Most managers are unprepared for their roles, with 82% having no management training at all. Effective team leadership needs structured, accessible tools to help managers build psychological safety, connection, and engagement with their teams.

Jennifer Dulski is the founder and CEO of Rising Team, a software-guided interactive learning platform for managers to develop their teams. Rising Team helps leaders build insights and deeper connections with their teams through structured development kits and short sessions that can be conducted virtually or in-person.

Three reasons to listen

• Learn how software is helping managers develop their teams more effectively
• Understand how to measure and improve psychological safety, connection, engagement, and retention in teams
• Discover practical tools for team development that work for both office teams and frontline workers

Episode highlights

• [00:10:01] Rising Team
• [00:21:26] The four Cs of developing leaders
• [00:23:20] The increase in overwhelming challenges faced by managers
• [00:26:50] "Can every manager really do it?
• [00:29:50] Making space for different cognitive styles and skillsets
• [00:32:30] Create a personal user manual
• [00:34:45] Advice for senior execs
• [00:37:21] Jennifer's media recommendation
• [00:39:00] Takeaways from Pia and Dan

Links

• Connect with Jennifer via LinkedIn
• 6 Lessons All Leaders Can Learn From Maverick
• Rising Team
• A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity, by Nicholas Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn
• Lessons in Chemistry – Jennifer’s TV recommendation
• Track and improve your team performance with Squadify
• Leave us a voice note

Engagement surveys and team data are tools for understanding and supporting teams, not targets to achieve or sticks to beat people with.

Simply gathering data for the sake of a good score is counterproductive and potentially disengaging. This information should be used to genuinely understand team dynamics, spot trends, and identify areas where support is needed to build authentic engagement and commitment to the organisation.

Jenni McNeil is the head of Information Security at Contact Energy in New Zealand. She leads a geographically diverse team focused on protecting the cyber resilience of the organisation. Jenni started in sales and became a manager at 25, switching to technology as an IT support technician before pivoting to cybersecurity.

Her current team includes a mix of experience levels, from recent graduates to industry veterans with 25 years of experience, spread across different locations.

Three reasons to listen

• Learn how to effectively monitor team dynamics in a remote work environment through digital listening and virtual water-cooler spaces
• Understand the true value of engagement surveys as tools for understanding workforce trends and identifying areas for support, not just scoring metrics
• Discover strategies for managing geographically dispersed teams while maintaining connection without micromanaging

Episode highlights

• [00:08:53] Leading a geographically-spread team
• [00:11:21] Pros and cons of engagement surveys
• [00:18:24] Ethics of AI in employee engagement
• [00:24:17] What to read when gathering data
• [00:26:30] Holding the data lightly
• [00:29:17] Jenni's media recommendations
• [00:30:32] Takeaways from Pia and Dan

Links

• Connect with Jenni via LinkedIn
• A Court of Thorns and Roses, by Sarah J Maas
• In Pursuit of the Secure Board (Spotify-only show)
• Track and improve your team performance with Squadify
• Leave us a voice note

Organisational effectiveness isn't just about making team members more productive, but properly structuring teams and understanding how they work together.

Small teams with high trust can make decisions quickly and maintain better context of what they're building, while being mindful of the cognitive load placed on members.

Matthew Skelton is the author of Team Topologies. He developed patterns for team organisation and devops that were adopted by companies like Netflix and Accenture. His work focuses on how to structure teams effectively in organisations, particularly looking at concepts like team cognitive load and team interaction modes.

