building using the Agree, Build, Compare technique.
- Introduction to the Six Thinking Hats technique.
Using feedback well
Feedback often fails to drive improvement due to poor timing, lack of specificity, or defensive reactions from recipients.
These techniques help participants develop their understanding of what makes good feedback and how to receive feedback in a way that promotes personal growth.
- Characteristics of effective feedback: clear, specific, timely, balanced, and given for the recipient’s benefit.
- The Radical Candour framework: caring personally while challenging directly, avoiding ruinous empathy or obnoxious aggression.
- Techniques to receive feedback well.
- The difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset when approaching feedback and development.
Translating between technical and business language
Technical experts often struggle to communicate effectively with business stakeholders, leading to misunderstandings and poor decision-making.
By appreciating different perspectives, engineers can communicate more effectively with non-technical stakeholders, leading to clearer expectations and better business decisions.
- Techniques for translating technical concepts into business impact and risk language.
- How to be explicit about subtext and implications rather than leaving them implied.
- Understanding what stakeholders need to know versus technical details.
Product thinking and prioritisation
Engineers often underestimate the important role they play in forming a plan that promotes rapid, safe value delivery, working in partnership with product owners/managers.
Teams deliver higher quality solutions, faster, when engineers and product people work in partnership to guide the plan.
- Exploring relative value and confidence on now, next, and future timeframes.
- Introduction to prioritisation frameworks, WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First) and RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Estimate).
- How to factor in quality considerations alongside feature delivery.
Transition from individual contributor to team leader
High-performing individual contributors often struggle with the transition to leading others, continuing to rely on personal technical expertise.
Team leads who gain confidence in adopting leadership behaviours deliver better results and enable themselves and team members to grow.
- Distinguishing between leadership and management.
- Shifting from direct control to influence and enablement.
- Moving from being in all details to selective engagement and strategic focus.
- Embracing team success over personal achievement and avoiding becoming a bottleneck.
- Growth mindset: seeing challenges as opportunities for team and personal development.
Delegation that empowers
Team leads do not always delegate effectively, either micromanaging or abdicating responsibility.
Using these techniques, team leads become better at delegating work while maintaining accountability and developing team capabilities.
- Delegation as a spectrum from direct instruction to complete autonomy.
- The importance of clear context, constraints, and desired outcomes when delegating.
- Balancing support and challenge.
- Creating a culture of empowerment and opportunity rather than fear or entitlement.
Working with neurodivergent team members
Leaders often lack understanding of neurodiversity, leading to misunderstandings and missed opportunities to leverage different thinking styles and the potential exclusion of team members.
By building awareness, team leads can better lead neurodivergent team members, improving mutual understanding and gaining confidence in making reasonable adjustments.
- Understanding the breadth and prevalence of neurodiversity.
- Different communication styles.
- Reasonable adjustments.
Workshops
We offer bespoke workshops tailored to your needs as well as ready-to-go packages.
You may choose to bring learners together from across your teams or to run team-based sessions focused around their specific context and challenges.
A distinctive benefit included in many of these is the half-day referesher workshop. This is most beneficial 6-8 weeks after the initial workshops, to refresh and reinforce learning, and help put ideas into practice.
Self-leadership and working with colleagues
Individual Contributors, Technical Leads, and Engineering Managers
2.5 days (2 x 1 day workshops + refresher)
TOPICS
Clarifying objectives
When goals are unclear and constraints are assumed or implied, individuals and teams waste time working on the wrong thing or designing suboptimal solutions.
These skills help individuals clarify their purpose, enabling them to make decisions aligned with the organisation’s goals with lighter oversight and reduced management intervention.
- Differentiating between stated objectives and the underlying organisational benefits. That is, between the “what”, which usually has some flexibility, and the “why”, which is likely fixed.
- Identifying constraints and distinguishing between soft and hard constraints.
- Recognising the importance of making context explicit.
DISC personality profiles
Others’ actions can seem illogical, irrational, or plain wrong-headed if we don’t understand why they are acting as they do.
By understanding ourselves better, we can actively mould our behaviours. And by understanding others better, we can communicate and collaborate more effectively.
- How DISC personality profiles can be used to understand yourself and others better.
- The concept that DISC profiles are the result of combining two axes: task-oriented vs relationship-oriented and extroverted vs reflective.
- The idea that while everyone thinks they are normal, what is normal is different for each personality profile.
- Explore specific, detailed characteristics typical of each personality profile.
Handling crucial conversations
When opinions differ, the stakes are high, and emotions are strong, we rarely handle the conversation well, leading to us withdrawing or the exchange becoming heated.
Being able to handle high-stakes, emotional conversations effectively prevents relationship damage and drives better outcomes in challenging situations.
- How to identify when a conversation is turning crucial (opinions vary + stakes are high + emotions run strong).
