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This episode looks at how to get hired as a sales engineer while the hiring process itself is changing. David Ledger has run more than fifty interviews in his first three months at HiBob. He walks through the three questions that haven't changed in decades and still trip people up: why do you want to work here, why do you like being a sales engineer, and tell me about a deal you are proud of. The conversation gets specific about what a weak answer sounds like (a twenty-year life story, a complaint about a former manager, a timeline of events with no ownership) and what a strong one sounds like. That includes the test David applies to every deal story: if another SE had been there instead of you, would it still have closed?   The second half turns to what is new. Candidates are now expected to talk confidently about their own AI literacy, covering both what they use week to week and a view on where the role is going. CVs are screened and scored by AI inside applicant tracking systems before a hiring manager sees a shortlist, and that changes how a CV should be written. The episode also covers whether a candidate should try to close the interviewer, why the answer depends on who is across the table, and what the latest presales compensation data says about demand for SEs. For UK listeners, David flags a change to unfair dismissal protection under the new Employment Rights Act and what it could mean for probation periods.   For Sales Engineers and Technical Consultants weighing a move, and for the leaders hiring them, this is a practical guide to what interviewers are listening for right now. The fundamentals still decide a lot. As David puts it, a company is just a collection of humans, and hiring is still a human exercise at its core.   About the guest David Ledger is Director of Sales Engineering for EMEA at HiBob, the HR technology company. Before HiBob he led presales teams at Vimeo and Seismic, and his career has been spent in presales, mostly in leadership roles. He describes himself as a big advocate for the profession, and hiring is a large part of how he builds it.   Connect with David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dledger/  Show notes footer: Listen and subscribe: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1yU6AcoCLySqE1wGn80HOT?si=649d8f8c3d8b47a3  Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/tech-world-human-skills/id1674003078  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@techworldhumanskills/podcasts    Newsletter and archive: https://www.techworldhumanskills.com  Connect with Ben: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benpthoughts  Technical Storytelling for Individuals: https://www.elevatedyou.live/individuals  Technical Storytelling for Organisations: https://www.elevatedyou.live/organisations

Stoicism is not about feeling nothing. It is about deciding what deserves your energy and what does not.   This episode looks at how a 2,000 year old philosophy shows up in the daily grind of pre-sales, sales engineering, and technical leadership. Tony Francetic, Director of Pre-Sale Support at Thomson Reuters, walks through the four cardinal virtues of stoicism, wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance, and shows how each one plays out in a forecast review, a demo that crashes, or a deal where the cheaper product is actually the right call for the customer.   The conversation covers why knowing your product is not the same as knowing when to say it, why an SC once talked a customer into the lesser priced solution and what that cost and earned the team long term, and why qualification is really a form of temperance, saying no to opportunities that are not ready rather than chasing every deal that lands on the desk. Tony also tells the story of a live product crash in front of a room of customers during his early days as a trainer, and what composure actually looked like in that moment.   For Sales Engineers, Technical Consultants, Customer Success Leaders, and CTOs, the throughline is control. You do not control the outage, the no show, or the buying committee politics. You control your preparation, your honesty, and how you respond once the unexpected happens. Tony's framing turns that into something practical rather than abstract, with a simple exercise listeners can run after their next demo or forecast call.   Tony Francetic has spent 14 years at Thomson Reuters and the last decade leading pre-sales, after starting out in journalism and support before moving into training and then sales leadership. He shares stoic reflections applied to work on LinkedIn every Monday and Wednesday, and describes the practice as something he leans on for himself as much as anything he offers his team. Show notes footer: Listen and subscribe: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1yU6AcoCLySqE1wGn80HOT?si=649d8f8c3d8b47a3  Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/tech-world-human-skills/id1674003078  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@techworldhumanskills/podcasts     Newsletter and archive: https://www.techworldhumanskills.com  Connect with Ben: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benpthoughts  Technical Storytelling for Individuals: https://www.elevatedyou.live/individuals  Technical Storytelling for Organisations: https://www.elevatedyou.live/organisations Connect with Tony: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-francetic/

