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

Coaching

,

Truth

,
Truth

I was talking to a fellow agile coach the other day who’s leading her own coaching practice. She’d completed several engagements partnering with two experienced agile coaches and there had been some “rocky exchanges” along the way.

One of the things she said to me that the coaches have given her some really hard feedback of late. Sort of like a firehose of feedback. And that while she appreciated all of it, it was really hard to digest it all. And all of it seemed to be constructive/negative in nature. So, lots to think about and she seemed overwhelmed by it.

I asked her to – look for the truth in it.

And she said something interesting. She said that – it was ALL true.

And I thought for a moment and responded.

No, it’s not all true!

It’s only true from the perspective of the coach’s giving you the feedback. Certainly 100% of what they told you can’t all be true. Nor do you want to take action on all of it.

,

Gimme Back My Bullets

,
Gimme Back My Bullets

There’s a song by Lynyrd Skynrd entitled Gimme Back my Bullets. It came to mind when I was thinking about this post and I thought I’d share that backstory with you. 

This is a follow-up to a blog reaction I had to a post from Dan Mezick.

Bullet Metaphor

I’ve been using this metaphor for the past 20 years of my agile coaching. It helps me to focus on what engagement opportunities I want to pursue. These would be both as internal and external coaches.

The metaphor has strengthened as I’ve gotten older. And right now, it very clearly guides every discussion I have around helping others with their agile journeys.

It involves an old west gun holster with bullets around the belt. Many years ago, I started out with a full belt when I began consulting. And over the years, I’ve used my bullets at a wide variety of organizations. Some of them hit the mark and the organizations had great successes. Not because of me. But because of themselves and their level of commitment to an agile mindset and agile principles.

What do I Do as an Agile Coach?

What do I Do as an Agile Coach?

Dave Rooney is a Canadian Agile Coach who recently wrote a nice article about what he focuses on in his agile coaching. I thought I’d share it and play off of Dave’s ideas a bit.

In the article, he mentions 6 important activities:

  1. First Do No Harm!

  2. Listen

  3. Ask boatloads of questions

  4. Challenge assumptions

  5. Teach/Coach Agile practices

  6. Work myself out of a job

My reaction to Dave’s list…