Shadow coach
Working behind the sciences and following experienced coaches.
Co-coach
Working together with other coaches, not completely independent.
Lead-coach
Leading a project, could work alone.
Six principals for the right mental path and changes
There are many reasons to delay a change in the team or organization. You will miss the train of the opportunity with each delay. Do you have doubt? Try to understand first with the team the next six principals before starting the journey:
- It’s always a good time to make a change
- Believe in your idea
- Share your idea
- Accept feedback
- Have a passion for collectively bringing the idea forward
- Assume the decisions made by others can always be changed
Bühler, Erich R. Leading Exponential Change: Go beyond Agile and Scrum to run even better business transformations
Profiling
We did a nice exercise for profiling your client.
It helps you to better understand and select you tools as a coach.
Levels
- Identity - what is the identity of the person is coming to you?
- Values and beliefs: how is it important this problem?
- Capabilities: Does he has all the capabilities to solve his problem?
- Behavior: is he going closer to the solution?
- Environment: is there a supporting environment?
Ok, I wrote there questions, they indicated the meaning of the level. but as a coach we should ask better questions:
- Identity - what is your role around this problem?
- Values and beliefs: how is it important this problem?
- Capabilities: Do you have all the skills to solve the problem?
- Behavior: What you would do to solve the problem?
- Environment: Could you find support for your solution?
You can do this exercise also for yourself when you face with a problem.
Dialog exercise for commitment
We need commitment from the teams very usually. They should have ownership and a strong relation with the topic to build responsibility.
This commitment is supported by a conversation, dialog.
Exercise: Vision, Values, Commitment
We built up our Vision (WHY), it can be general or personal, and try to find a collection of value (WHAT).
The journey to improve our values step by step and reach the vision is working via the commitments.
During this conversation we try to find what are the values to become a coach and how we can support this goal.
My commitments to become a Technical and Team coach:
- Joining agile academy workshop
- working with developers and team
- pair-coaching with IATM coaches
- joining conferences, meetups
- practice self reflections
- reading relevant books
- start blogging and sharing the journey
- earn ICF ACC certification
- follow IAF trainings
8 elements of coaching
So a people could have 36 identities.
Just try to avoid no to mix them. So you arrive home from work where you were an manager and you wife ask you something, dont forget, you are the husband!
Coaches has eight very important identities, they use them in different situations.
Your identity can be defined also by your opponent, for example if he takes a child role, you will play as an adult.
Coach
you are focusing on developing a shared goal. your tools are the questions.
Mentor
You are focusing on developing the how-to, normally it is a pair work.
Trainer
You are teaching the team, sharing knowledge, focusing on the learning outcomes.
Facilitator
You are helping the team for their goal and outcome. Avoid conflicts, miscommunication, introduce transparency.
Lean Leader
Promoting for life-long learning the teams.
Change agent
Develop a formal path for the change
Consultant
You share your experiences, the best practices, giving advises and problem solving.
Problem to Opportunity exercise
Let see your team has a problem, and they turn to you to find a solution.
As a coach it is better not to provide a solution, they have find their solution, because they will find the connection and see they are the owner of the solution. They can do commitment more easily to deliver the solution.
Opportunity Tree Analysis
Lets invite the team for a workshop to find a solution for a problem.
The Opportunity tree analysis is a very good practice for this.
Let's create a Tree about a problem, and then find the desired situation of the problem.
Try to identify what could support this desired situation. Later you can collect together the possible outcome of this positive, desired situation.
Example of "I am tired"
We selected a personal or general problem to solve and see the outcomes.
1) The problem tree:
- eating to much
- sickness
- lack of quality sleeping
- stress etc.
2) Now lets create the Opportunity tree. We selected "I am energized!"
So when you think about with the team what could support I am energized, you can find a lot of positive things, just a few:
- fun
- health
- hope
- vision
- calm etc
3) The green leaves can be the outcome of you are energized.
- Enjoy the work
- Help each other
- Love
- Focus
- Energize others
You can see in a one hour exercise we can help the team to focus on the positive side of the problem, and seeing the opportunity of the original problem if we turn to the solutions.
We have the yellow postits as solution and the green postits as the reason why to do that.
