Better Ways of Working

How to Collaborate Visually

Dave Borzillo

Former board member and instructor at BU Agile Innovation Lab

Understand the science and why combining visualization with collaboration is a powerful combination that yields results

Lead with collaboration & visualization

Develop the goal and outcome of an engagement and use AI to shorten preparation time.

Designing your events with AI

You'll know what needs to be in your toolbox if you're leading virtually or in person.

Executing for success

Leaders are remembered not just for their technical prowess but for the lasting impact they have on their team's careers and success. In an era where AI is transforming how teams work, the human side of leadership has never been more critical. This course equips both aspiring software engineering managers and experienced EMs alike with the essential interpersonal skills to amplify their influence and drive team performance. It leverages AI tools to enhance these fundamentally human leadership capabilities. Over 100 individual contributors (ICs) and EMs have already enhanced their leadership capabilities through this course. Join them and transform your approach to tech leadership for the AI era. -------- This interactive course will teach you how to solve 4 key problems faced by senior ICs and managers: 1️⃣ Identifying growth opportunities within your team and working with them to fill these missing areas—using both traditional mentoring approaches and AI-powered insights to personalize development plans 2️⃣ Communicating with clarity and impact with direct reports, peers, and upper management—enhanced with AI tools for message preparation, follow-up analysis, and communication refinement 3️⃣ Delivering constructive, actionable feedback that drives real improvement—using proven frameworks plus AI assistance for better situation analysis and delivery optimization 4️⃣ Balancing AI adoption with human needs by helping your team to navigate the challenges of AI integration while maintaining team trust and unity ------- For the duration of this course you'll receive: • 4 live sessions over 2 weeks hours over Zoom, with interactive lessons and breakout sessions• Hands-on learning by walking through case studies and real-life examples with your cohort• Templates and AI prompts you can immediately start using on the job• In-depth live Q&amp;A sessions to get immediate answers to your on-the-job questions• Recording and slides for future reference and review ------- Great leadership is more than just your title, it’s about supporting and growing the people around you. This is a course designed to give technical managers the skills and tools they need to become effective, influential leaders that can inspire teams as well as manage them. You’ve put in the hard work to get to management level, and on completing this course you’ll have the skills to prove yourself as a leader.

What makes a great engineering leader in the modern AI era?

Course syllabus

Session 1: Become the leader your team needs<ul><li>Identifying the types of high performers on your team</li><li>Managing medium and low performers</li><li>Using AI to identify trends in performance</li></ul>

Tuesday, August 19

Session 2: Career development without the noise<ul><li>Breaking down the 1:1</li><li>Quarterly development planning for your team</li><li>Building an AI bot to help you write QDPs</li></ul>

Thursday, August 21


Session 3: Communicate like a leader<ul><li>Managing expectations with your team</li><li>Negotiating with your PM and EM peers</li><li>Managing up in your organization</li><li>How to use AI to assist in these conversations</li></ul>

Tuesday, August 26


Session 4: Feedback and conflict without the fear<ul><li>Reframing your own views of feedback</li><li>Tactical feedback delivery framework</li><li>Practicing giving feedback with AI</li><li>Feedback case study</li></ul>

Thursday, August 28


New and experienced managers looking to build the interpersonal skills required to succeed as a leader in the AI era

Technical managers who want to develop their team and build influence across their company while navigating AI adoption

Aspiring managers looking to lay the groundwork to create impact as an IC and future leader, preparing for an AI-transformed workplace

Who this course is for:

After taking this course, you'll be able to:

Your success as a leader is measured by your team's execution, and to execute well, you need a great team. Learn to identify strengths, empower growth, and navigate AI's impact on team dynamics.

Build and scale a high performing team

1:1s and performance reviews don't have to be stressful. Learn how to keep the feedback loop active by applying proven frameworks and AI tooling to conduct meaningful 1:1s and provide tactical, actionable feedback to your team on a regular cadence.

Conduct impactful 1:1s and development check-ins

From performance management to resource allocation, learn frameworks for tough calls while leveraging AI for better information gathering. We'll cover how to gather the right information, involve the right people, and confidently communicate decisions upward and downward.

Make difficult decisions with confidence

Learn how to give constructive feedback from a trained therapist! Master effective communication strategies for conflict resolution within your team to build influence within your organization. Discover how AI can help you prepare for conversations and follow up effectively.

Navigate challenging conversations with peers and direct reports

Balance AI advancement with human needs, ensuring your team thrives in an AI-augmented workplace. Learn to maintain psychological safety during change, help team members adapt their skills, and create an environment where both AI tools and human creativity can flourish.

Lead through AI transformation

Master essential people skills to transform from technical expert to impactful leader in today's AI-driven tech landscape.

