5 Tips to Improve your Emotional EQ

Learn the difference between reacting and responding through an introspective journey in self-awareness.

The decisions we make every day are heavily influenced by our emotions -- and are limited by our own biases, experiences and perspectives. We might find ourselves going through life reacting, never taking the time to think about how or why we respond the way we do, which can limit our ability to control our own actions and emotions. There's a better way.

Self-awareness is the ability to identify and understand your emotions and how they affect you -- and how your actions are affecting others. One of the best ways to do this is to recognize your emotional tendencies, strengths, and weaknesses through asking the right questions--to both yourself and others.

In this session, I outline 5 techniques to build greater awareness of self, broaden our perspective and begin to see ourselves through the eyes of others. This work is inspired by Scott Watson, an emotional intelligence expert in the education arena, and Emotional EQ 2.0 by Bradbury and Greaves.

We will

1. gain insight into our own thinking and feeling processes
2. use that insight to develop strategies to help us being "emotional" to "emotionally intelligent.

You might find that focusing on how your behavior is impacting others can change your relationships – and positively impact your career.

The Product Mindset is the link between the products we build and the culture of the organization that is building them. It's the foundation for operating in a digital economy and creating new insights for success. So what is it, and why should we care?

There is a shift happening. One that puts the user closer to the center of our work than ever before. We are moving away from the question "Are we building it right?" to asking "Are we building the right thing?" This approach isn't new - it's growing in response to the increasing speed and complexity of competing in today's marketplace. It's founded in human behavior and decision sciences. No matter what you are creating for your customer, there is one thing that unites us: Our customers want products that are simple to use and solve their problem.

The best tool we have to grow our Product Mindset is a set of principles and techniques known as Design Thinking. This isn't trivial, it's big business. The Design Management Institute's study in 2016 says Design companies outperform others by 211% percent! You know the names; you use the products - companies like Apple, Starwood, Nike, Walt Disney to name a few.

In this session, we will explore what the Product Mindset is and how to grow it within ourselves and in our organization. We'll identify the questions we can ask to go further than we have before to define value. We'll discuss how to develop products that resonate with our user's emotional needs. And we'll finish with a simple, interactive exercise that applies design thinking to product discovery that you can take back to use on Monday morning. No experience necessary.

Join us. If we can change the way we think, we can change the way we work.

Stop getting good at process and start getting good at business! This session is for anyone who is seeking practical, proven techniques to create a Lean Portfolio Management Office. Participants will explore the pre-requisites for a Lean PMO, the role of the PMO in agile delivery, and a high level overview of a Portfolio Kanban System that balances the speed of agile delivery with the accountability and transparency needed by organizations for complex programs.  Along the way, you will hear details of how a dynamic product company evolved to a people-centric, flow-based PMO.