Leadership, People, and Change

Facilitating with The Focused Conversation

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I was presenting Building Antifragile Relationships and Teams at Santa Barbara Agile recently and as we worked on ideas for a conflict protocol, we started discussing the common theme of “facts vs. feelings”. I’ll point out that there was not a hard-line view in the group as to one way or another, but it came up and opened up a nice discussion on the topic.

Facilitating with the focused conversation
The Focused Conversation Poster.

I mentioned The Focused Conversation as a great tool you can use to help structure a conversation. Focused Conversations include four important categories of questions — objective, reflective, interpretive, and decision focused questions. The acronym ORID is sometimes used to describe The Focused Conversation.

The structure also provides a way to hear all of the voices that need to be heard within the group or team. You might even use this as part of an agile retrospective. Using the tool is another way to build antifragile relationships in teams and organizations.

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Be Better, Don’t Limit Yourself to Best Practices

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We hear a lot about best practices. We talk a lot about them. Many organizations are of the opinion that if they can identify the best practice, they are set. Of course, that thinking can be limiting in a number of ways. We need to be better, not best.

Limiting Yourself with Best Practices

Googling “best practice definition” gives you “commercial or professional procedures that are accepted or prescribed as being correct or most effective.”

Wikipedia says : “A best practice is a method or technique that has consistently shown results superior to those achieved with other means, and that is used as a benchmark. In addition, a “best” practice can evolve to become better as improvements are discovered. Best practice is considered by some as a business buzzword, used to describe the process of developing and following a standard way of doing things that multiple organizations can use.”

Notice in the Wikipedia definition they add the idea that they can evolve to become better. This gets to the root of what we need to be doing.

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Understanding the Agile Coach Competency Framework (Part 1)

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Agile Coaching. A seemingly simple term that causes so much confusion. Much of the confusion seems to stem from the reasonable question of  “what does an agile coach do?” ACI (Agile Coaching Institute) defined an Agile Coach Competency Framework. I’ve used the framework over the years both for agile coaching and leadership. I find it valuable to help people to understand the different perspectives they can approach agile coaching from. We use the framework as a one tool in Advanced Scrum Master Training (A-CSM) and as one set of approaches and skills in Leading Amazing Teams Training. We find it offers leaders insights into how they can shift from a leader-follower to a leader-leader approach to leadership. ACI had a whitepaper outlining the framework (created by Lyssa Adkins and Michael Spayd on a website – no longer active). This article includes my summary of it based on multiple sources — as well as my personal experience with it and ways to learn from it.

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Strong roots, growing branches—agility thrives when sustainability and growth go hand in hand.

Agile Coaching: Guiding, Empowering, and Building Sustainable Success

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Agile coaching means different things to different people, and I often find myself in conversations about what it really is. To help clarify and share my perspective, I’ve put together key insights based on these discussions. Strong roots, growing branches—agility thrives when sustainability and growth go hand in hand.

What is an Effective Organization?

An effective organization consistently delivers value to customers in a way that retains the great people it has over the long term. It aligns its decisions and actions with its purpose and goals, fosters innovation, adapts to change, ensures financial sustainability, and operates sustainably to remain competitive and impactful. These elements are key to long-term success, though how they take shape depends on the organization’s unique context and challenges.

What is Agile Coaching?

An agile coach helps individuals, teams, and organizations cultivate an effective organization by utilizing agile, lean, and agility. They use a variety of approaches, tools, skills, and competencies to guide clients in aligning their decisions and actions with their own goals while building the capabilities needed for long-term success. Agile coaching is not about agility for its own sake—it’s about using agility to drive real business outcomes, such as customer value, financial sustainability, innovation, and organizational resilience, by creating an environment where people can engage, deliver, and thrive over the long term. A truly effective organization balances financial sustainability with an environment that enables people to do their best work.

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The Real Baseline Agile Retrospective Format

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I always considered this six question format to be the Baseline Agile Retrospective Format.  I say baseline instead of standard because a baseline is something to build on, not an ‘always the way’ standard (I know I’m splitting hairs here).

