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

Self-Mastery

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The 10 Rules of Agile Coaching

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The 10 Rules of Agile Coaching

I wrote this article in 2018 and it’s received quite a bit of attention over the years. I recently saw it reposted again by Comparative Agility and it made me think about the notion of “rules of Agile Coaching”.  

Not don’t get me wrong. I’m not a rules guy. I actually wasn’t that fond of the title of the first article. I guess I may have been inspired by the quote—The first rule of fight club…

But all of that being said, as I mulled it over again, other aspects of agile coaching emerged that I thought I’d share with you. And, if one rule was good, then certainly ten are better. So, here we go—

The 1st Rule of Agile Coaching…

Be coachable 

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Agile Coaches, Might WE Be the Problem?

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Agile Coaches, Might WE Be the Problem?

I ran across a post on LinkedIn by Huy Nguyen. I think I’ve met him briefly at an agile coaching retreat or event, and he struck me with his thoughtfulness.

The post was titled an Agile Coaching Thought of the Day where he posited the following question:

Is there a Western/Colonial bias to the Spiral/Laloux developmental models?

In and of itself, a thoughtful question.

Here’s a large part of his post—

In Agile settings, I question the value the use of these "developmental" models. Teal is not a business objective. It's not a requirement for a successful business, yet we often put a bias toward it - as if coaches have an agenda to push clients into. Agile falls prey to the same thinking. IMO this is problematic.