Course Review: Management Fundamentals for the Modern Leader with Kelly Vaughn

Recently, I had the opportunity to participate in Kelly Vaughn’s Management Fundamentals for the Modern Leader course on Maven. Kelly, a Director of Engineering at Spot AI, brought her many years of experience in engineering leadership to a small, interactive cohort of just five participants, creating a personalized and deeply engaging learning experience.

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What Made the Course Stand Out 📔

- Kelly’s teaching approach is approachable, insightful, and immediately actionable. She has a talent for breaking down complex leadership concepts into bite-sized, practical steps.

- The small cohort size fostered meaningful discussions and allowed for one-on-one feedback, which was incredibly valuable.

- Topics like quarterly development planning, navigating conflict, and giving impactful feedback were especially relevant to modern engineering teams.

If I could change one thing about the course, it would be to make it longer—Kelly has so much knowledge to share, and I wanted more time to absorb it all!

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Key Takeaways 💡

One of the standout moments for me was learning about frameworks for effectively supporting and growing engineering teams. Kelly’s practical tips, paired with real-world examples, left me inspired to immediately incorporate what I learned into my leadership practices.

She also introduced some lightweight tools for tracking team progress and improving 1:1s—simple yet transformative approaches that can help any manager connect better with their team.

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Would I Recommend This Course? 🤔

Without a doubt! As someone who is recently stepping into management, I felt this course offered a wealth of tools and strategies to help me navigate the complexities of modern engineering teams.

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If you’re curious to dive deeper into Kelly’s insights, I highly recommend subscribing to her newsletter, The Modern Leader. It’s packed with actionable advice and resources for engineering managers looking to grow. Her newsletter is a fantastic way to access similar content from the course.