The skills that make someone a strong technical expert are rarely the skills that make them a strong leader of the business around that expertise.   This episode continues the conversation with Malcolm Murphy, who returns to Tech World Human Skills for a second time. The first conversation covered the people management skills a new leader needs. This one moves into the business management side, set specifically in the world of technical pre-sales. Malcolm lays out four areas he has come to rely on: partnering properly with your sales leader rather than acting as a service center, knowing your sales process well enough to know when it is right to deviate from it, understanding how organizations actually buy, and staying cross functional even when the day job keeps pulling toward the next urgent deal.   The conversation gets specific. Malcolm tells the story of a car purchase that never happened, and what it taught him about what buyers are really comparing you against. He and Ben talk about the difference between a sales process and a sales framework, when it is safe to break the rules, and why treating your sales counterpart as a genuine partner, not a supplier, changes how a whole team behaves. For Sales Engineers, Technical Consultants, Customer Success Leaders, and CTOs or engineering leaders trying to grow into a broader leadership role, this episode is a practical map of what that growth actually requires.   Malcolm Murphy has worked across organizations of every size, from global enterprises to small teams, and has held roles as an individual contributor, a solution consultant, a sales engineering leader, and now a sales leader at Mimecast. He has also spent time on the buying side of the table, managing a technology budget inside an end user organization, which shapes how directly he talks about what buyers actually think. Show notes footer: Listen and subscribe: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1yU6AcoCLySqE1wGn80HOT?si=649d8f8c3d8b47a3  Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/tech-world-human-skills/id1674003078   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@techworldhumanskills/podcasts   Newsletter and archive: https://www.techworldhumanskills.com  Connect with Ben: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benpthoughts  Technical Storytelling for Individuals: https://www.elevatedyou.live/individuals  Technical Storytelling for Organisations: https://www.elevatedyou.live/organisations  Malcolm Murphy Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/malcolmmurphy/

Fixing weaknesses feels productive, but doubling down on what you are already good at is usually what actually moves the needle. This episode explores the case for a strengths-based approach to work, using Gallup's CliftonStrengths assessment (formerly known as StrengthsFinder). It unpacks how the tool sorts thirty-four themes into four categories — relationship building, strategic thinking, executing, and influencing — and why the order those themes rank in for each person matters more than any individual score. Ben revisits his own results from 2002, the year he first took the assessment, and the conversation traces how understanding a low-ranked strength (in his case, analytical thinking) reframed what he actually enjoyed about a job built entirely around data and troubleshooting. The conversation then moves from individual reflection to team application. It covers an example from a leadership team where everyone's top strengths were put on cards with the names stripped out before staffing decisions were made for cross-business projects, removing unconscious bias from who got picked. It also looks at smart partnering, the practice of pairing people whose strengths cover each other's gaps, and a case where reassigning two team members to swap roles turned a frustrated manager's team around within months. For anyone who builds or leads teams, the throughline is practical: strengths data can replace guesswork in who does what, who gets picked for what, and why. **In this episode:**- [00:00] — Intro and welcome- [02:11] — Susie's background: Microsoft, StrengthsFinder accreditation, Red Book Consultancy- [05:40] — What CliftonStrengths is: Gallup's 34 themes and why rank order matters more than any score- [17:28] — Ben's 2002 results: top five and bottom five- [21:56] — Reframing a low-ranked strength: Ben's old job in technical support- [27:39] — Blind card-sorting to remove bias from staffing decisions- [29:27] — Case study: swapping two team members turns a team around- [38:07] — Smart partnering: pairing complementary strengths- [40:20] — Where to find Susie **Guest: Susie Harding**Susie runs the Red Book Consultancy. She spent seven and a half years at Microsoft, where she was chief of staff to three general managers and accredited in StrengthsFinder when Gallup first rolled it out across the UK subsidiary. Twenty years into running her own business, she works across technology, gaming, pharmaceutical, and sports organisations, helping leadership teams turn strengths data into decisions about roles, teams, and where people are genuinely likely to thrive rather than just get by. Connect with Susie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susie-harding-a9b2a74/Red Book Consultancy: https://www.theredbookconsultancy.com --- Listen to the full conversation above, and subscribe so you don't miss the next one. **Listen and subscribe:**Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eUGUEB7sApple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/eMHTNE-3YouTube: https://lnkd.in/esq9jDs2Newsletter and archive: https://www.techworldhumanskills.com Connect with Ben: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benpthoughtsElevated You: https://www.elevatedyou.live

