Facilitating Team Communications for Software Team Leaders

Moving into engineering management means taking on a wide range of new responsibilites. It's no longer good enough to be technically proficient and productive - you now have to:

• Develop the individuals on your team and deliver key feedback.
• Ensure your team works smoothly with one another to accomplish larger goals.
• Understand and translate requests from a broader set of people.
• Make sure your team communicates to the rest of the company with one voice.
• Structure meetings that are effective for a wide range of personalities.

...and these are skills not taught in CS classes, coding bootcamps, or on the job, so where are you going to learn how to be a great manager?

Facilitating Team Communication for Tech Leads gives you a framework to understand effective communication, tools to facilitate better dialogue within your team, and exercises you can use to develop individuals who might need a communication boost!

Working in a small group of eight people, you'll get real hands-on experience, not a binder full of frameworks and unrelatable case studies. By the end of the workshop you'll have an arsenal of communication tools, and techniques you can practice solo before important meetings.

Who is this Workshop For?

This workshop is best suited for leaders of software development teams - engineering managers, product management leads, design managers, and data science leads. In particular, if you are new to a technical management role, or working towards your first team leaderhsip role, this will be a great fit for you! Team leads in other discplines and industries are welcome to signup, but we will use some software development-specific jargon throughout the workshop.

Can I Use Professional Development Budget to Pay for This?

Absolutely - in fact, we've already pre-written an email template for you right here!

What Will I Learn?

• The common challenges in manager to team communications and how to maximize understanding.
• The common challenges in team to manager communciations and how to improve your listening skills.
• Techniques to facilitate more effective meetings when you have a mix of vocal and less vocal team members.
• How to handle distruptions in communication.
• How to manage conflict in communications by listening, agreeing, and moving towards solutions.
• How to help team members be more assertive in their communication.

How Will I Learn - Improv?!

Don't panic! We're not going to ask you to get on stage and act, dance, sing, or tell jokes.

Highwire Improv’s workshops use improv techniques to help you develop skills in a low-pressure environment where the brain is primed for maximal learning.

Our Play / Reflect / Apply learning methodology creates connections in the moment and then reinforces learning through solo reflection and team discussion.

The workshop will use a mix of communication exercises, improv games, lecture, and group discussions to prepare you for the wide range of challenges that arise in team communications.

We'll leave you with worksheets and instructions to run some of these exercises with your team so that you can share and practice what you've learned!

Why Learn Through Improv?

1. Improvisation skills have a high overlap with critical interpersonal and leadership skills.
2. Improv provides a psychologically safe environment to fail and experiment without having to worry about 'sounding correct' professionally.
3. You get the opportunity to repeatedly practice skills and situations that are high stakes, but infrequent in the workplace.

About Your Instructor:

Barry Wright (he/him) is a technology professional, improviser, and teacher. He currently works as Chief of Staff and Director of Corporate Development at Noom, and has previously held product leadership roles at Spotify, Amobee, Videology, and Hawkes Learning Systems.

Barry is a co-founder of Highwire Improv and currently serves as President of the Board, and manages Highwire's Applied Improv division. He has trained in improv since 2017, including at Baltimore Improv Group, Hoopla Impro, and numerous online workshops. He performs with many ensembles including Improv Jeoparty, Topiary, Important Screws, Whatever This Is, and Dreamweaver. Barry lives with his wife Kristen and their three cats and is always happy to chat about technology, improv, Baltimore, or start a Google Doc.

About Highwire Improv:

Highwire Improv is a 501(c)(3) non-profit arts organization based in Baltimore, Maryland. Our mission is to steward a community of artists committed to growth, collaboration, joy, and justice — in Baltimore and around the world — through improvisational theater.

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