Podcasts about lyssa adkins

In this episode of #AgileWay podcast, I have a conversation with one of the speakers of the Agile Prague Conference that is going to be on Sep 15-16, 2025 in Prague, Czech Republic. We talked with Lyssa Adkins about taking agility to the other context, and inspiring people.#agile #businessagility #agileleader #leadership #agileprague #conference #people #inspiration

In this episode, Emily chats with Lyssa Adkins and her newest venture with the Women in Agile community: World Work. We dive into what this program is, why it matters, and how it can mobilize the agile community to serve the world beyond the workplace. Let's uncover why agilists are uniquely positioned to be a force for good and create a ripple effect of positive impact.   About the Featured Guest Lyssa Adkins is an internationally-recognized thought leader and the author of Coaching Agile Teams which has sold over 75,000 copies. Lyssa's focus is inspiring the worldwide network of agilists to see the devastating planetary challenges we are already experiencing as an opportunity to express their agile superpowers to make a massively positive impact.   Follow Lyssa Adkins on LinkedIn Follow Lyssa on Instagram (@lyssaadkins)   Reference(s) Women in Agile World Work: https://womeninagile.org/world-work/    The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared.   Podcast Library: www.womeninagile.org/podcast Women in Agile Org Website: www.womeninagile.org    Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/womeninagileorg    Please take a moment to rate and review the Women in Agile podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This is the best way to help us amplify the voices and wisdom of the talent women and allies in our community! Be sure to take a screenshot of your rating and review and post it on social media with the hashtag #womeninagile to help spread the word and continue to elevate Women in Agile.   About our Host Emily Lint is a budding industry leader in the realm of business agility. Energetic and empathetic she leverages her knowledge of psychology, business, technology, and mindfulness to create a cocktail for success for her clients and peers. Her agile journey officially started in 2018 with a big move from Montana to New Mexico going from traditional ITSM and project management methodologies to becoming an agile to project management translator for a big government research laboratory. From then on she was hooked on this new way of working. The constant innovation, change, and retrospection cured her ever present craving to enable organizations to be better, do better, and provide an environment where her co-workers could thrive.    Since then she has started her own company and in partnership with ICON Agility Services serves, coaches, and trains clients of all industries in agile practices, methodologies, and most importantly, mindset. Please check out her website (www.lintagility.com) to learn more. You can also follow Emily on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilylint/).  About our Sponsor Scrum.org is the Home of Scrum, founded in 2009 by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber focused on helping people and teams solve complex problems by improving how they work through higher levels of professionalism. Scrum.org provides free online resources, consistent experiential live training, ongoing learning paths, and certification for people with all levels of Scrum knowledge. You can learn more about the organization by visiting www.scrum.org.

Hassan Butt: Fostering Growth Mindsets in Hierarchy Driven Organizations Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes. In this episode, Hassan talks about one of his early experiences with a team struggling with ingrained hierarchy. Senior team members dominated conversations, creating a culture where only the most authoritative voices were heard. However, new team members with a growth mindset challenged this dynamic, leading to conflict. Hassan highlights the importance of listening to all voices, especially newcomers, and encourages leaders to avoid stifling ideas. "Good ideas can come from anywhere," he shares, reminding us to foster an environment of openness and collaboration. Self-reflection Question: How do you create space for all voices to be heard in your team? Featured Book of the Week: Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins Hassan recommends Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins as a foundational book for Agile practitioners. The book, especially the chapter on "mastering yourself," helped Hassan overcome impostor syndrome and grow more confident in his role. He often recommends this book to others as it provides valuable insights into personal growth and self-awareness, critical for building effective teams. [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