Change management often fails for one simple reason: nobody diagnosed why people are actually resisting before throwing more training and communication at the problem. Matt Quinn, SVP of Sales and Go to Market at IFS Industrial Intelligence, joins the show to unpack how leaders diffuse resistance to disruptive technology, using the ADKAR framework (awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, reinforcement) as a lens for figuring out where a change effort is actually stalling. The conversation covers why leadership style has to shift depending on how competent someone is at a specific task, not their general reputation, and why pairing a vision led leader with a detail oriented "bad cop" tends to make change stick where either style alone would not. The episode also digs into a part of the AI conversation that gets less airtime: the 70 percent of the global workforce who do not sit at a desk. Quinn talks about what it takes to bring AI into industrial settings like production lines and field service, where the disruption looks very different from the desk based AI tools most tech media covers. He and Ben also talk about reward structures, the risk of mandating change without addressing the fear underneath it, and why looking before you leap beats jumping straight to a training rollout. Matt Quinn is SVP of Sales and Go to Market at IFS Industrial Intelligence, where he works on embedding AI into established ERP and field management systems. He previously worked at Oracle and Microsoft and has founded startups of his own, giving him a view of change management from both the big tech and founder side of the table. He is only a few months into the role, but the questions he is wrestling with are not new to him. He talks about the ADKAR framework he leans on repeatedly, the difference between coaching a beginner and coaching someone who has just been made a beginner again, and why he deliberately built his own leadership team around people who think nothing like him.   Show notes: Listen and subscribe: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1yU6AcoCLySqE1wGn80HOT?si=649d8f8c3d8b47a3  Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/tech-world-human-skills/id1674003078 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@techworldhumanskills/podcasts Newsletter and archive: https://www.techworldhumanskills.com Connect with Ben: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benpthoughts Technical Storytelling for Individuals: https://www.elevatedyou.live/individuals Technical Storytelling for Organisations: https://www.elevatedyou.live/organisations Connect With Matt Quinn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattquinn-aistrategy/

A tough job market rewards the people who can say, in one sentence, why they, and not the other thousand applicants, should get the role.   This episode turns into a live coaching session. Dr. Kyle Elliott, a tech career and executive coach, walks Ben through the exercise he uses with senior leaders across Silicon Valley: gathering feedback from people who knew you as a child and people who know you now, then finding the overlap. That overlap, in Kyle's language, is your fabulousness, the specific and provable things that set you apart from everyone else with a similar background.   The episode moves from theory into practice quickly. Kyle coaches Ben live, drawing out how Ben's own friends describe him, then pressing for the proof behind each trait: not just positive, but the specific week a deal fell through and Ben kept going anyway. That gap between a personality trait and a concrete story is where resumes and LinkedIn profiles usually fall flat, a problem Sales Engineers, Technical Consultants, and Customer Success leaders run into constantly once a market tightens.   The conversation also covers the part of hiring nobody agrees on right now: how much AI is actually reading resumes, and how much a candidate should let AI write theirs. Kyle's answer, drawn from clients inside Google, Amazon, and other large tech companies, cuts against the assumption that bots decide everything. He also unpacks his cake and frosting framework for balancing the qualifications a role demands against the individuality that gets someone remembered, and how to talk about weaknesses in an interview without hiding them or handing the interviewer a reason to say no.   Dr. Kyle Elliott,  is a tech career coach and executive coach at CaffeinatedKyle.com, working with senior managers, executives, and job seekers across Silicon Valley and the wider tech industry. He is a member of the invitation-only Forbes Coaches Council and a consultant with the Myers-Briggs Company, and his coaching has been featured in Business Insider, Fortune, and the Harvard Business Review. Show notes footer: Listen and subscribe: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1yU6AcoCLySqE1wGn80HOT?si=649d8f8c3d8b47a3  Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/tech-world-human-skills/id1674003078  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@techworldhumanskills/podcasts    Newsletter and archive: https://www.techworldhumanskills.com  Connect with Ben: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benpthoughts  Technical Storytelling for Individuals: https://www.elevatedyou.live/individuals  Technical Storytelling for Organisations: https://www.elevatedyou.live/organisations   Dr Kyle Elliott: https://caffeinatedkyle.com/freebies/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylecromerelliott/