5 Classic principals of integrated Agile coaching
1. Constructionist principal
Words create worlds. The reality is created through the language and the conversations.
2. Simultaneity principal
Inquiry creates change, and when we ask the question, we begin to create the change.
3. Poetic principal
What we choose to study makes us different. It describes the world as we know.
4. Anticipatory principal
The human system move in to the direction, what they can imagine. It should be a positive and hopeful image of the future.
5. Positive principal
Positive questions lead the individual or the team to positive changes.
Immunity to change in Agile transformations
We face with immunity, ignorance, resistance, rebellion. Of course! why and how we can handle it?
You see animal about to change or die in worst case. Why human-being can not accept change?
Integrated performance model
How can I improve my performance and team performance?
You need good feelings, emotions for good results!
Lets take an example, you feel anxious.
| Level | State |
|---|---|
| behavior | stress |
| thinking | alternatives, interpretations |
| feel | fear |
| emotions | feel trapped |
| physiology | sweaty hands |
So what we can expect a team member, who is anxious? he is thinking on alternatives, he has fear, he feels trapped?
So well being and safety is very important for the team members to open up and work on the topics. They need definitely good feelings.
Recommended readings:
|
Exercise
Team immunity to change. Look at your team, when you start to change things in the team, what happens in the team?
Skill and will matrix
There is no one size fits all solution to maximize the team members performance. How can the leader minimalize this performance.
There is the skill and motivation matrix to help to determine what to do with each individual.
Capable, we need one on one sessions, and new challenges.
Excelling, we need to delegate some tasks, let them to develop others and check their progress together.
Doubtful, we need to do a root cause analysis, maybe create together an improvement plan, organize regular meetings for feedback, maybe find an alternative role together.
What is value in Team Coaching Agile teams
We switched the topics from individual to team coaching.
Today this master class was not over-structured.
I would like to highlight few things.
Launching a team
The successes of the team depends on mainly on the structure:
- Team design and structure (60%)
- Team launch (30%)
- Team coaching (10%)
Team interactions by the coach
- Build trust
- challenge paradigms
- seek strategy clarity
- execute flawlessly
- give effective feedback
- tap into talent
- move to the middle
- the team coach role is enabling rather than directing
Attributes maturity
- patience to pull back and see the bigger picture
- ability to manage emotions in difficult situation, maintaining the capacity to think rational
- the habit of thinking systematical and seeking to understand an issue from a range of perspectives
- the humility to see your own contribution as part of a whole
- habit of continually seeking to learn from recent experience and help others adapt to the future
Good team coaching questions for improving performance
- how do other feedback your team performance?
- whose feedback matters
- what can you do exert more control over how your performance is measured
- what do you want to do about it?
Exercise
Share your experience in coaching
Exercise: communication map
Interpretation game
We did a little game with a question: "What is agile for you?"
Ant the three answers:
- a tool to give you a fast feedback
- a way of thinking, mindset, support flexibility, reaction time, continuous improvement
- continuous improvement
How to manage a working agreement?
So we need alignment inside the teams and between the teams and stakeholders.
Create together agreements and publish them transparently accessible and ready for challenges.
- data-dictionary
- strategies
- DoR
- DoD
Interpretations & communication filters
Seems we continue to go deeper in the topics. Maybe it is fast now. Lets see.
4 axioms for agile coaches
- I take the responsibility of understanding lays in one who speak
- The map is not the territory
- People have all resources necessary to succeed
- The element in any system with the most flexibility will exercise the greatest influence
The axioms do not need pooves.
I think the biggest takeway here the mapping, different interpretations and narratives.
4MAT
Why 60% of the people
What 30% of the people
How 40-60%
What 20% if yes or no
Exercise
Create your team communication map.
Exercise: roles
In my previous project I touched several roles, of course. I started the project as a developer scrum master and finished in a technical coach position.
In both position I used the facilitation role, specially for the meeting, agile rituals, workshops.
I organized several workshops to coach and train teams about many topics. I brought several topics to discuss together, ask opinion and share some some knowledge.
As a mentor I helped junior colleagues practicing TDD, unit testing, principals.
I was very often a consultant in the beginning to bring ideas, than I changed to ask the people what they would like to to as their ambitions.
