It was early April 2020, we were marooned in our respective homes. Everyone was going through their own lockdown experiences (and challenges) and we were fascinated with how other tech leaders were dealing with these extraordinary events. So we launched Lockdown Learnings, a series of online interviews with tech leaders…

Giving constructive feedback to the people you manage is often one of the more uncomfortable tasks you face as a tech leader and yet it’s one of the most important leadership skills to get right. Pitch it badly and you could be suffering some severe consequences. Too soft and you might…

Back in 2012, I started a two-man agency in Manchester with aspirations of becoming the goto company for helping SMEs achieve digital transformation. We had to start with the basics which meant websites, apps, print … yep, you name it, we probably had a tender for it at some point. …

Whether we like it or not, part of being a technical leader is mastering the time-consuming, and sometimes painful recruiting and hiring process. To be successful as a technical leader you need an exceptional technical team but the good news as a leader, is that you own the responsibility to…

It’s a remarkable human foible that we can spot the 1 negative person in 100 smiling faces. Anyone who has performed on stage or delivered a presentation will recognise the sensation of spotting that face in the crowd who looks far from impressed or engaged with what you’re saying. It’s…

For today’s article, our author Zoe Fragou actively listened to all her tech-coachees when they told her they don’t know how to actively listen to their own team members. However, they usually listen to her, which can only mean that active listening is not a skill, but most probably a…

We’re lucky at CTO Academy to work with tech leadership coaches around the world and this week we’ve got a great article from Owen Evans based down in New Zealand which looks into what can go wrong with remote working, and how to make it right. “A lot of us…

Emotional intelligence (“EQ”) in the workspace is a leadership topic and conversation that become particularly hot in recent years but which some technology leaders struggle with. But what exactly is emotional intelligence and why does it come so high up the list of key attributes for effective technology leaders? Most…

“Success is stumbling from failure to failure without any loss of enthusiasm” — Winston Churchill It’s always easy to see people at the top of their tech career or sporting discipline, where they make success look “relatively” straight forward, and presume it’s been a gilded path to the top but…