This episode is the second of two conversations with Ron Whitson, and it picks up where part one left off. Ron returns to walk through the remaining four of his seven timeless behaviors for presales and solutions consulting professionals: show empathy, have a conversation, practice humility, and tell a story. Each behavior sounds intuitive on paper. Ron's job, and he does it well, is to show exactly how technical people get each one wrong in practice.   The empathy conversation goes further than the standard put-yourself-in-the-customer's-shoes framing. Ron draws a clear distinction between being in service to your audience and being focused on your own performance, and flags a specific mistake that catches a lot of experienced practitioners: when someone shares something and you jump in with "the same thing happened to me," you think you're building rapport. You're actually discounting them. The humility section is one of the most candid stretches of either episode. Ron talks openly about the early-career arrogance that came with knowing every piece of software on the market, and the slower realisation that telling an audience "I don't know, let me find out" can do more for your credibility than pretending you have every answer.   On storytelling, the conversation gets concrete. Ron argues for plain language over technical vocabulary, and makes the point with a tight example: one company presented storage capacity as 300 gigabytes an hour. Another described the same capability as 40 hours of content. Only one of those stays in the room after you leave. Ben adds his own angle on the Aristotle trifecta of credibility, logic, and emotional connection, and there is a brief, genuinely useful argument about English mustard.   Ron Whitson is Senior Director of Solutions Consulting at Thomson Reuters and author of A Friendly Human in Presales, a practical guide built from 28 years in the field. A signed copy and free audiobook codes are available at timelessbehaviors.com. Connect with Ron on LinkedIn. Show notes footer: Listen and subscribe: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1yU6AcoCLySqE1wGn80HOT?si=649d8f8c3d8b47a3  Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/tech-world-human-skills/id1674003078  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@techworldhumanskills/podcasts    Newsletter and archive: https://www.techworldhumanskills.com  Connect with Ben: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benpthoughts  Technical Storytelling for Individuals: https://www.elevatedyou.live/individuals  Technical Storytelling for Organisations: https://www.elevatedyou.live/organisations      Ron Links https://timelessbehaviors.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronwhitsonse/

Most technical professionals can fill a presentation with content. The harder problem is deciding what belongs, what order it goes in, and how to stop the audience forgetting everything before they walk out the door. In this solo episode, Ben unpacks two frameworks he comes back to every time he coaches someone through a high-stakes presentation. One is AOREN, a five-question template that acts as a North Star before a single slide gets built. The other is his go-to presentation structure, which maps the whole session from opening to close. AOREN stands for Audience, Objective, Remembered, Emotion, Next Steps. Ben walks through each element in detail: who is in the room and what they care about, how to hold two objectives in mind at once (yours and theirs), why narrowing down to three key messages before you start designing dramatically sharpens everything that follows, how to build emotional connection into content that is often dry and data-heavy, and how to be deliberate about what the audience should do the moment the session ends. He draws on recent coaching work with a head of data presenting an AI strategy to senior leaders, a professional navigating a difficult budget conversation, and a consultant pitching to government officials in developing countries. The same framework applies in all of them. The second half covers the go-to structure: a distinct beginning, three key theme sections that correspond directly to the Remembered section of AOREN, and a deliberate ending. Ben breaks down what actually goes inside each of those sections. The opening framework runs from breathe-and-smile through a hook, a clear statement of benefit, and the key messages upfront, before the audience has had a chance to zone out. The closing framework runs from a verbal signal that the session is ending through to a clean next-step ask. He also explains why building in the key messages at the start is not giving away the punchline: it is the only reliable way to make sure the people who matter hear them at least once. Listen and subscribe: Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eUGUEB7s Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/eMHTNE-3 YouTube: https://lnkd.in/esq9jDs2 Newsletter and archive: https://www.techworldhumanskills.com Connect with Ben: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benpthoughts   Blog Articles: AOREN - https://www.elevatedyou.live/blog/tslAOREN Content Flow - https://www.elevatedyou.live/blog/contentflow Beginning - https://www.elevatedyou.live/blog/presentation-opening-win-the-audience-in-60-seconds-elevated-you Ending - https://www.elevatedyou.live/blog/endingpresentationstrongly