In this episode, Lyssa joined Shahin to delve into the evolving landscape of leadership and Agile coaching, offering valuable insights and resources. She highlights the skills essential for thriving in an increasingly uncertain world and discusses her efforts to elevate leadership consciousness to address complex global challenges. Topics Covered: Importance of Adaptive Skills: Lyssa emphasizes the need for professionals to develop the ability to adapt to change, work creatively, and collaborate effectively, rather than focusing solely on technical skills. Leadership and Mental Complexity: The conversation explores how leaders can enhance their mental complexity to better navigate the complexities of today's world, making decisions that benefit their organizations and the broader ecosystem. Elevate Change: Lyssa shares her thoughts on the concept of "elevating change," emphasizing that change should not be feared but embraced as an opportunity for growth and innovation. Planetary Challenges: Lyssa discusses the critical role of conscious leadership in addressing global issues such as climate change, mass migration, and societal instability. Collaboration with Frederic Laloux: She introduces "The Week," a program developed by Frederic Laloux that brings people together to confront the realities of our species' challenges and inspires action towards positive change. Agile Community's Potential Impact: Lyssa highlights the potential for the Agile community to be a force for good by applying Agile principles to global challenges and collaborating with others to create meaningful change. Recommended Books: The Age of Thrivability by Michelle Holliday Regenerative Leadership by Laura Storm and Giles Hutchins Personal and Professional Growth: Lyssa reflects on her journey of continuously evolving her mindset and learning from others, particularly in how to apply natural world principles to business and leadership. Contact and Resources: Lyssa can be reached through her website, LyssaAdkins.com, where listeners can find more information about her work and initiatives. People Mentioned: Frederic Laloux: Author of Reinventing Organizations and creator of "The Week," a program that encourages deep reflection and action on global challenges. Michelle Holliday: Author of The Age of Thrivability, a book focused on aligning business practices with natural world principles. Laura Storm: Co-author of Regenerative Leadership, a book that explores how to lead organizations by drawing inspiration from the natural world. Giles Hutchins: Co-author of Regenerative Leadership, who collaborates with Laura Storm in exploring sustainable and regenerative practices in leadership. Check out Elevate Change Training & Events Follow us: Visit us at http://www.leanonagile.com Twitter: http://twitter.com/Elevate_Change LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ElevateChange

Paul Jarvis: Unlocking Scrum Team Potential, The High-performance Tree Tool  Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes. In this episode, we explore the dynamics of two high-performing teams hindered by a single member's reluctance to seek help. This episode explores the critical lesson, such as leveraging the "power of the team", and introduces the high-performance tree metaphor, illustrating the foundational values and desired behaviors in effective Scrum teams. How does one individual's challenge affect team performance, and what strategies can encourage collective problem-solving and support? Paul discusses his approach and insights, and refers to a video from Lyssa Adkins about the high-performance tree. Featured Book of the Week: Management 3.0 by Jurgen Appelo Paul recommends the book "Management 3.0" by Jurgen Appelo. He shares the book's profound impact on understanding Agile. Paul also shares other key references for Scrum Masters such as "Coaching Agile Teams" by Lyssa Adkins, "Radical Candor" by Kim Scott, "Nonviolent Communication" by Marshal Rosenberg, "Think Again" by Adam Grant, and Patrick Lencioni's contributions. Each book offers a unique perspective on Agile principles, from fostering constructive disagreements and navigating conflicts to reevaluating our knowledge and embracing humility. Find out about Paul's lightbulb moments and the collective wisdom these authors bring to the Agile table.   [IMAGE HERE] Do you wish you had decades of experience? Learn from the Best Scrum Masters In The World, Today! The Tips from the Trenches - Scrum Master edition audiobook includes hours of audio interviews with SM's that have decades of experience: from Mike Cohn to Linda Rising, Christopher Avery, and many more. Super-experienced Scrum Masters share their hard-earned lessons with you. Learn those today, make your teams awesome!     About Paul Jarvis Paul is a seasoned Enterprise Lean Agile Coach, Trainer, RTE, and Scrum Master with a decade of experience in the FinTech sector, focusing on banking, payments, and e-commerce. Recently, he completed a 3.5-year tenure at a key player in investment banking. You can link with Paul Jarvis on LinkedIn and connect with Paul Jarvis on Twitter.

