Personal Thoughts
Robert Galen
We've Moved
We've Moved
Walking Their Talk, Sustainability, Inspiration
Robert Galen
Sustainability

I saw this wonderfully courageous and informative post by Sabine Canditt the other day where she wrote about Sustainable Scrum. 

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sustainable-scrum-responsible-choice-sabine-canditt-x0gef

After just completing a The Week program facilitated by the amazing Ann-Marie Kong, it touched my heart.

That said, I wanted to highlight one comment reaction/interaction between Sabine and Erich Bühler 

Erich said—

Thank you for bringing this approach into the world! Scrum does provide an iterative approach for teams to create value, but its scope is limited to the product level and struggles with dynamics across the whole organization for several reasons.
Without updating the underlying business and financial model at a strategic level, Scrum alone cannot transform organization-wide sustainability.

Sustainability
Short-takes, Inspiration
Robert Galen
Sandy’s Take
Sandy’s Take
Short-takes, Personal Thoughts
Robert Galen
The Human Aspects of Agile Coaching
The Human Aspects of Agile Coaching
Coaching, ACGW, Personal Thoughts
Robert Galen
Keys to Building your Coaching Relationships

I talk a lot about the first step in coaching any client (individual, system, team, etc.) is to build a relationship, gain empathy and understanding, and then gain an idea of where/how to help initially. So, do NOT start to coach until you’ve done some relationship-building. 

But what does a coaching relationship, or a professional relationship in general, look like? What are aspects of that? Here are a few things that come to my mind—

  • Making + taking the time.

  • Explaining what you do—what is Agile Coaching.

  • Building some empathy; walking in their shoes; understanding where they are coming from.

  • Meeting them where they are.

  • Listening; reflective listening; building metaphors together.

  • Connecting with their language, not yours.

Keys to Building your Coaching Relationships

Life vs. Agile Coaches

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What Happened to Agile Coaching?

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What Happened to Agile Coaching?

Todd Charron posted a rather Big Question on Linked in February 2023. And it’s supported by this blog with more details. 

I thought I’d share a snippet from Todd’s post to whet your appetite—

But I don’t see these kinds of coaches as often as I used to

Now I see--

  • “You’re going to have bring in more coaches”

  • “You have to follow the process exactly”

  • “If only we had management support / buy-in”

  • “Which certification should I get next?”

  • “I’m studying to be a life coach…”

The last one, in particular, annoys me

It’s like a bunch of life coaches discovered Agile

And since they can’t get hired as life coaches, they figured they’d get businesses to pay them for “Agile Coaching”

These coaches are doing the activities they want to do instead of focusing on the mission

And the mission is:

Helping the client solve their problems

Instead, what we get is:

Coaches pretending to help businesses while they convince people to quit their jobs

I’ve seen this more times than I’d like to admit

This isn’t the only coaching anti-pattern

Among the 38 comments by March 1st, I also wanted to share these two from Sam Perera—