I believe the six question baseline agile retrospective format is a solid way to teach people how to do an agile retrospective. They can see, relatively clearly, the different parts that should be included. It can be a useful starting point to address additional questions and challenges.

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Cursing Your Vision Statement

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I was coaching someone a while back and asked them to tell me what their vision statement: what motivated him? When I heard the answer, I was not moved. What I heard was boring. I knew this person had passion for what he did. What happened to it?

If I ask you to tell me why you do what you do, and you are not jumping up and down a bit, getting a bit fired up, I don’t buy your passion!  Here are some ideas to find the passion in your vision statement.  They may not be for everyone, but I know they have helped some people already, so I wanted to share.

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Improving Yourself with StrengthsFinder 2.0

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I am often asked by folks I’m coaching for ideas of assessments they can take to help them grow.

I’m working on a few articles about different types of assessments and improving yourself (subscribe if you are interested in being notified). I thought I’d take some time to explain some of insights I got from taking the StrengthsFinder® 2.0 assessment a while back, as well as explain what it is and how to take it.  This is the first of three articles on assessments. The other two will cover MBTI® and The Leadership Circle Profile® .  All three are very different in a number of ways, which I will discuss in those articles.

Agile and Agility are about people, learning, and collaborating – a foundational part being able to collaborating and learning with others is personal mastery.

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Learning with Fist of Five Voting

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Fist of Five Voting is a deceivingly simple process you can use to check-in, learn, gain consensus, and/or vote to understand where people stand on an issue or idea.  I say deceivingly, because there is so much more you can learn about what is really happening in a team if you are paying attention.

I find there are many tools I (and others) use without being entirely sure of the idea’s origin. As I work on other articles, I realize some people may not be familiar with concepts such as Fist of Five Voting. So I’m working on building these ideas out to fill in those gaps. The source of Fist of Five is sometimes attributed to American Youth Foundation, however I can’t find a reference on their website.

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Agile Retrospectives Improve Team Relationships

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I get a lot of questions about agile retrospectives from existing clients who are familiar with agile, those new to it, and folks who don’t use agile (so, yes: everyone!). This is one in a series of posts on retrospectives covering a variety of angles on the subject. [Agile Retrospective Resources has a list of the upcoming articles and many other resources.]

What is an agile retrospective?

Not this kind of retro!
Not this kind of retro!

An agile retrospective (often simply called a retro) is a regular ritual focused on celebrating, learning, collaborating, committing, and improving the team’s relationship.  These items, taken together form the value of an agile retrospective.  There are different types of retrospectives (e.g. release and project retrospectives); though here I am focusing here on regularly scheduled team retrospectives (e.g. sprint retrospectives or iteration retrospectives).

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Thoughts on Professional Coaching

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I get a lot of questions about coaching – what is it, what do you mean by the word ‘coach’, is it the same as mentoring, is coaching just asking questions… and many more.

Who do you coach?

I coach people.  🙂   These may be individuals, pairs, couples, teams, organizations, or systems.

Can you tell me more about what the word Coach means to you? 

Professional Coaching is the Key to Learning and Finding New InformationThe word ‘Coach’  tends to have a lot of different uses.  When I talk about coaching, I am referring to professional coaching, which in the US, tends to be associated with standards laid out by the International Coaching Federation (ICF).  I view coaching as helping people find the internal wisdom to achieve their goals by moving beyond whatever is stopping them or slowing them down.  Coaching is NOT about telling people what to do or judging them – the coach may be an expert on “coaching” but is not the expert on the person or the goals they have.  This is concept is misunderstood by a lot of people.  A coach is not the person who says “do this” or “don’t do that”!  Coaching is always about the clients agenda – NOT the coach’s!   The coach relies on the client being fabulous, amazing, and wanting to move forward toward a goal!  That sounds over the top to some, but it really isn’t, it’s about having faith in the person!   The key is that as a coach, I need to fully believe that the person (or people or system) I am coaching has the wisdom to solve their challenges.  They might need some help in finding or accessing that wisdom or working through different options, but they can access the information to let them move forward!  This is not always an easy place to stand, but believing in the client is a fundamental part of professional coaching. It does not work without it.

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