In this season of the 5&5 Podcast, Lyssa Adkins welcomes guest Matthieu Cornillon, 10+ year agile coach and former Spotify, as they take on a 5 question exploration about the present and future of agile coaching. At this key moment when it seems the market had "rejected" agile coaching they share their insights, experiences and predictions. In this episode, they tackle the question: What has the market rejected? You can find Lyssa at LyssaAdkins.com. You can find Matthieu at growingtruffles.wordpress.com

In their exploration of the present and future of agile coaching, Lyssa Adkins and Matthieu Cornillon dive deeper to share their thoughts on the question: Why has the market rejected agile coaching? You can find Lyssa at LyssaAdkins.com. You can find Matthieu at growingtruffles.wordpress.com

The next question Lyssa Adkins and Matthieu Cornillon take on as they explore the present and future of agile coaching: Is getting the skills of agile coaching worth it? You can find Lyssa at LyssaAdkins.com. You can find Matthieu at growingtruffles.wordpress.com Links: Agile Skills in the Modern Workplace Survey

The next question about the present and future of agile coaching is a provocative one. Lyssa Adkins asks, "Are we going to get serious about agile coaching?" Lyssa and Matthieu Cornillon meet this question head-on to offer their own takes and reveal their aspirations. You can find Lyssa at LyssaAdkins.com. You can find Matthieu at growingtruffles.wordpress.com Links: Learning Outcomes at ICAgileCode of Ethiccal Conduct at Agile AllianceModel for Development and Growth at Agile Coaching Growth Wheel

The final question Lyssa Adkins and Matthieu Cornillon approach in their exploration of the present and future of agile coaching takes us to a new dimension: What's the evolutionary angle of agile coaching? You can find Lyssa at LyssaAdkins.com. You can find Matthieu at growingtruffles.wordpress.com

Here's a wrap-up of the 5&5 exploring the present and future of agile coaching. In this 5&5, Lyssa Adkins and Matthieu Cornillon offer thoughts, answers, and prognostications as they make their way through 5 key questions for the profession of agile coaching. You can find Lyssa at LyssaAdkins.com. You can find Matthieu at growingtruffles.wordpress.com

Josh Lambert: Strategies for Improved Team Collaboration in Agile Teams Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes. In this episode, Josh shares a team's struggles – newly formed, but spanning distant timezones, and facing communication issues. Individual work overshadowed teamwork, and this was made worse by very unclear responses from a team member that was not meeting their sprint goals. Frustration peaked on the final day of one of the Sprints. Reflecting on that story, Josh advocates transparent communication, urging team members to share when help is needed. He stresses the importance of a working agreement when seeking help and proposes conducting psychological safety assessments and focusing on team well-being. Featured Book for the Week: "Coaching Agile Teams" by Lyssa Adkins In this episode, Josh recommends "Coaching Agile Teams" by Lyssa Adkins for Scrum Masters. He highlights its enduring value, providing continuous support for navigating challenges. Drawing from a team member's experience feeling trapped in a "hamster wheel," Josh emphasizes the book's relatable stories, offering preparation for similar situations.   [IMAGE HERE] Do you wish you had decades of experience? Learn from the Best Scrum Masters In The World, Today! The Tips from the Trenches - Scrum Master edition audiobook includes hours of audio interviews with SM's that have decades of experience: from Mike Cohn to Linda Rising, Christopher Avery, and many more. Super-experienced Scrum Masters share their hard-earned lessons with you. Learn those today, make your teams awesome!     About Josh Lambert Josh is an Agile Coach at a financial institution. He has been through a few different Agile Transformations. And became a Scrum Master in one of the early transformations and loved the role where where he stayed for 6 years, after which he transitioned into an Agile Coach. You can link with Josh Lambert on LinkedIn.