I tried to be far from therapist. Probably it was successful.
Coaching foundations
It was a very interesting master class. We touched so many topics, I have to do many research and readings.
The most important point is this foundation: How you can be a better coach?
Identity
Neno detailed people could have 36 identities in the same time. You can be a father, manager, brother etc. And for each identity there is a different behavior Ho we execute a job.
The biggest conflicts are coming with mixing the identities, but it is not easy to prevent in private and professional life also.
We identified two main tasks: manage the expectations of the client and let the client to understand your role.
1. Attitude
- respect all - be open for all opinions, because everybody is different.
- helping forward
- the value of the team = the weakest link
- pareto, just care of 80% <=> against continues improvement!
- need to help your team in a continues improvement cycle without regarding the experience etc.
- soft skills: learning, open for feedback
- non judge mental for all opinions
- feedback can bring useful to the team, not all of them;
- work on yourself, the team will follow you
- co-creative partnership
2. Knowledge
- agile methods
- theories of team dynamics
- align with the client and coachee
- understanding grow model, Whitmore
- styles of coaching methods of how to overcome resistance
- solution focused coaching, what worked & next step
- Logical Levels Bateson & Dilts
- Responsibility model Avery
- 5 principles of Integral Self Management
- model Peter Block, co-creative partnership
3. Experience
- development work
- team / group management
- being coached
- line management
- agile TL, PM, ProgM
- Any agile role
- HRM
- Training
- Giving and receiving feedback
- Strategy development
- agile transformation coach
- Scrum master, Product owner
4.Do's
What action we will do for continuous improvement: there is no GOOD or BAD
- listen more then we talk
- create safe environment
- coaching on engineering practices
- challenge people respectfully and polite
- help people forward
- transparency
- objective behavior
- self reflection
- continuous learning
- discipline
5. Don'ts
- Disrespect people's ideas, experience, opinion
- Behave judge mental
- Put people down
- judge mental
- put people down
- command and control
- excluding people
- assume and think for others
- cover things up
Exercise
- what roles you had in your last project
- Develop mechanism to identify the roles
Healthy & exponential organization
I am reading and blogging few important things from the book of Bühler, Erich R. Leading Exponential Change.
Healthy organization
“Today, competitive advantage doesn’t go to the company with the best widget. It goes to the organization that can reinvent itself and defend itself from attackers—wherever they may come from—better than anyone else.” - Colin Price
"A healthy business is one in which people feel confident, where there are fewer political decisions and greater collaborative effort, where conflict is used as a tool for continuous improvement, and where individuals can find and use techniques to overcome human limitations when facing constant change."
So to be healthy can be a goal, there is no perfect organization, but you are on the good way if you built up collaboration , continuous improvement and constant change.
Exponential company
- Have organizational structures that can regularly evolve by consensus (collaboratively).
- Have clients that are co-creators of products and not just consumers.
- Encourage learning and decision-making under consensus.
- Use artificial intelligence or robotics in areas where the human element cannot multiply exponentially.
- Use different ways of measuring progress.
- Use tactics that constantly reduce complexity and bureaucracy in the company.
- Understand how people’s brains work when faced with change and the need to use techniques that overcome these difficulties.
- Understand how to manage conflict in times of turbulence.
I would agree on this list. From my point of view the most important the empiricism. This is the way creating a product with the client and learning.
Exponential acceleration & Six Ds
I am reading the Bühler, Erich R. Leading Exponential Change book. It is very interesting.
At the end of each chapter he shares: what you learned, so the topics, but he has also some questions to the reader. "Do you remember what is Exponential acceleration"? Very powerful.
Exponential acceleration
In 1999, Raymond Kurzweil, recognized futurist and the director of engineering at Google, proposed the law of accelerating returns.
The rate of change in a wide variety of evolutionary systems tends to increase exponentially when their systems are converted into digital information.
The evolution of digital photography is mentioned in the book. I really like this example.
Six Ds
The six Ds of Exponentials have to be considered to identify the stage of acceleration a product has reached.
- Digitalization
- Deception
- Disruption
- Demonetization
- Dematerialization
- Democratization
"In the case of Kodak, once film changed from a physical to a digital medium, its rate of growth turned totally unpredictable."
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