- Behaviours when we move to silence (withholding information, sugar-coating, avoidance) or violence (forcing opinions, raising voice, exaggerating).
- How to determine what level of conversation you should have: content, pattern, or relationship.
- Start with heart: focus on what you want for yourself, others, and the relationship.
- STATE your path: Share facts, Tell your story, Ask for others’ paths, Talk tentatively, Encourage testing.
- How to identify and name emotions precisely.
- The danger of clever stories that absolve us.
- How to make it safe: restore safety when others move away from dialogue.
Bottom-line up front
The natural communication style of subject matter experts sometimes fails to drive the action they want, especially from busy senior colleagues.
Detail-oriented colleagues and technical specialists particularly benefit from these techniques to communicate more concisely and effectively.
- Importance of starting with a clear statement of what you need from the recipient.
- Difference between chain-of-reasoning structure and progressive drill-down structure.
- Utility of these techniques, both in written and verbal communication.
Techniques to bridge differences
Differences of opinion can lead to disputes that get in the way of progress.
The ability to bridge differences and turn potential conflict into informed consensus is a powerful tool to get things done in all organisations.
- There are always good reasons behind others’ views, even if they seem surprising or strange.
- Differences cannot be bridged by pushing your ideas harder. They should be explored through active listening and respectful questioning.
- The importance of body language and tone.
- Consensus building using the Agree, Build, Compare technique.
- Introduction to the Six Thinking Hats technique.
Using feedback well
Feedback often fails to drive improvement due to poor timing, lack of specificity, or defensive reactions from recipients.
These techniques help participants develop their understanding of what makes good feedback and how to receive feedback in a way that promotes personal growth.
- Characteristics of effective feedback: clear, specific, timely, balanced, and given for the recipient’s benefit.
- The Radical Candour framework: caring personally while challenging directly, avoiding ruinous empathy or obnoxious aggression.
- Techniques to receive feedback well.
- The difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset when approaching feedback and development.
Technical communication, problem solving, and decision making
Engineers, Technical Leads, and Principal Engineers
1 day
TOPICS
Relevance of leadership skills to individual contributors
Individual contributors often undervalue or do not appreciate how important non-technical skills are to building influence and delivering results.
Framing leadership skills as essential to individual contributors helps participants engage with the learning.
- Difference between leadership and management.
- Importance of being able to influence peers and more senior colleagues.
- Importance of communication in delivering results.
Tailoring complex messages to the audience
Technical architecture is often poorly communicated, with too much extraneous detail, while failing to communicate the information most important for each stakeholder.
Using these techniques, engineers can build better shared understanding and improve collaborative problem solving.
- Principles of effective architecture diagrams.
- Using appropriate levels of abstraction.
- Making diagrams accessible to non-specialists.
- Designing for the audience and their specific needs.
Feature slicing and iterative delivery
Engineering teams often fall back to delivering technically-focused horizontal slices that delay value delivery and increase the risk of building the wrong thing.
A strong focus on delivering in vertical slices reduces risk, shortens time to value, and accelerates learning.
- Difference between vertical and horizontal slices when breaking down work.
- Principles of effective feature slicing.
- Benefits of small vertical slices.
Translating between technical and business language
Technical experts often struggle to communicate effectively with business stakeholders, leading to misunderstandings and poor decision-making.
By appreciating different perspectives, engineers can communicate more effectively with non-technical stakeholders, leading to clearer expectations and better business decisions.
- Techniques for translating technical concepts into business impact and risk language.
- How to be explicit about subtext and implications rather than leaving them implied.
- Understanding what stakeholders need to know versus technical details.
Product thinking and prioritisation
Engineers often underestimate the important role they play in forming a plan that promotes rapid, safe value delivery, working in partnership with product owners/managers.
Teams deliver higher quality solutions, faster, when engineers and product people work in partnership to guide the plan.
- Exploring relative value and confidence on now, next, and future timeframes.
- Introduction to prioritisation frameworks, WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First) and RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Estimate).
- How to factor in quality considerations alongside feature delivery.
Leading others to boost productivity and strengthen engagement
Technical Leads and Engineering Managers
2.5 days (2 x 1 day workshops + refresher)
TOPICS
Transition from individual contributor to team leader
High-performing individual contributors often struggle with the transition to leading others, continuing to rely on personal technical expertise.
Team leads who gain confidence in adopting leadership behaviours deliver better results and enable themselves and team members to grow.
- Distinguishing between leadership and management.
- Shifting from direct control to influence and enablement.
- Moving from being in all details to selective engagement and strategic focus.
- Embracing team success over personal achievement and avoiding becoming a bottleneck.
- Growth mindset: seeing challenges as opportunities for team and personal development.
Delegation that empowers
Team leads do not always delegate effectively, either micromanaging or abdicating responsibility.