Khwezi Mputa: Breaking Down Dysfunctional Dynamics between a Scrum team and their Product Owner Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes. In this episode, Khwezi discusses a challenging team scenario where great individuals struggled due to high-pressure dynamics and dysfunctional patterns. The Product Owner lacked decision-making authority, leading to delayed information and a proxy PO situation. This pressure caused scope creep and hindered technical debt management. Khwezi highlighted the importance of empowering the team to push back against excessive demands, coaching the PO to engage stakeholders effectively, and ensuring the right person fills the PO role. Addressing these issues was crucial for improving the product and fostering a healthier team dynamic. If you need to support your Product Owner, we've created a course for you. You can access the Coach Your PO e-course here.  Featured Book of the Week: Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins In this segment, Khwezi shares her recommended book, "Coaching Agile Teams" by Lyssa Adkins, which played a pivotal role in her self-improvement journey as a scrum master. This book provided valuable insights into guiding teams toward high performance. Khwezi emphasized using the Agile coaching competency framework and suggested self-assessment based on it. This framework led her to discover additional paths for growth. The book also highlighted the importance of exploring diverse topics to enhance skills. She mentioned the "Periodic Table of Scrum Master's Competencies" as a useful resource for understanding various skills enhancement facets.   [IMAGE HERE] Do you wish you had decades of experience? Learn from the Best Scrum Masters In The World, Today! The Tips from the Trenches - Scrum Master edition audiobook includes hours of audio interviews with SM's that have decades of experience: from Mike Cohn to Linda Rising, Christopher Avery, and many more. Super-experienced Scrum Masters share their hard-earned lessons with you. Learn those today, make your teams awesome!     About Khwezi Mputa Khwezi is an experienced Agile coach, trainer, and IT professional since 2008. With diverse roles like Scrum Master, Agile Project Manager, and Business Analyst, she's active in the Agile community, promoting diversity. Passionate about teaching, she empowers individuals and organizations to reach their full potential through coaching and mentoring.

When it comes to groups of humans collaborating and actively distributing their power and authority, size matters! In this episode of The HOW, Lyssa Adkins, Susan Basterfield and Francesca Pick explore different group sizes, and the what, the why and The HOW of facilitating each. At Greaterthan, we believe that the future of leadership is facilitative leadership - put another way, leading by facilitating is a better tuning to the collective and emotional intelligence of everyone in the team or organization.

Venturing beyond the conventional model of leadership - where the boss, the hero, and the visionary take center stage - we delve into a transformative paradigm shift towards a shared, democratized model of leadership. A model that empowers each individual, fostering a sense of collaborative culture, and promoting leadership development at every level. In this episode of The HOW, Susan Basterfield, Lyssa Adkins, and Francesca Pick take us on an enlightening journey exploring new practices and mindsets for leadership, exploring the power of distributed leadership, amplifying transparent communication and power sharing, ultimately transforming the way we perceive and enact leadership.

