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

Storytelling

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Your story...

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We are our stories.

No. These are not stories that surround us or that are told about us. These are the stories that we tell ourselves, that we share in our heads. Stories of… 

  • I am not good enough

  • I am not skilled or experienced enough

  • I am not smart enough

  • I am not strong enough

  • I am not…enough

Instead of those, perhaps begin telling yourself different stories, stories of…

  • I am magical

  • I am complete

  • I can do this

  • I am resilient

  • I am unique

  • I can survive this

  • I can overcome this

  • I am complete and I am…enough

When do you tell these stories?

All of the time. Quietly and continuously. One story at a time, shift from ‘not’ to ‘am’ stories and become what you truly are.

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

BTW: this blog post contains a nice graphic around our old versus new stories - https://rgalen.com/agile-training-news/2019/2/25/the-leadership-circle-initial-thoughts

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Storytelling lessons I've learned on my journey...

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Storytelling lessons I've learned on my journey...

I’m of the mind that Storytelling is THE communication imperative for today’s most effective leaders. But the question is always—

  • What does Storytelling “look like?”

  • How do I start the Storytelling path?

  • And, how do I become a great Storyteller?

And, while I don’t profess to be a “professional” Storyteller, I have become a solid Storyteller over the years, so this article is intended to share some of my learnings.

Storytelling Considerations

Stories are found, not made

You have to first become an active observer of your surroundings. You have to pay attention and, dare I say it, write things down. This is why I’m such an avid proponent of journaling. And by journaling, I mean old-fashioned paper and pen journaling. Jerry Weinberg wrote a book called Weinberg on Writing, where he shared his fieldstones technique for gathering story nuggets (fieldstones) that you later piece together into effective stories. The wonderful thing about this idea is you can “reuse” your stones.