Are you looking to improve your team's leadership and communication skills?

With over a decade of experience as an engineering leader and conference speaker, I offer interactive workshops and personalised coaching to develop these key areas.

My workshops are designed to be highly interactive, featuring hands-on exercises, moments for introspection, and lively discussions. This allows participants to immediately apply what they've learned and put their new skills into practice. With my background in online learning, I specialise in creating impactful learning experiences that resonate with participants long after the sessions end.

I’ve had the privilege of working with engineering teams and leaders across a range of organisations, including Planday, Bloom & Wild, Scan.com, and dxw. These workshops help teams communicate more clearly, develop leadership skills, and build confidence to have impact.

Communication Workshops for Engineering Leaders

As engineering leaders, we spend most of our time communicating: giving feedback, aligning priorities, setting boundaries, and guiding others.

Getting these conversations right is key to making the right type of impact: for your team, your stakeholders, and your projects.

Yet many communication challenges aren’t about confidence or technical skill: they’re about structure, clarity, and awareness. Leaders often find themselves avoiding difficult conversations, struggling to prioritise, or giving feedback that isn’t heard.

Working in tech, we know how to approach building a new product: we research our user base, we figure out what and for whom we’re trying to create something, and we make sure we constantly iterate on what we’ve come up with. These workshops apply that same intentional, design-led thinking to communication.

In these Communication & Influence workshops, I help leaders and senior engineers build awareness, design conversations intentionally, and use practical frameworks to communicate more clearly, influence outcomes, and navigate challenging situations with confidence.

Recognising and Preparing for Difficult Conversations

We start with building awareness. Before you can communicate better, you need to recognise what makes a situation hard and understand what’s underneath that difficulty.

Designing Your Communication

Once we know why conversations feel hard, we move to how to design them more intentionally. This workshop builds the practical skills to structure and adapt a message, to think in terms of audience, goals, and outcomes, and to be clearer about what success looks like for a conversation.

Giving Feedback That Lands

With that design mindset in place, we dive into how to design the details. Here, we explore frameworks that make feedback clearer, and more effective, and helping participants move from vague or overly cautious feedback to conversations that create learning and action.

Prioritisation, Delegation, and Saying No

Clear communication becomes critical when making decisions. This workshop focuses on how engineers and leaders communicate priorities, set boundaries, delegate effectively, and say no with clarity and confidence, without damaging trust or relationships.

Possible follow-up workshops

These workshops are often paired with:

  • Communicating Upwards
  • Asking Better Questions
  • Running Effective Meetings
  • Decision-Making Frameworks
  • Building Team Consensus and Navigating Conflict
  • Facilitation Skills for Engineering Leaders
  • Leading Without Burning Out

Each of the above topics is a stand-alone 2-hour workshop. Workshops can be made bespoke to fit your team. They can be adapted to teams that already have public speaking experience and need help levelling up or new teams looking to get into public speaking. The workshops can also be augmented with interactive feedback sessions and/or 1:1 coaching sessions. 

Curious to see how this could fit your team? Feel free to reach out today at melinda@seckington.com to explore further and discuss in an intro call.

Proactive Leadership Workshops for Engineering Managers

Learning the practical skills from someone who has been in the same shoes.

Great leadership isn’t about having all the answers.

It’s about creating clarity, guiding your team, and helping people take initiative in a way that builds trust and momentum.

Many engineering leaders struggle with balancing guidance and autonomy. Teams can be reactive, hesitant, or unsure of priorities, leaving leaders caught between delivery pressure and supporting growth. Managers want to coach, empower, and build trust, but often lack concrete frameworks or structured approaches to make it happen consistently.

These workshops teach practical skills and frameworks to help engineering leaders coach, empower, and develop their teams effectively. By fostering proactivity, alignment, and confidence, you can create an environment where your team thrives and delivers results.

Building Proactiveness

Learn to shift from reactive behaviour to intentional action using my proactiveness framework: awareness, intention, and action.

Coaching & Empowering in 1:1s

Embed coaching into your everyday leadership. Recognise when to coach versus direct, practise reflective listening, and apply coaching frameworks to guide your team.

Building Relationships

Develop the skills to build rapport, trust, and psychological safety with your direct reports, creating a foundation for effective collaboration and performance.

Goal-Setting for Managers

Guide your team in defining meaningful development goals. Learn frameworks to brainstorm, structure, and track progress toward achieving those goals.

Possible follow-up workshops

These workshops are often paired with:

  • Motivation, Ownership & Engagement
  • Leading Without Burning Out
  • Building High-Trust Teams
  • Facilitation Skills for Engineering Leaders
  • Running Internal Unconferences / Away Days

Each of the above topics is a stand-alone 2-hour workshop. Workshops can be tailored for your team, run as standalone sessions or combined into a short series. Sessions can be adapted for new managers, experienced leaders, or senior ICs stepping into leadership responsibilities, and augmented with interactive feedback or 1:1 coaching.

Curious to see how this could fit your team? Reach out at melinda@seckington.com to explore next steps and schedule an intro call.

Speaker Workshops for Engineers

Learning the practical skills from someone who has been in the same shoes.

Confidence doesn’t come from being fearless.

It comes from understanding your strengths, practising in safe environments, and learning how to show up even when things feel uncomfortable.