This episode looks at why career growth in technology rarely happens by accident, and what people working in tech can actually do to take control of their own progression.   Ben sits down with Jeremy Burns, VP of Platform Engineering at Hawke and author of Earn More Move Up, to dig into the mechanics that decide who gets promoted, who gets paid more, and who quietly stalls. The conversation centres on a simple hierarchy that Jeremy uses for almost every career decision: customer, company, team, self. Reverse that order and your career suffers. Get it the right way round and the rewards follow naturally because you are creating real value for the business.   They also unpack the unwritten contract every employment relationship lives inside, the difference between endorsing and adjusting feedback, and why pay rises and promotions are a lagging indicator of work you did six to nine months ago. Jeremy explains why walking into a performance review with a beautiful self-pitch document is almost always too late, and what to do instead. Ben adds the leadership view from his time managing budgets at Microsoft, including the moment a manager sits down with their final pot of cash and realises someone has been quietly invisible all year.   The final section is about knowing when to leave. Jeremy uses the boat metaphor to talk about staying, accepting your boat, or moving on. Ben shares the eighteen months of planning that sat behind his decision to leave Microsoft and start Elevated You. The throughline is the same idea Jeremy returns to throughout: be first to your own rescue.   About the guest: Jeremy Burns is VP of Platform Engineering at Hawke, host of the Build Your Edge podcast, and author of Earn More Move Up. He started in marketing, taught himself to code, and worked through development and management into senior technology leadership over a long career. His view sits at the rare intersection of having been on both sides of the performance review table.   Listen and subscribe: Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eUGUEB7s  Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/eMHTNE-3  YouTube: https://lnkd.in/esq9jDs2    Newsletter and archive: https://www.techworldhumanskills.com  Connect with Ben: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benpthoughts  Connect with Jeremy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremyburns/

Buyers in a serious software evaluation sit through between eight and thirteen vendor demos, and most of them blur into the same slick performance, so the sales engineer who actually gets remembered is the one who shows up as a real human. This episode digs into the three timeless behaviours that Ron Whitson has spent twenty-eight years in pre-sales learning the hard way: be authentic, listen actively, and leave an impression. The conversation works through each one in turn, what gets in the way of doing it well, and the small habits that move the dial. On authenticity, Ron makes the case that imitating someone else's demo always reads as fake, and that in a market saturated with AI-generated polish, the slightly boring real version of you is more valuable than a perfect performance. On active listening, he separates listening to understand from listening to respond, and explains why putting the phone down and resisting the urge to jump in is harder than it sounds, especially for technical experts who already know where the question is going. On leaving an impression, he frames the audience reality clearly: when a buyer has watched a dozen presentations in a week, the differentiator is rarely the product, it is whether they liked you and whether the solution was simple enough to explain to a colleague. It also questions the lazy assumption that being audience-centric means becoming whatever the room wants you to be. Ron argues that you can adapt to the situation while staying anchored to a consistent set of values, and that giving yourself permission to say "I have not had that question before, let me come back to you" is itself an authentic move. Useful for Sales Engineers and Solution Consultants who are tired of polishing the same deck, and for leaders who keep getting feedback that their team's calls all sound the same. About the guest. Ron Whitson is Senior Director of Solution Consulting at Thomson Reuters and the author of A Friendly Human in Pre-Sales. He has spent twenty-eight years in pre-sales work, roughly half of that in leadership roles, and now spends a lot of his time coaching, mentoring, and developing solution consulting teams. Listen and subscribe: Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eUGUEB7s Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/eMHTNE-3 YouTube: https://lnkd.in/esq9jDs2 Newsletter and archive: https://www.techworldhumanskills.com Connect with Ben: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benpthoughts Elevated You Program: https://www.elevatedyou.live Ron Links https://timelessbehaviors.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronwhitsonse/