Guest Bio : Michael Hamman Michael Hamman is dedicated to the possibility that the workplace be a site for personal, professional and social transformation. Trained in the 1980s in coaching and large group facilitation, Michael went on to train in systems thinking and methods, group dynamics and facilitation, professional and executive coaching, and in human and organization development. He is a decades-long student of the nature of human transformation, in himself, in others, and in organizations.  Over the course of the last 20 years, Michael has brought together these various strands into a unique approach to coaching, consulting, and teaching Agility within large organizational settings. Along the way, he has coached dozens of Fortune 500 companies and teams, and hundreds of leaders and coaches toward greater holistic team and enterprise-level agility.  He is recognized as a highly effective workshop leader, and for his skill in creating deep learning environments which leave participants feeling inspired by the insights and inner shifts they experience. His book, Evolvagility: Growing an Agile Leadership Culture from the Inside Out provides a blueprint for what it means to be an agile leader in today's complex world, and offers a practical roadmap for getting there. Guest Bio: Lyssa Adkins  Lyssa Adkins is an internationally-recognized thought leader in the Agile community. She is deeply trained and experienced  in human systems coaching and facilitation and she is a frequent keynote speaker. Her content expertise is agile coaching, adult human development, and working with change and complexity. She is the author of Coaching Agile Teams which is still a Top 10 book a dozen years after publication. Her current focus is improving the performance of top leadership teams through insightful facilitation and organization systems coaching to help leaders take up the individual and collective transformation that is theirs to do. Episode Highlights 05:15 Vertical Learning 09:40 Upgrading our Operating System 12:20 Inner versus Outer Agility 16:30 Three Types of Learning 19:20 Disorienting Dilemmas 21:15 Vertical Facilitation 30:00 Heat Experiences 38:45 Building Trust 42:00 Stretch Practices Websites ·         https://www.theverticalfacilitator.com Social media ·         LinkedIn: Michael Hamman ·         Twitter: Michael Hamman  @docHamman ·         LinkedIn: Lyssa Adkins ·         Twitter: Lyssa Adkins @lyssaadkins   Guest Intro (Ula Ojiaku) Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I'm Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. This episode is a special one to me. I am humbled and honoured to be in the virtual presence of giants and pioneers who have shaped the Agile Coaching discipline into what we know it as today. I have with me Lyssa Adkins and Michael Hamman. Not just one, but two, so this is like, I won the lottery today, and I'm so excited to have you both on the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast for this episode. Welcome. Now Lyssa, I had the honour of interviewing just you for an earlier episode and for the benefit of the audience, who, you know, some, I mean, for most people, Michael wouldn't be a stranger. They would be well acquainted with him, but for some of my audience who may not be familiar with, you know, your background. Michael, would you mind telling us about yourself? Michael Hamman Hmm, where do I even start? Ula Ojiaku I understand you used to be a music composer, software engineer, or developer, you know, how did that trajectory lead you to here? Michael Hamman Well actually it, you know, for those years when I was a composer and a scholar, I had a dual life. One life was this sort of creative life of the artist and the writer. But the other life was that I actually was working with people, and I got exposed to transformational learning in 1985 when I took a course. In fact, even before then, I got exposed to it because other people had taken this course. It was called the Est training, and so I got trained to lead seminars back in the eighties and the early nineties, and I brought all of that into my work with software teams. And at first I was a technical, you know, advisor. And then I got into like, well, you know, how do we make these teams work better? And that just, you know, one thing led to the next, and you know, I studied human systems and systems thinking and coaching, I was trained in professional coaching. I brought all that into the agile world when I started consulting in 2004, specifically in Corporate Enterprise, Agile Coaching, probably one of the earlier people to be doing that, and, but I was really known for bringing this sort of transformative angle to it, you know, so there was always a, some people thought it was a bit odd, like I was kind of like the weird uncle in the room, but people really liked it because they found something shifting in themselves while they were learning to do this thing called Agile and Scrum and XP and all that kind of stuff. And so it sort of has just grown, you know, my work has really grown from there. And maybe just to add one last piece that I regard my own personal transformation as part of the work that I do with other people and with the organisations, for me, they're inseparable and, to the degree that I myself am evolving and developing, then I can become an authentic conduit for others to do the same. Ula Ojiaku Wow, that's very inspirational. Thank you, Michael, for that great overview. Lyssa, I'd love to hear your crack at it. Lyssa Adkins Yeah. What I want to say about Michael is that you brought in a word Ula, that I want to just reprise here, which is pioneer. So Michael's talked about his trajectory with transformational learning, and he is indeed a pioneer in that and sort of making the implicit explicit, you know, and that's exactly what he was doing with computer music as a composer, and it was at the very early dawn of computers making sounds. That's where Michael Hamman composed his works, right, and so it's the confluence of a couple of different worlds coming together that he was able to bring forth into a new composition. And that's exactly what's happening here now with bringing these different worlds and experiences and lived experiences together in this new composition called Vertical Facilitation. Ula Ojiaku Wow, well, thank you Lyssa. That brings us nicely, segues nicely into, in terms of what you've been working on lately. So you