The impromptu summit: Contextualizing Leadership

To celebrate our recent rebrand, we brought together incredible leaders from across the tech community to share their knowledge, experiences, and actionable advice to elevate people managers all over.

From ideation to going live, this summit came to fruition in a matter of days. What started out as a simple tweet…

… turned into a 10-hour long summit on Thursday, June 24. And what an amazing day it was!

If you weren’t able to join us for the jam-packed day of learning, not to worry, we recorded most of the sessions! In this article, you’ll find the live recordings from the following events.📹

• Keeping your remote team aligned with goals
• 4 Leaders share their approach to 1:1s and best practices to follow
• A sneak peek into what’s coming down the Hypercontext product pipeline
• From IC to manager: Managing up, down, across, and diagonally
• How to manage your remote team without smothering them

Keeping your remote team aligned with goals

The most significant fear that leaders and managers have when building a remote team is that everyone will slack off, and no one will be productive.

So, how do you fight it? By keeping everyone aligned and on track to hit goals.

Check out this session, presented by Hiba Amin, Senior Marketing Manager at Hypercontext, to learn about:

• Why goals are critical to your team’s success
• Common goal-setting frameworks
• A 7-step goal-setting process for remote managers

4 Leaders share their approach to 1:1s and best practices to follow

Managers are the single most important benefit any company can offer their employees. When employees and managers communicate frequently and continuously share feedback (both ways), they’re more likely to be engaged in the workplace.

The most powerful way managers can engage their employees and share feedback? 1:1 meetings.

In this session, 4 leaders walk through how they approach 1:1s with their team, including but not limited to:

• Frequency and length
• Non-negotiable rules (i.e. never cancel or reschedule)
• Practicing vulnerable leadership
• Creating psychologically safe spaces that encourage continuous two-way feedback sharing

Speakers for this session included:

• Hiba Amin, Senior Marketing Manager at Hypercontext
• Jordan Hirsch, Director of Strategy at Phase2
• Amalia Fowler, Director of Marketing at Snaptech Marketing
• Fabian Camargo, Management Coach at Camargo Consulting LLC

Check it out:

Product sneak peek: What we’re building at Hypercontext

In the afternoon, we were joined by Hypercontext Co-Founder and CTO, Graham McCarthy, Senior PM, Adam Walker, and Senior UX Designer, Lucas Espin, who shared:

• A sneak peek into what’s coming down the product pipeline
• Pro tips, shortcuts, and Hypercontext easter eggs

Check out the recording to learn more about what you can expect from Hypercontext in the near future straight from the product team.

From IC to manager: Managing up, down, across, and diagonally

As an individual contributor, the lines of communication are more linear. You communicate feedback and updates to your manager, your team, and sometimes senior leadership if you’re lucky enough to have skip-level meetings.

However, once you step into a management position, all of a sudden you’re getting pulled in every direction. It’s a lot to manage.

In this session, Benyamin Elias, Director of Growth Marketing at Active Campaign talks about how to navigate all of the lines of communication managers experience.

How to manage your remote team without smothering them

As a remote leader, you don’t get to see your team physically working at their desks.

But, that’s not an invitation to micromanage your team.

In this talk, Brennan McEachran, Co-Founder and CEO of Hypercontext walks through the ways in which leaders can lead a high-performing team from afar. We walk through one-on-one best practices, goal-setting, and building trust.

Other conversations we had

That’s not all! We also had some great conversations on Twitter, including:

• Top management complaints from direct reports and what to do instead
  • With the following 6 expert panelists, we walked through common gripes direct reports have with their managers and advice around how to avoid being the manager no one likes.
    • Brennan McEachran, CEO and Co-Founder at Hypercontext
    • Hiba Amin, Senior Marketing Manager at Hypercontext
    • Renita Kalhorn, Executive Coach at The Flow Factor
    • Moly Milosovic, Senior Manager at Community at Jobber
    • Darja Gutnick, CEO & Co-Founder at Bunch AI
    • Nael El Shawwa, Head of Engineering at Perpetua

• How the heck do I manage a remote team?
  • These 7 managers came together to discuss how to manage a remote team, covering everything from loneliness and building trust to best practices for communication.
    • Brennan McEachran, CEO and Co-Founder of Hypercontext
    • Justin Mitchell, CEO and Co-Founder of Yac
    • Andrew Edelman, Head of Strategic and Platform Partnerships at Zapier
    • Corine Tan, Co-Founder at Kona
    • Vicki Yang, VP, People Operations at Bonusly
    • Valerie Aguiar, Marketing Manager & Chocolate Sustainability Lead at Nestlé
    • Janet Mesh, CEO and Co-Founder at Amital

• Bracing for impact: First-time manager woes and triumphs
  • 4 first time managers walked through their experiences when making the transition from IC to manager, shocks to the system they encountered and where they’d like more support from senior leaders.
    • Hiba Amin, Senior Marketing Manager at Hypercontext
    • Abby Reimer, SEO Manager at Uproer
    • Tyler Sellhorn, Director of Customer Experience at Hubstaff
    • Jei So, Growth and Content Manager at Growclass

We’ll be sharing insights from these discussions on our Twitter and LinkedIn pages! Follow along to join the conversation:

Thanks for an amazing day! We hope you learned as much as we did. 😄