Background
I have just completed a full pass of this new Udemy course in around 8 hours (56 sections).
I was given free access to the course by Sonsoles who I know only virtually via doing a 12-week Working Out Loud (WOL) circle in Q1 this year and a 12-week Designing Your Life book club in Q2/3 this year with her.
I am voluntarily publishing this review. I was not asked to do a review.
To encourage readers to read the full review, although the course is marketed as a Tech Leadership and Comms Skills course, the vast majority of the content is applicable to all people working in all organisations.
About Me
I am an IT professional in the 34th year of my IT career since graduating from the University of Stirling, Scotland, in May 1984 and subsequently completing an MBA at the University of Strathclyde by distance learning in the mid-1990s. I have undertaken a variety of business analysis/ consultancy, project/ programme management and design authority roles in a number of different types of organisations in the public, private and third sectors. See my LinkedIn profile for more details.
Course Instructors
Mark and Sonsoles are a married couple based in Barcelona but work globally.
Mark is a Microsoft Certified Trainer with a 20-year IT career, a serial entrepreneur and has launched two startups in The Netherlands.
Sonsoles is a Team & Executive Coach, Facilitator and Trainer.
Course Content
The following listing provides an overview of the course content.
Section 1: Introduction
Section 2: The Project Team – Leadership Roles
Software Development Team Roles
Leadership Roles
The Lead Developer
The Solution Architect
The Project Manager
The Senior VP of Engineering
The CTO
Section 3: The Four Horsemen of Toxic Communication
Criticism and Defensiveness
Contempt and Stonewalling
Section 4: Toxic Leadership and Power
Power Traps and Power Games
Consensus and GroupThink
Section 5: Leadership and Power Anti-Patterns
Blowhard Jamboree
The Corncob
Irrational Management
The Feud
Intellectual Violence
Section 6: Tools for Healthy Leadership
Empowering the Introvert
Creating Team Alignment
The Five Why’s
Creative Cultures
The Manager as Service Designer
Healthy Decision-Making
Section 7: Culture of Fear Anti-Patterns
Fear of Success
Analysis Paralysis
Death by Planning
Smoke and Mirrors
Section 8: In Conclusion
Course Format
The course is presented in a series of video clips of Mark or Sonsoles or both speaking to camera supported by text on slides. There is a recap textual summary at the end of each section. There are quizzes throughout to test learner understanding.
Review
I was the 100th person to sign-up to do this course.
I was expecting this course throughout to be aimed much more at IT professionals working in technical development roles at varying levels of an organisation. Although the course starts in that vein (Section 2) and that world features throughout the rest of the course via examples of people’s behaviour in such teams, the vast majority of the course is far more widely applicable than simply to technical systems development teams. There also seemed to be an emphasis on the Solution Architect role.
Much of the course content was either new to me or gave me terms and language to use to describe a large number of real life examples in my own career currently and in days gone by.
“Section 2: The Project Team – Leadership Roles” sets the scene by describing various roles in a technical development team including skills and reporting relationships. I note that this section contains one example of how to structure such a team but there are several alternatives that I have seen and working in during my career. I was personally disturbed to see that there were more cons for the Project Manager role than pros! ☺
The remaining sections each describe the symptoms, the causes and how to address a number of issues in leadership, communication and team working.
“Section 3: The Four Horsemen of Toxic Communication” describes four communication styles that are toxic in any human relationship in whatever context. It was good to get more detail on these. I was first introduced to these “horsemen” in a 1:1 with Sonsoles while we did the WOL circle together. This material is based on content from The Gottman Institute.
“Section 4: Toxic Leadership and Power” builds on the previous section describing issues of leadership and power that are also detrimental to individual and team performance. Interesting to see groupthink mentioned as I annotated an article on that earlier this year.
“Section 5: Leadership and Power Anti-Patterns” describes five commonly-observed toxic leadership and power issues impacting individual and team performance. I recognised each of these and multiple examples of these came rapidly to mind from my career to date.
“Section 6: Tools for Healthy Leadership” provides the six tools in the course title to create a healthy leadership culture in any team of any size in one organisation or across organisations.
“Section 7: Culture of Fear Anti-Patterns” describes four issues impacting team performance arising from a culture of fear, finger pointing and blame. Much of the content around analysis and planning was very close to home for me in my current roles.
The course content is highly practical and encourages the learner to diagnose the issues confronting their team(s) in their organisation (and across organisations in collaborative teams) and to then do something about them i.e. sort them out! I loved the practical implementability of this course.
My personal experience is that more often than not teamworking issues that impact performance are not properly identified, diagnosed or addressed and are simply ignored.
I highly recommend this course as an introduction to these subjects. I encourage people to apply this content to make their teams more effective and productive.
Note to Sonsoles and Mark
I definitely recommend creating a non-IT version of this course aimed at all teams and organisations regardless of function. This may just need the removal of Section 2 and, possibly, adding examples that are non-IT in the other sections.
It may well be that the IT audience requires this specific course as-is as they may be happier having a soft skills course in their “language” and with their scenarios. I also suggest reducing the emphasis on the Solution Architect role in this version.
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