mentioned Vertical Facilitation, but before we get to Vertical Facilitation, so Michael, I was looking at your website earlier on, michaelhamman.com and you said something about vertical learning being a process by which we evolve the psychological and emotional structuring process that determine how we think, understand and emotionally grasp our work. Do you want to expand on that, please? Vertical learning before we get to Vertical Facilitation… Michael Hamman Yeah, I think what I would say about that is that, at any given moment, there are the things that we're doing. So at any given moment, we are in action and we have a sense of where we're going in our action. So we have a sense of maybe a sense of direction, maybe even a goal, we might even have a vision, right? And so there's this, the world of our action. And at the same time, there's that world, there's that which informs our action at any given moment, there's a sort of sense making that's going on that informs our action, that informs what action we'll take. What's the appropriate action? How might we act? And it also determines the competency with which we act. So there's this sense making that's going on. And you could say that it's an individual sense making, a kind of a psychological layer, but it's also something that happens with us collectively. And so it's this realm that's happening, of which we are for the most part, unaware. And so what vertical learning is about, is to bring awareness to that realm, that dimension, which informs our capacity for effective action, and to the degree we become aware of that realm, we become better able at crafting action that is truly effective, that is action, that is truly congruent with what it is that we are committed to, what it is that we intend. Ula Ojiaku What comes out to me is, you know, that vertical learning is about bringing awareness to the realm that informs how we, you know, act when we've made sense of our environment. That's powerful. Lyssa, do you want to add anything to that? Lyssa Adkins Well, I think I'll add the dimension of why this is even important right now. I mean, there's, you know, for a long time sort of just getting more and more skills, more and more competencies sort of, as a collection, as a basket of things we were now capable of doing. For a long time, that was really sufficient for the context that most of us were in. And, you know, you probably know Ula, and maybe everyone listening that we're in this age of acceleration where everything is speeding up, almost every graph looks like a hockey stick. And, you know, and things are not straightforward anymore. In fact, the complexity of the situations that get served up to us, and especially those ones we don't want to have on our plates, you know, that complexity is beyond most of our meaning making right now. So that's what this is about. It's about closing that gap between the complexity of the situations we're in and the complexity of our own meaning making so that we can be more of a match for the confounding, you know, ever-changing, constantly anxiety-producing situations that we find ourselves in, in our whole life, and especially in business these days. So there's a really important thing pulling us forward to help to, and wanting us to be more capable for the environment we're actually in. And so I think that's why it's up for us and up for other people. Ula Ojiaku Michael, do you have any more, anything else to add to that? Michael Hamman Well, no, what you're saying, Lyssa, just it makes me think of this metaphor that I often use that it's that meaning making, that Lyssa was just referring to, that, which we need to bring to a higher level of complexity to meet the complexity of the world. It's a bit like, you could think of it analogically as a kind of operating system, like an operating system metaphor that, you know, I noticed on my phone, you know, that there are a lot of apps that won't install on my phone because I have to upgrade the operating system. And similarly, in the world of the complex world, the world, I love what you just said, the hockey stick, all the graphs are hockey sticks. Now in the world in which all the graphs are hockey sticks, right, we need, we need new apps. Apps are our behaviours, the actions that we take, and in order to take the kinds of actions that we need to take in this world of hockey stick graphs, we need to upgrade the operating system that informs those actions, and that's what vertical learning is all about. Ula Ojiaku Hmm. And to just explore that metaphor of the operating system, would it have any relationship with, you know, our mindset, our attitudes, or worldview? Michael Hamman I would say absolutely. In fact, oftentimes we use the word mindset as a kind of shortcut term to point to this realm. But unfortunately, for the most part we don't, you know, we're pretty good at, in the agile world at eliciting ways of understanding things that have to do with engineering and basic management and you know, product management and so we've gotten very good, like business agility has taught us a lot about how to bring a kind of agile competency, agile capacity for action, I guess you could say. The thing we haven't gotten very good at, and that's what the work we're up to here is to, what's the nature of mindset? What's the science and the research behind mindset, which has a comparable depth, a comparable legacy to the various engineering and complexity science lineage that informs other aspects of Agile, and so this is really about bringing those sort of human technology, the lineage of human technology to bear, to help us grow that inner operating system. So this is, in many ways, it's a research-based and science-based sort of set of practices as much as an art. Ula Ojiaku That's great. So based on what you've said, that would bring me to the concept of inner versus outer agility. You know, because you said business, we've learned a lot, agile, you know, business agility. But to an extent, and this is me summarising what I think I've heard from you, Michael, you know, it's kind of, we've kind of focused on the engineering of products and services, but there is the inner work we need to do to be able to operate more effectively in a world of hockey stick graphs or some other people will call it VUCA in a volatile, uncertain, complex… I forgot what the A means… Lyssa Adkins Ambiguous. Ula Ojiaku Ambiguous, thank you so much, Lyssa. So can