Make it Awkward
Why saying hard things matters at work (and how to actually do it)
April 10, 2024 from 12-1:30pm ET
Featuring Jane Davis, Shannon Leahy, Clara Kuo, and Shawna Hein. Pay what you wish. Suggested price: $15.
Recording will be shared with all registered attendees.
Your PM didn’t scope enough time for research, so you Slack your work bestie the eye-roll emoji and call them a jerk. You’re feeling disappointed with a direct report, but find yourself talking around the problem in your next 1:1. You notice a new feature shipped with low-quality content, so you send a spicy email pointing out all the problems and attach your “Why content design matters” deck again.
We hear stories like this all the time in our coaching practice. And we get it! Talking about hard things is… hard. So instead, we hem and haw. We avoid. We fake-smile. Or maybe we get snippy, hitting send on angry emails and treating cross-functional partners like enemies.
Ultimately, these patterns—avoidance, defensiveness, and us-versus-them thinking—get us nowhere. They make our projects painful and our days exhausting.
More than anything, they keep us disconnected from the humans we work with—at a moment when we need connection more than ever. Because the real problem at work isn’t a misaligned colleague or a struggling team member. It’s the extractive, inhumane systems that pit us against one another and treat us like we’re disposable.
Having hard conversations won’t fix our organizations’ incentives, but we believe it’s pretty magical anyway. Because when we choose to make it awkward—to say what needs to be said even when it feels uncomfortable, to get curious about someone even when we don’t understand their perspective, and to talk through conflict instead of around it—we choose connection. We choose community. We choose our shared humanity.
About this event
At this event, we’ll be joined by a panel of leaders working in design and product who’ve all taken the plunge into having hard conversations—and found that life really is better on the other side. They’ll share:
When and how they realized they needed to form better relationships at work
The mindset shifts they needed to make to break through habits of avoidance
Techniques for starting difficult conversations about expectations, boundaries, feedback, and conflict
How they’ve learned to move through fear, get past the awkward part, and just say it
We’ll close with sharing a tool for starting hard conversations, and facilitating a self-reflective activity designed to help you transform what you heard into practical next steps for yourself.
Our panel
Jane Davis, UX research leader
Shannon Leahy, senior content design manager, Adobe
Clara Kuo, UX research leader
Shawna Hein, VP of experience, Code for America
Register now
This is a pay-what-you wish event, with a suggested price of $15. If you’re unemployed or facing financial hardship, please register for the minimum price of $1 (with zero guilt!).
This event will be recorded and shared with all registered attendees.
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More about our panelists
Jane Davis, UX research leader
Jane Davis is a UX research leader who specializes in helping organizations make better decisions by understanding people. She has experience building and scaling research practices at companies both large and small, and loves talking to humans about how they get things done.
She established and scaled the UX research function at Zoom as their first-ever director of UX research and content design, scaled and matured the UX research and content design practices for Zapier as their head of research, and led teams at Dropbox and BitTorrent. Most recently, she was principal researcher at Great Question. When she's not doing research, she's probably outside or making something with her hands. She loves coffee, croissants, and crossword puzzles.
Shannon Leahy, senior content design manager, Adobe
Shannon has worked at the intersection of words, strategy, design, and people for more than 15 years. She calls Richmond, Virginia home, and organizes meetups for local and global content and UX communities.
When she’s not exclaiming about error messages, you can find her snuggling up for movie night with her family and two dogs. Shannon’s favorite neutral is leopard print. Her superpower is asking questions… lots of questions.
Clara Kuo, UX research leader
Clara is UX research leader with 10+ years experience, including building new research practices at different companies. She helps teams to connect and empathize with users, especially in fast-paced startup environments. Most recently she led a "team-of-one" practice at Vivian Health, which helps nurses and allied professionals to find jobs. Her research focus areas are in B2B healthcare tech and social impacts to the patient experience.
Clara identifies as a third-culture kid. She is fluent in three languages and has lived in the UK and Hong Kong. She enjoys urban sketching and spending time with her two young daughters.
Shawna Hein, VP of experience, Code for America
Shawna Hein is a civic design leader who nerds out on how to organize and run teams to ensure psychological safety, feel empowered, and make the highest positive impact. Currently, she is building an experience practice with ~50 folks across UX and service design, qual research, data science, and customer success at Code for America, whose vision is government that works for the people, by the people, in the digital age.
In her last role, Shawna ran a team of folks working in collaboration with USDS to build VA.gov. With multiple degrees related to Information Management, Computer Science, and Sociology, Shawna brings a unique combination of skills to her work. When she’s not working, she occasionally has time to read, garden, and hike, but she’s mostly a lab assistant and robot-making co-conspirator to her 9-year-old son.