Tech Talent North Toronto - 2024 Highlights
November 04, 2024
Connecting to Learning and Innovation
We kicked off our 3rd annual Tech Talent North conference in Toronto this week with our fantastic conference chair, Michelle Brooks, Chief People and Culture Officer at Security Compass. Michelle introduced the unique focus of the day, “Tech Talent North is intentionally niche - HR + Tech + Canadian. It’s the only conference of its kind!”. She encouraged us to build community, and challenged us to make the most of the time that we’ve invested by sharing vulnerably and making connections. People and Culture leaders are the unsung heroes in tech, and this event helps us hone in on what’s important. It’s where we can connect with industry peers and re-energize in order to lead growth, change, and innovation in our organizations.
Session Highlights
First up, was our morning keynote - Disruptive Leadership for an Entrepreneurial Workplace, with Fahd Alhattab, Founder, Unicorn Labs. In Fahd’s high energy, engaging talk he delivered a powerful session for People and Culture leaders. The key takeaways? Identify and enable your high performers, 70% of team engagement variance is determined by the leader, and teams can grow beyond the leadership they receive.
To build high performance teams focus on:
- Psychological safety: Confidence that the team won't punish someone for speaking up.
- Empowerment: Push decision-making down for high velocity and quality.
- Effective communication: Clear, open channels at all levels.
- Culture of leadership: Developing leaders at every level.
- Sense of purpose: A shared goal that drives engagement.
- All-encompassing vision: A clear, unifying vision for the future.
Great cultures bring problems up to the surface, where they can be solved. “You don’t want leaders who can put out fires, you need leaders who can start fires”, said Fahd. In a culture of psychological safety, employees can have productive conflict and debate and help solve problems without fear of embarrassment or reprimand. When searching for those high performers, teams matter more than individual talent and will be your competitive advantage.
Next up, was the hot topic, AI & HR: Practical Tactics for Future-Ready People Ops. Our panel had some great recommendations for AI tools, such as Metaview (an AI scribe for recruiting), Perplexity (an AI search engine) and Nadia Ai (a coaching tool). Roald Harvey, Senior Director of People, at Athennian, gave us a live demo to show us how one can use AI to easily create a job description, adjust it, and then generate social media posts, LinkedIn messages and interview questions for the job all in 3 minutes!
In our lunch keynote, Thriving Under Stress: Bringing Your Best When it Matters Most, with Ann Gomez, Speaker, Author and Founder, Clear Concept Inc., she shared her practical wisdom with strategies to build resilience in stressful circumstances. How to build resiliency? Reframe our mindset as leaders and take positive action:
- Is this stress debilitating or enhancing?
- Is the situation impossible or challenging?
- Turn ‘I can’t’ and ‘I have to’ into ‘I can’t yet’ and ‘I get to’.
- In stressful situations ask yourself and your team – what are the gifts in this?
- Respond (instead of react), notice, pause, choose.
- Take it one step at a time.
- Lean on your network.
Treating challenges as opportunities reframes our mindset, creates positive action and confidence, and helps us respond to workplace demands with resilience when stress is high.
In one of the insightful afternoon keynotes, Turning Purpose Into Profit: Strategies for Sustainable Business Growth, with Carolyn Lawrence, Founder of ClearPath, she shared two case studies from Salesforce and Shopify, with key takeaways for sustainable success:
- Start with a committed CEO who drives purpose from the top.
- Self-diagnose and prioritize your highest-impact opportunities and gaps.
- Develop a co-ownership accountability model to increase team buy-in.
- Continuously measure implementation, progress, and impact.
- Reinforce with programs, communications, and reporting to ensure lasting change.
The common pitfalls to avoid:
- Siloed plans that don't integrate across teams.
- Starting your strategy with a program, instead of a purpose.
- Lackluster leadership accountability.
- Focusing only on diversity or the environment instead of a holistic view.
- Waiting for a “future state” of business maturity before acting.
This session covered proven strategy frameworks for People and Culture leaders to transform your organization’s good intentions into measurable impact for today’s tech landscape.
These were just a few of the many thought provoking sessions throughout the day.
Leaning into Insights for the Future
From thought leadership to real-world strategies, this conference is where Canada's People and Culture leaders in tech come together for an engaging day of learning.
Each keynote and breakout session was packed with insightful discussions and learning opportunities on hot topics for future-ready work, leadership, and people operations, offering practical tools to implement in our organizations right away.
Thank you to our speakers, conference steering committee, and event partners who all made this day possible at The Quay, a beautiful venue in Toronto! We’re grateful to everyone who came to the conference this year! We hope you were able to make some great connections.
What were your key takeaways or favourite part of the day? Let us know on LinkedIn, tag us at #TAPNetwork and #TechTalentNorth.
About Tech Talent North
This event is built by tech sector culture leaders and innovators and was founded by TAP Network in 2012. We re-launched the event as Tech Talent North in partnership with Cube Business Media in 2021, and it is now offered annually in both Vancouver and Toronto.