Three reasons to listen

• Learn how small teams can achieve faster results and deliver value more effectively to users
• Understand the principles behind Amazon's "two pizza team" approach, including how trust enables quick decision-making in small groups
• Discover how organisations often lack self-awareness and how this becomes a major obstacle to their success

Episode highlights

• [00:11:47] The road to Team Topologies
• [00:17:18] Why collaboration is not the only answer
• [00:22:05] Creating flow for small teams
• [00:23:34] Making work humane
• [00:28:10] The Uswith example
• [00:30:45] Alternative schools of thought
• [00:34:56] Impact on team leaders
• [00:37:31] Conway's law
• [00:40:48] Decoupling of teams and architecture
• [00:46:08] Matthew's media recommendations
• [00:48:59] Takeaways from Pia and Dan

Links

• Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow –Matthew’s book
• The jazz ensemble: the ultimate team? – We Not Me
• Team Topologies’ Uswitch case study
• Conway's law
• Empowered Agile Transformation: Beyond the Framework, by Alexandra Stokes
• Architecture Modernization, by Nick Tune
• Frozen II (2019)
• Leave us a voice note

AI technology has the potential to enhance team dynamics and human relationships… if used thoughtfully. In this episode, Dan and Pia explore how AI can help with team communication and collaboration, while raising questions about finding the right balance between AI assistance and maintaining genuine human connection.

For this episode, Dan and Pia are joined by ChatGPT, using OpenAI's advanced voice technology to participate in the conversation and provide answers to questions. ChatGPT is assisted by Squadify’s Chief Technology Officer Ian Smith.

Three reasons to listen

• Explore the challenges of hybrid teams and practical strategies for maintaining effective communication when team members work from different locations
• Discover approaches for transforming groups from "Teams in name only" into truly collaborative teams that achieve shared goals
• See where ChatGPT excels and falls down when answering questions (and how well it can maintain accents)

Episode highlights

• [00:10:41] The challenges faced by hybrid teams
• [00:12:42] Teams in name only
• [00:15:11] Dealing with difficult team members
• [00:19:38] The ideal size of a team
• [00:21:07] Challenges faced by cross-functional teams
• [00:22:50] Qualities of high-performing leaders
• [00:24:18] ChatGPT's book recommendation
• [00:25:55] Takeaways from Pia and Dan

Links

• The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization, by Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith
• Research by Richard Hackman
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, by Patrick Lencioni
• Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World, by Stanley McChrystal
• Track and improve your team performance with Squadify
• Leave us a voice note

Nearly 60% of women are worried about job losses due to AI, but only 22% are actively adopting it. This reflects a broader pattern of workplace inequality, where tech revolutions risk leaving women behind.

The solution lies in leadership, embracing vulnerability and authenticity, focusing on short-term clarity, and not pretending to have all the answers. But does it also lie in Sheryl Sandberg’s “lean in” philosophy, or does this encourage women to behave more like men in order to fit in?

This episode’s guest is Sheela Subramanian, who has had an extensive career in tech leadership, including roles at Google, Slack, and Salesforce. She's the co-author of How the Future Works, a bestselling book about flexible work and teams, focusing on how leaders can navigate change. She's a mother of two young daughters and balances multiple roles including being a wife, mother, daughter, and speaker.

Three reasons to listen

• Learn about the gap in AI adoption between men and women
• Understand how leaders can navigate workplace uncertainty by embracing vulnerability and acknowledging when they don't have all the answers
• Discover perspectives on burnout in the modern workplace, particularly how it affects women trying to fit into systems that weren't built for them

Episode highlights

• [00:07:32] How the Future Works
• [00:12:45] Life through, and after burnou
• [00:18:14] The Personal User Manual
• [00:20:20] Team level agreements
• [00:21:22] Team rituals
• [00:22:40] Self-awareness in leadership
• [00:24:07] Non-negotiables for leaders today
• [00:26:04] Where to start
• [00:28:18] Sheela's media recommendations
• [00:29:44] Takeaways from Dan and Pia

Links

• Connect with Sheela via LinkedIn
• How the Future Works: Leading Flexible Teams to Do the Best Work of Their Lives, by Brian Elliott, Sheela Subramanian, and Helen Kupp
• Track and improve your team performance with Squadify
• Leave us a voice note

Effective leadership in tech means crafting a collaborative culture where growth happens through real-world challenges and strong interpersonal connections – not individual technical accomplishments.