Kelly Vaughn

Cohort 5

Cohort 6

Your job as a CEO or team leader is not to order your team around, but to conduct an orchestra of highly talented individuals in a way that elicits engagement, collaboration and performance, delivering upon company goals while ideally, creating something beautiful along the way. This cannot happen when your team is not aligned, team members are stressed or burnt out, or for one reason or another, are not performing at their full capacity.&nbsp; Peak team performance is not derived from feel-good activities or mandatory team building trips. It requires optimizing the human element in your business to achieve more. It requires that you are just as passionate and engaged in what you are doing as they are, and just as passionate and engaged in them as they are. This is not an easy feat, but it is achievable. This course will provide you with the tools, systems and frameworks to help you reignite your passion and elevate your conducting skills, 10xing you and your team’s productivity. When your team is aligned and engaged, you get to spend less time in the business and more time on the business - setting the vision, accelerating growth, and making it a place your team members don’t want to leave.

Turn your team into an elite force in business.

Tuesdays & Thursdays

2 Modules Per Week; Optional 1:1 with Ali; 1 Final Integration Call

Sept 9-30

Course schedule

You are a new CEO or startup founder that wants to level-up your team's and your own performance.

You’re an ambitious team leader within a larger organization that knows your team is more capable than they are letting on.

You lead a team but you yourself are feeling burnt out or disengaged, and you know there must be a more elegant way of achieving your goals.

You are an executive at a rapidly growing company with a decentralized team, and are having trouble building alignment.

You're at an organization that has prioritized product-market-fit over culture, and you're starting to see the ramifications.

Who is this course for

What you’ll get out of this course

Hundreds of exercises, templates, and curated resources to help you clarify your Massively Transformational Purpose, and ensure it aligns with your company goals and values.

Clarity and Renewed Passion for Your Mission - Rekindle Your Love for Your Work

Proven formulas, processes and best practices for outlining crystal clear goals and determining whether you have the right people in the right seats. If you don't - and chances are you won't - guidance and resources on handling changes gracefully.

Crystal Clear Goals and an Understanding of Your Team-Purpose Fit

Science-based exercises for getting buy-in from your team - aligning your "why" with theirs. Frameworks for empowering them to execute without constant oversight, creating a culture where failures are accepted on the path to mastery, and collaborative momentum drives you forward.

A Blueprint for Helping Your Team Manage Itself, So You Can Focus On Your Area of Genius

Use the latest in neuroscience and psychology to build resilience in yourself and your teammates, freeing you all up to do your best, most impactful work, and have fun along the way.

A Burnout Proofing Guide for High Performing Teams, Helping You And Your Top Performers Become Resilient and Adaptable

Peak team performance does not happen naturally. It requires artfully optimizing the human element in business to achieve more.

Ali Winkle

Founder, Advisor & Culture Builder

Cohort 1

Cohort 2

Overall, leadership in remote workplaces requires a shift in mindset and a different set of skills compared to traditional office-based leadership. This course will help you develop the skills necessary to be a remarkable leader in virtual and hybrid work places. You will enhance your ability to communicate, create trust, adapt, and how to leverage technology to create a productive and connected virtual work environment.

Empower yourself and your employees to thrive in virtual and hybrid environment

We will meet for two hours as a group on Zoom (link in the calendar invite)

February 8th and February 15th

At the end of our first session you will have an assignment to complete prior to our second program.

Weekly projects

You are a people leader looking to maximize productivity in a remote and hybrid working environment.

You want to help foster collaboration and team cohesion despite physical distance.

You care about the wellbeing and mental health of your employees and want to create an environment of psychological safety.

What you can expect from this course

You will learn to sharpen the communication of yourself and your team by becoming more concise, inclusive, and proactive to ensure everyone on your team is on the same page and connected.

Enhance your communication skills

You will learn how to implement strategies to improve regular team meetings, inclusive decision-making processes, enhance psychological safety, and virtual team-building activities to create a deeper a sense of unity.

Enhance the dynamics of your team

You will work through common and challenging scenarios that occur in hybrid and virtual environments. These exercises will give you a plan of action to handle situations in your own working environment.

Hands-on practice and application

During our program you will receive materials and resources that can be used on an ongoing basis after our sessions end (such as team exercises, virtual project retrospective templates, etc.).

Resources and tools

This course will teach you to excel as a leader in a hybrid and virtual workplace.