Using these techniques, team leads become better at delegating work while maintaining accountability and developing team capabilities.
- Delegation as a spectrum from direct instruction to complete autonomy.
- The importance of clear context, constraints, and desired outcomes when delegating.
- Balancing support and challenge.
- Creating a culture of empowerment and opportunity rather than fear or entitlement.
Working with neurodivergent team members
Leaders often lack understanding of neurodiversity, leading to misunderstandings and missed opportunities to leverage different thinking styles and the potential exclusion of team members.
By building awareness, team leads can better lead neurodivergent team members, improving mutual understanding and gaining confidence in making reasonable adjustments.
- Understanding the breadth and prevalence of neurodiversity.
- Different communication styles.
- Reasonable adjustments.
Coaching and mentoring skills
Leaders who lack experience with coaching and mentoring techniques can default to giving direct instructions or delegating without support. These miss opportunities to harness the individual’s abilities and develop their capabilities.
These skills help team leads to harness their team members’ capabilities and promote their development through better coaching and mentoring.
- Four leadership modes and situational leadership.
- Differences between coaching and mentoring.
- GROW coaching model.
Priority management and decision-making
Leaders and individuals don’t always focus their own time and their team’s efforts on the most important work, getting caught up in urgent but less important tasks.
By adopting a structured approach to prioritisation, team leads can focus their time and their team’s efforts on high-impact work while effectively managing competing priorities.
- Introduction to the Eisenhower Matrix (urgency/importance) for bringing focus on the right tasks.
- Thinking vs doing: when to break problems down and analyse vs when to take action and experiment.
- Course correction and iterative delivery.
Performance management and career development
Leaders sometimes lack the skills to have impactful and empathetic conversations about performance and career growth, leading to disengaged individuals and missed development opportunities.
Using these techniques, team leads can have better conversations about performance and career development that address concerns, motivate team members and align individual growth with organisational needs.
- Introduction to the Radical Candour framework.
- Distinguishing between “rock stars” and “superstars” and recognising the importance of both.
- Career conversation framework.
- Providing feedback that is honest and balanced, and drives growth.
Advanced
Coming soon
Leading at scale, optimising organisational design and flow of value
Engineering Managers, Department/Function Heads. Consider for Technical Leads
2.5 days (2 x 1 day workshops + refresher)
TOPICS
Team Topologies and Conway's Law
Leading change
Culture and organisational typologies
Accelerating development using career frameworks
Setting and tracking goals and objectives
Helping others grow and navigate their careers
People Leaders and Managers
1.5 days (1 day workshop + refresher)
TOPICS
Coaching and mentoring skills
Leaders who lack experience with coaching and mentoring techniques can default to giving direct instructions or delegating without support. These miss opportunities to harness the individual’s abilities and develop their capabilities.
These skills help team leads to harness their team members’ capabilities and promote their development through better coaching and mentoring.
- Four leadership modes and situational leadership.
- Differences between coaching and mentoring.
- GROW coaching model.
Priority management and decision-making
Leaders and individuals don’t always focus their own time and their team’s efforts on the most important work, getting caught up in urgent but less important tasks.
By adopting a structured approach to prioritisation, team leads can focus their time and their team’s efforts on high-impact work while effectively managing competing priorities.
- Introduction to the Eisenhower Matrix (urgency/importance) for bringing focus on the right tasks.
- Thinking vs doing: when to break problems down and analyse vs when to take action and experiment.
- Course correction and iterative delivery.
Performance management and career development
Leaders sometimes lack the skills to have impactful and empathetic conversations about performance and career growth, leading to disengaged individuals and missed development opportunities.
Using these techniques, team leads can have better conversations about performance and career development that address concerns, motivate team members and align individual growth with organisational needs.
- Introduction to the Radical Candour framework.
- Distinguishing between “rock stars” and “superstars” and recognising the importance of both.
- Career conversation framework.
- Providing feedback that is honest and balanced, and drives growth.
Working with neurodivergent team members
Leaders often lack understanding of neurodiversity, leading to misunderstandings and missed opportunities to leverage different thinking styles and the potential exclusion of team members.
By building awareness, team leads can better lead neurodivergent team members, improving mutual understanding and gaining confidence in making reasonable adjustments.
- Understanding the breadth and prevalence of neurodiversity.
- Different communication styles.
- Reasonable adjustments.
Using feedback well
Feedback often fails to drive improvement due to poor timing, lack of specificity, or defensive reactions from recipients.
These techniques help participants develop their understanding of what makes good feedback and how to receive feedback in a way that promotes personal growth.
- Characteristics of effective feedback: clear, specific, timely, balanced, and given for the recipient’s benefit.
- The Radical Candour framework: caring personally while challenging directly, avoiding ruinous empathy or obnoxious aggression.
- Techniques to receive feedback well.
- The difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset when approaching feedback and development.
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