Productive Conflict

Conflict on teams is essential. Without the ability to constructively dissent and debate diverse points of view, innovation and creativity become stifled. Yet conflict can also dissolve trust and breed resentment. When conflict gets personal, it can be a vicious cycle that makes workplaces unhealthy and unproductive. In this presentation, participants will learn specific skills for using empathy and effective communication to generate high-performing teams, fulfilling relationships, and healthy workplace cultures.

By incorporating recent research about conflict and team dynamics, participants will learn concrete skills to:

• Identify key differences between productive and destructive conflict patterns
• Explore how personal distress and defense mechanisms impede productive conflict
• Plot potential failure points as a way to improve communication proactively
• Engage in and encourage constructive dissent as a means of learning and creativity
• Develop specific communication protocols for common situations

Andrea Goulet, Heartware

Through her online courses, Andrea has taught over 50,000 students how skills like empathy can lead to better software teams, products, and codebases. Andrea is the author of the forthcoming book, Empathy-Driven Software Development and a passionate community builder. Her ideas have been featured in prominent industry media, such as The First Round Review, InfoQ, Software Engineering Daily, and more.

In 2009, Andrea co-founded Corgibytes, and spent over a decade helping clients modernize complex legacy software systems as its CEO. In 2015, she launched Legacy Code Rocks, an online community and podcast for people who find joy in software maintenance.

Andrea is currently the Co-Founder and Co-CEO at Heartware, an organization that focuses on helping tech teams transform 'soft' skills into software skills. She is the founder of Empathy In Tech, on online community where code and compassion connect.