Stories are like mustard on a ham sandwich. A little lifts everything. An inch thick and you lose the room.   Tim Chinchen has spent 30 years in technology, half of that leading pre-sales teams. In this episode he walks through the storytelling habits that move deals and the ones that sink them. Why some cultures expect you to share your life before you share your ask. Why breaking a client's website inside a demo can work better than showing them a feature list. Why the classic hero's journey does not hold up in a 40-minute call where the exec might get pulled out after ten.   The conversation unpacks a three-act structure you can drop any story into, the three business themes every commercial story eventually serves (making money, saving money, and not getting sued), and the habit of putting the last thing first so even a distracted audience gets the point.   Tim also shares where he still gets it wrong. He recently used an AI note-taker to review his own job interviews and was told he used too many stories. The lesson is that the right number is rarely the maximum.   This is for sales engineers, pre-sales leaders, technical consultants, and anyone using narrative to get technical ideas across to people who have other things going on.   About the guest: Tim Chinchen has spent 30 years in technology, the first 15 as a developer and architect, the next 15 leading pre-sales teams. He ran Northern European sales engineering at Acme Packet before the company was acquired by Cisco for 3.7 billion dollars, and has spent the last 8 years running global pre-sales at PagerDuty. Find him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timchinchen/ Show notes footer: Enjoyed this episode? Here's what to do next: Get Ben's weekly newsletter, practical ideas for technical professionals, straight to your inbox: https://www.techworldhumanskills.com Follow Ben on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benpthoughts  Explore the Technical Storytelling Professional Program: https://www.elevatedyou.live  Follow Tim on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timchinchen/  Tech World Human Skills is the podcast for technical professionals who want to communicate, influence, and lead at the highest level.

How to get better results from your technical team is one of the most searched questions in tech leadership. And the answer is almost never about hiring better people. It is about how you assign work, how you give feedback, and how much oversight you are actually running. In episode 78 of the Tech World Human Skills podcast, Ben Caird joins Ben Pearce for the third episode in a mini-series on leadership in tech. Ben Caird has 25 years in software and technology and 15 years leading large operational teams across enterprise SaaS. This episode is the most practical of the three. What you'll learn: Match work to people by mapping aptitude and confidence, not just availability Give feedback that describes specific behaviours rather than character judgements Use the WIT framework (When, Impact, Therefore) to make feedback land without triggering defensiveness Diagnose whether your oversight is creating discipline or bureaucracy Balance honesty and empathy when a direct conversation cannot be avoided About Ben Caird: Ben has 25 years in software and technology, with over 15 years leading large operational teams across enterprise SaaS environments. He specialises in building high-performing teams, driving operational improvement, and leading transformation at scale. Episode Highlights: [16:35] — Ben introduces the idea that feedback is rocket fuel for performance and explains why even Djokovic still has a coach. [19:25] — The difference between giving feedback on behaviours versus judgements, with a sharp example about someone on their phone in a meeting. [22:20] — Ben shares the WIT framework from a BBC producer and walks through exactly how to use it in a tech leadership context. Connect with Ben Caird: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bcaird/ Enjoyed this episode? Here's what to do next: 📩 Get Ben's weekly newsletter — practical ideas for technical professionals, straight to your inbox: https://www.techworldhumanskills.com 🔗 Follow Ben on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benpthoughts 🌐 Explore the Technical Storytelling Professional Program: https://www.elevatedyou.live Tech World Human Skills is the podcast for technical professionals who want to communicate, influence, and lead at the highest level.