Allen Levy

Cohort 4

The Leadership Crisis No One Talks AboutIt's 2:47 AM and you're staring at the retention dashboard. Again. Your "AI-enhanced" feature launched to fanfare three months ago—great press, executive excitement, promising initial adoption. Now you're watching 73% of users abandon it after the first session. Tomorrow's executive product meeting is focused on exactly this: the design problem causing the retention cliff. You need to present research findings and lead a strategy discussion that could reshape your entire approach to AI. This isn't just about fixing a feature—it's about defining what AI design leadership looks like. Why This Moment MattersYour credibility was built on predictable delivery. For years, you shipped experiences that worked consistently. Now you're pioneering something entirely new—and that positions you to lead the industry standard. The paradigm has fundamentally shifted: Traditional UX Design:- Deterministic systems with predictable, consistent experiences- One-way interaction where users experience a fixed interface- Success measured by users completing intended paths AI Systems:- Non-deterministic learning systems where every interaction changes future behaviour- Bi-directional adaptation where both human and AI evolve through each encounter- Success measured by the quality of the evolving relationship﻿ 54% of people don't trust AI systems despite 61% of respondents using them daily. (University of Melbourne and KPMG, 2025) That retention cliff isn't a failure—it's feedback. Users sense the mismatch between predictable tools and learning entities. You're uniquely positioned to solve what no one else has figured out yet. The OpportunityThe leaders who master relationship design first won't just solve their retention problems—they'll become the case study everyone else studies.This is your chance to define what trustworthy AI design looks like, rather than follow standards someone else sets. A Leadership Transformation in Three MovementsThis intensive journey rebuilds your leadership approach for the relationship design era: 1. Leading Through UncertaintyHow to guide teams building systems that learn and adaptCommunicating AI value to executives without overpromisingMaking decisions about technologies you're still mastering 2. Building Trust-First TeamsEstablishing design processes for non-deterministic systemsCreating quality standards for evolving AI relationshipsDeveloping team capabilities in trust signal design 3. Scaling Relationship DesignImplementing frameworks that work across your entire organisationMeasuring success in dynamic, learning systemsBuilding competitive advantage through trustworthy AI ﻿For Design Leaders Under PressureDesigned for leaders who must deliver AI transformation while maintaining team confidence and executive credibility—who recognise that relationship design isn't just a new methodology, it's the fundamental shift that determines whether your organisation leads or follows. Whether you're currently:A UX Design Leader orchestrating team transformationA UX Research Leader scaling insights through AIA Strategic Design Leader defining AI-enhanced experiencesWhat unites our participants is their recognition that leading AI adoption requires something more nuanced than traditional management approaches. The Essential Leadership Outcomes You emerge with:Frameworks to guide teams building learning systems you can't fully predictLanguage to communicate AI value without technical BS to executivesProcesses that maintain quality while embracing non-deterministic outputsMetrics that prove relationship design delivers measurable business impactA network of leaders defining the standards everyone else will follow Most importantly, you join a community of leaders pioneering this emerging discipline—professionals who understand that the most valuable AI systems won't be those with impressive technical specifications, but those designed with profound understanding of human trust dynamics. A Limited ExperienceLimited to fifteen participants per cohortFocused on meaningful exchange and personal attentionA deliberate practice developed through engagement with fellow leaders "The leaders who recognise this shift first won't just survive the transition—they'll define what relationship design looks like for everyone else." ** This course can you considered as an Add-On to the Human-Centred AI : Building AI Systems People can Trust. https://maven.com/ai-flywheel/human-centred-ai

Lead with Trustworthy AI: Design, Innovate & Inspire

Weekly LIve Ethics Lesson 90 minute sessions where we unpack 1 ethical principle in depth and have peer to peer conversation.

Thursdays - Live Workshops

You'll be given<ul><li>&lt; 60 min of e-learning modules per week</li><li>practical exercises</li><li>micro-habits to apply learnings directly to your AI use in your daily work</li></ul>

Self paced learning 

You have access to BONUS lessons to build your personal AI literacy - this optional session is a group coaching opportunity for any questions or challenges you have using AI for your own work.

Optional - AI Help Office Hours

UX &amp; Design Directors : Balancing executive AI demands with your team's creative integrity and fear of replacement.

UX Research Leaders : Scaling research with AI whilst preserving methodological rigour and meaningful human insights.

Service Design Leader : Reimagining end-to-end experiences with Human+AI interactions whilst maintaining human agency and trust.

You'll leave being able balance innovation with user trust, giving you confidence to lead AI initiatives that executives support.

1. Strategic AI Roadmap for Design Teams

Master proven design patterns that increase user trust in AI features by 30%. You'll learn exactly where transparency, human oversight, and error correction mechanisms create measurable improvements in adoption and retention.

2. Trust-Building Design Patterns 

Transform your designers from AI-overwhelmed to AI-empowered with frameworks that show exactly where AI enhances rather than threatens creativity. You'll restructure workflows that boost productivity whilst preserving your team's unique human value.

3. Team Transformation to AI-Enhanced Operations

Establish yourself as your organisation's trusted authority on Trustworthy AI design. You'll master the language, metrics and case studies that convince skeptical stakeholders, positioning you as the strategic bridge between technology and human experience.

4. Leadership Positioning Strategy

The live weekly sessions we unpack 1 ethical principle using a real world case study of an AI implementation that went wrong. Having peer-to-peer discussions and practice applying the ethical principle to a new case study. Allowing you to practice applying in safe space.

5. Real-World Implementation of AI Ethical Principles

Design leaders are under pressure—expected to adopt AI, guide teams through change, protect creativity, and build trust at scale.

Lightning Lessons

How to Collaborate Visually