Engineers bring intellectual skills to make great systems. But what do you bring to make a great team or organization? Culture is the architecture of human groups, and engineers who aspire to lead themselves and others need to learn the components and patterns of creating great culture. Unlike finite state machines, however, humans are a fuzzy science indeed, and we the scientists are part of the problem and the solution.

Being able to build and lead a successful group requires a new set of capabilities that aren’t taught in school and don’t come from certification programs. Emotional intelligence to recognize good and bad patterns of behavior, listening skills to get the true information you need to understand a person, empathy to be able to not only gain insight but deliver true support and leadership for others -- these are just some of what can be acquired and deployed. Just as developers learn to read code and reason about it backward and forward, you can learn to read yourself, your team, and your organization in order to understand what led to the present state and how to achieve a future state.

This talk will focus on a concrete set of skills that you can and should develop for your own benefit, and that of any group of people you come to lead.