Most technical people get promoted because they're the best at the job. Then they spend the next 18 months quietly struggling. Nobody told them it is a completely different job. Malcolm Murphy has spent his career in technical pre-sales, leading solutions consultant teams across major vendor organisations. His view is blunt: the skills that got you promoted will actively hold you back as a manager. What you'll learn: Identify the three distinct buckets every new tech leader must manage from day one Build a proactive hiring bench before you even have a role to fill Set clear performance expectations without fearing the conversation Delegate outcomes instead of activities to unlock your team's performance Develop your people in a way that drives retention more than any salary increase About Malcolm Murphy: Malcolm Murphy has spent the majority of his career in technical pre-sales, moving from UNIX engineer to leading solutions consultant teams across major vendor organisations. He currently specialises in insider risk and human risk management at Mimecast and runs the Pre-Sales Leaders Forum community in the UK. Episode highlights: [approx. 5 min mark] Malcolm breaks down the three buckets every new manager must own: people, business, and company leadership [approx. 17 min mark] Why hiring is not something you do alongside your job. It is your job. How to build a proactive bench before headcount opens up [approx. 36 min mark] The micromanagement trap and why your personal blueprint for success might be the worst thing you impose on your team Connect with Malcolm: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/Malcolm-Murphy Enjoyed this episode? Here's what to do next: 📩 Get Ben's weekly newsletter — practical ideas for technical professionals, straight to your inbox: https://www.techworldhumanskills.com   🔗 Follow Ben on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/benpthoughts  🌐 Explore the Technical Storytelling Professional Program: https://elevatedyou.live  Tech World Human Skills is the podcast for technical professionals who want to communicate, influence, and lead at the highest level.

In this episode, Ben Pearce and Panos Malakoudis discuss the evolving landscape of leadership in the age of AI. They explore the five essential human competencies that modern leaders need: Insight, Integration, Inspiration, Integrity, and Impact.   Panos Malakoudis runs his own company - Citium Solutions.  He spent many years leading Consultancy and Engineering teams at Microsoft.  Then he led coaching programs for the Microsoft leadership community and even got a Guinness World Record for it.    Show Links Ben Pearce LinkedIn -  https://www.linkedin.com/in/benpthoughts/ Tech World Human Skills Home - https://www.techworldhumanskills.com Panos Malakoudis Linked In - https://www.linkedin.com/in/pmalakoudis/ Citium Solutions - https://www.citiumsolutions.co.uk/ Panos Forbes Page-  https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbescoachescouncil/people/panosmalakoudis/   Takeaways Leadership is changing due to rapid technological advancements. Empathy has become a crucial competency for leaders post-COVID. 95% of AI pilots fail due to lack of insight and connection to business needs. Leaders must integrate technology into their decision-making processes. Inspiration is key to managing change and addressing team fears. Integrity involves understanding the ethical implications of AI usage. Measuring impact is essential for assessing the success of AI initiatives. Leaders should create a culture of experimentation and support. The fear of becoming obsolete (phobo) affects both leaders and teams. The five competencies are not new but need to be reframed for today's challenges.   Keywords leadership, modern leadership, human competencies, AI, coaching, change management, integrity, impact, technology integration, inspiration

In this episode Ben Pearce and Nic Neate discuss what it's really like to build and be part of an AI native engineering team.  Nic shares his experiences and insights on how AI is fundamentally changing the way software is developed, the skills required for engineers in this new landscape, and the challenges organizations face in adapting to these changes.    Nic Neate is the CTO of @Nimbus.  He has many years working in the software world and previously worked at Metaswitch and Microsoft.   Show Links Ben Pearce LinkedIn -  https://www.linkedin.com/in/benpthoughts/ Tech World Human Skills Home - https://www.techworldhumanskills.com Nic Neate Linked In - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nic-neate-b3515210/ Nimbus - https://www.nimbusmaps.co.uk/     Takeaways AI is fundamentally changing software engineering. Vibe coding is using AI to write code. AI native means riding the wave of AI tooling. Being AI native enables you to do so much more. AI can do it in 10 minutes what you could do in a week. Context engineering is a key skill for engineers. Decision making is crucial in an AI native world. You need to invest in your tool chain. Recruitment processes need to change for AI roles. Maximize value for people working in AI.   Keywords AI native engineering, software development, generative AI, engineering teams, AI tools, context engineering, software productivity, AI integration, engineering leadership, tech transformation