Many engineers struggle to share their work or influence outcomes because they lack confidence, are unsure how to structure messages, or feel invisible in meetings and presentations. Imposter syndrome, hesitation, and self-censorship can hold talented engineers back, limiting their impact and visibility.

These workshops help engineers and technical leaders build self-assurance, present their work effectively, and increase their visibility across teams and the wider organisation. By developing practical speaking skills and strategies for managing imposter syndrome, participants leave ready to communicate with clarity, confidence, and impact.

Improving Your Delivery and Confidence

Build presence, clarity, and self-assurance when presenting, speaking in meetings, or sharing ideas with peers and stakeholders.

Conference Speaking for Engineers

From idea generation to proposal writing and delivery, this workshop guides participants through the full process of speaking at conferences or public events.

Dealing with Imposter Syndrome

Reflect on personal experiences, explore common patterns, and practise strategies to overcome self-doubt while increasing confidence and visibility.

Possible follow-up workshops

These workshops are often paired with:

  • Internal Presentations and Demos
  • Storytelling for Engineers and Managers
  • Self-Advocacy and Career Visibility
  • 1:1 Speaking or Confidence Coaching
  • Designing High-Impact Messages for Stakeholders

Workshops can be tailored for your team, run as standalone sessions or combined into short series. They can be adapted for engineers at any level (from ICs to tech leads) and augmented with interactive feedback or 1:1 coaching to support ongoing development.

Curious to see how this could fit your team? Reach out at melinda@seckington.com to explore next steps and schedule an intro call.

Engineer Your Talks

You've decided you want to give a talk. But you know you need to work on your speaking skills.

Maybe you don't know how to identify an interesting topic others want to learn more about. Maybe you don't know how to write a talk proposal. Maybe you don't know how to deal with your nerves.

You don't know where to start.

That's what the Engineer Your Talks workshops are for!

In these interactive 2-hour workshops, you'll learn how to approach your talks by applying an engineering mindset. You'll familiarise yourself with a few models and frameworks to develop your talks in a structured way that you can replicate at any time.

  • Brainstorming Talk Ideas Workshop
  • Writing Talk Proposals Workshop
  • Developing Your Talk Idea
  • Structuring Your Story
  • Designing Your Slides
  • Improving Your Delivery

I run these workshops online regularly throughout the year, and you can sign up (yourself or your team members) for any of the upcoming sessions.

Do you want to arrange these workshops internally for your team? Reach out at melinda@seckington.com to explore further and discuss in an intro call.

Testimonials

I’ve had the privilege of working with engineering teams and leaders across a range of organisations, including Planday, Bloom & Wild, dxw, and many more. These workshops help teams communicate more clearly, develop leadership skills, and build confidence to have impact.

Here’s what a few of my clients have said about their experience.

Louise Bolden - Scan.com:

"It was really easy to work with Melinda to customise a two-part workshop for my team on the topics of product engineering ownership and effective communication.

After our initial conversations, she quickly understood the goals we had for each workshop. I was particularly impressed by the ideas Melinda brought to the table for the structure and activities within each workshop, as they were creative, interactive and engaging. The whole team enjoyed them and took practical ideas away."

Nicky Thompson - dxw:

"At dxw we are committed to developing strong leadership skills in our team, so we sent some of our new line managers on Melinda's Engineering Management workshops to make sure they were well prepared for their new roles.

Melinda was able to tailor the content around some existing internal training, so the sessions were fresh and effective without retreading our previous work. It's been a few months since we did the workshops, and I've been really pleased to see their skills and confidence grow - one manager said they felt like they came away with several new tools for their toolbox, and some new ways of approaching their work which I've seen them now being able to apply, and it's helped frame my own conversations with them in a useful way. I wouldn't hesitate to send more of my team on these workshops; the insights and practical techniques have been incredibly valuable for the team."

Why work with me?

I specialise in 1:1 training and coaching tailored specifically for engineers and engineering leaders. I have over a decade of experience as an engineering leader, a keynote speaker, an event organiser and a workshop facilitator, and over those years, I have helped many teams improve how they collaborate and communicate with each other. I understand tech audiences and offer workshops that bring an engineering perspective.

With a background in computer science, specialising in AI, I started my career as a software engineer before moving into engineering leadership. As an engineering manager at companies like the Wikimedia Foundation and FutureLearn, I focused on improving management practices, fostering a culture of learning, and helping teams work and communicate more effectively. I’ve also led internal outreach and training initiatives, equipping engineers with the skills to teach, mentor, and share knowledge within their teams and the wider tech community.

I’ve worked in startups and companies building online learning platforms, where I deepened my understanding of how people learn, communicate, and collaborate. That insight shapes my approach to training, making it engaging, hands-on, and immediately applicable.

I’m also an international conference speaker, having spoken at over 50 conferences on topics ranging from effective management to public speaking. Next to that, I’ve spent the past 18 years organising events to bring people together to learn from each other. I currently run the Tech Ladies Dinner Roundtables and co-organize the LeadDev London meetup, creating spaces where engineering leaders can connect and grow.

Combining my expertise in engineering, storytelling, event organising and online learning, I design impactful learning experiences that leave a lasting impression.

Need something more bespoke for your team? Reach out today at melinda@seckington.com to discuss collaboration opportunities and availability.

Email melinda@seckington.com