Bill Lennan on Communication, Coaching and 40% Team Turnarounds | Ep 259 | DevReady Podcast

·45 min·3 clips

A CTO tells Bill his team is now the best performer in the company, with throughput up 40%.

The host opens by saying he prefers not to script guests too tightly. Bill Lennon introduces himself as a Silicon Valley software engineer with 30 years of experience. Most of that time was spent in startups and mid-sized companies. He has also worked at Google and at other very large organizations. His steady focus has been helping people work effectively. He says he started leading software teams with fewer than five years of experience. He is proud of the teams he built and the people he worked with. Bill also says he came into tech late, after avoiding computers in college. He did not start in the field until he was 32. From there, he turns to the practical problem of getting comfortable talking to people. He describes starting small with a simple greeting in the checkout line. Then he moved to five-minute speed-networking events with a written script and three questions. The script gave him control and kept him from going blank. After a few rounds, the practice started to feel natural. He then stretched to 15-minute events with more questions. By the time he reached 30-minute conversations, he was no longer inventing new prompts every time. Instead, he listened closely and followed the thread of what people said. That shift let him relax enough for the creative part of his brain to take over. He then applied the same method to presentations by practicing with his software team as a volunteer audience. His boss later asked him to start presenting more often. The conversation closes by circling back to Silicon Valley, where the local culture does not just live inside the hype cycle, it helps create it.

As heard by us

A practical talk on building communication skills the hard way.

Bill Lennon's conversation on the DevReady Podcast stays focused on the habits that support technical leadership: a late start in tech, 30 years in Silicon Valley, and the kind of experience that shapes how he coaches, presents, and keeps people effective.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

If you want a practical listen on learning to network and present as a technical leader, Bill Lennon brings a grounded Silicon Valley story.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from DevReady Podcast