Rob Dinsmore has an extensive background in leadership and team development, particularly in technical organisations like Cisco. He built a highly regarded programme for top engineering talent, helping these specialists expand their leadership skills and integrate them across the company to produce meaningful, business-driven outcomes.

Three reasons to listen

• To find out how to enable technical leaders to work effectively as a team
• To learn why leadership for technical experts is as much about collaboration and influence as it is about technical proficiency
• To hear how Cisco integrated senior technical leaders across departments, forming partnerships that transformed business initiatives

Episode highlights

• [00:09:34] Leadership at Cisco
• [00:14:39] Global Tech Leader Program
• [00:20:26] Using data to save the rhinos
• [00:25:27] Helping technical leaders build interpersonal skills
• [00:29:42] Learning the business and how to pitch it
• [00:32:18] Takeaways from Pia and Dan

Links

• Connect with Rob via LinkedIn
• Track and improve your team performance with Squadify
• Leave us a voice note

Effective teaming requires intentional design and can’t be achieved simply by putting people together on a project.

Teaming by Design emphasises the importance of embedding team effectiveness skills within the context of real work, rather than teaching it as a separate subject.

This approach recognises that valuable teaming skills are often developed through practical experience and reflection, rather than through theoretical instruction alone.

For this episode, Dan and Pia are joined in-person by Sara Beckman, who developed the concept of "teaming by design" while teaching MBA students. Sara works on integrating team effectiveness training into various courses, particularly in innovation, design, and new product development, and has conducted research on team dynamics, including studies at Hewlett Packard.

Three reasons to listen

• To discover a unique approach to teaching teamwork called which embeds team effectiveness skills into project-based courses
• To explore goal congruence and its critical role in team performance
• To learn about the challenges of bringing about psychological safety in teams and how it relates to conflict management

Episode highlights

• [00:09:29] Teaming by design
• [00:14:42] Teaming in corporate vs academia
• [00:19:00] Conflict
• [00:19:59] The University of Unlearning
• [00:25:59] The importance of shared goals
• [00:29:55] How students view leadership
• [00:32:11] What is the future of teaming?
• [00:36:22] The benefits of teaming by design
• [00:38:05] Sara's book recommendation
• [00:40:07] Takeaways from Dan and Pia

Links

• Connect with Sara via LinkedIn
• Books by Claire Keegan
• Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver
• Rough Sleepers, by Tracy Kidder
• Track and improve your team performance with Squadify
• Leave us a voice note

Agile isn’t just for software teams – its principles can be effectively applied to HR and other business teams, offering a pragmatic approach to improving workflow and efficiency.

It goes beyond flexible working or nimble decision-making, representing a philosophy and set of principles for getting work done more effectively.

Nebel Crowhurst is the Chief People Officer at Reward Gateway, and has extensive experience in HR. She’s worked across a variety of industries, helping teams understand and transition to Agile.

Three reasons to listen

• For a pragmatic approach to implementing Agile principles in HR and business teams
• To discover how Agile can help teams prioritise work, reduce friction, and improve efficiency in meetings
• To explore the benefits and potential challenges of applying Agile methodologies outside of traditional software development

Episode highlights

• [00:08:46] Revisiting engagement surveys
• [00:13:40] What Agile is and is not
• [00:17:30] What Agile looks like in practice
• [00:22:08] Handling Agile scepticism (including your own)
• [00:24:55] Transitioning your team to Agile
• [00:31:53] Taking your first steps into Agile
• [00:33:17] Nebel's media recommendation
• [00:35:51] Takeaways from Dan and Pia

Links

• Connect with Nebel via LinkedIn
• Books by Natal Dank
• The Multi-Hyphen Method, by Emma Gannon
• Track and improve your team performance with Squadify
• Leave us a voice note