you, how would this tie in with the concept of outer versus inner agility? Michael Hamman It brings to mind, you know, young children learn programming, you know, like young nine year olds and ten year olds. But it's unlikely that they'll ever be able to build huge, the kinds of huge software systems that professional software engineers are able to build. And it's, and it's partly due to skill, but at some point that young child, you could teach them more and more advanced programming skills, but they're, at some point they're not going to be able to absorb it. And that points to their inner meaning making. And it's similar in organisations that we could teach them, you know, agile frameworks, but they may get better and better at it at first, you know, but then at some point they hit a ceiling, and that ceiling is defined by their capacity for inner agility. And so when we hit the ceiling, we could see that as a signal, wow, we need to start to do some work on both our individual and our collectively held sense making frames if we're going to actually get past that ceiling. We will not get past that ceiling, I think we all know that by now, unless something shifts in the area of inner agility, or you could say mindset. But I use the word mindset somewhat reluctantly because it's become a buzzword and we really, for the most part, we really don't know what it means. Ula Ojiaku I didn't mean to impose that word on you, that was me trying to make sense (of the concepts)... Michael Hamman The word is so out there and so I kind of want to, whenever I have an opportunity to do a little bit of violence to that word, I would rather talk to it. Ula Ojiaku No worries at all. And something you said about, you know, individuals and teams hitting the ceiling, getting to a limit with applying the Agile frameworks, due to their operating systems needing an upgrade. It reminds me of, I believe it's the writing of John Maxwell. He's a known leadership expert and he has something called, you know, the Leadership Law of the Lid. You can only lead effectively to a certain extent, and it kind of ties in with what you're saying about you'd have to do the work, because once you've hit that limit, you have a choice either to remain at that level or you upgrade yourself, you expand your capacity by learning, by being coached by, you know, being willing to learn, or, I mean, unlearn and relearn or, you know, learn new things, but change the way you do things to get to the next level. Now, how can one upgrade their operating system? Michael Hamman Well, that's what vertical learning really ultimately points to, and it's a different kind of learning. So you could say that there are three different kinds of learning. The first is informational learning, where we, you know, basically teach concepts and we give information. And the idea is, is that then people take that information or those concepts and apply it, you know, into their life and, you know, into their work, and so that's one form of learning perfectly valid and legitimate for certain kinds of learning needs, I guess you could say. The second kind of learning or the second sort of method of learning is behavioural, where we teach skills and competencies to people, with the idea that they will then take those skills and competencies out into their world and exercise those skills and competencies. The problem is, is that what we often find is that both with, in terms of informational learning and behavioural learning, is that there's a missing ingredient. Oftentimes, for instance, people don't know when it's appropriate to bring a certain information to bear in a given moment, or, for people who have learned particular skills, they find themselves unable to exercise those skills when it really matters, when the heat gets high. And this is where the third quality of learning comes in, which is called transformational learning. And transformational learning doesn't happen in the same realm as informational and behavioural learning. It can't, it's not taught by telling people. It's not even taught, you know, through behavioural practice, although that can be part of it. It has to be taught in a very different way, and this is where Vertical Facilitation builds because you can only bring about transformational learning through the design of a learning environment. And it can only be done by creating situations in which people experience a kind of inner dilemma between what, how the categories with which they already make sense and the category that is likely to be necessary to make sense of the current situation being presented to them. Ula Ojiaku Lyssa, do you have anything to add to that? Lyssa Adkins Well, just that it is so much fun to present a group of people with a disorienting dilemma, and to watch them reach the edge of their known meaning making, and to find out that it's actually not the edge of the world, they're not going to fall off the world. They can say, oh, wow, now I see that that frame of reference I was holding, it's just a frame of reference, it's actually not how the world is. You know, now I can look at it, I can take it off of me and look at it as an object and say, okay, well how has this frame of reference served me in the past? And do I still need it now? What pieces am I bringing forward as I expand into other frames of reference that can inform me more completely about the situation I'm in? And so it's just, you know, for about a decade, I suppose. Michael Hamman and I were involved, this guy right here, with others, were involved in conducting these transformational learning environments in our agile coaching work. And it is such a joy, it is such a joy to see people break through this concrete, calcified way that they were viewing the world and to realise, ah, there's like a field out here with flowers and butterflies and there's all kinds of other options now available to me, and you know, we have a lot of lived experience in those kinds of transformational education environments. And that builds on training that we've all had, but also on Michael's really long history with transformational education environments and I think the modern need for us to help others increase their vertical capabilities. Ula Ojiaku I know that some of my audience, or people who are listening or watching, would be wondering, what Vertical Facilitation is, and they also would be wondering if you have any stories. And of course, I'm here as your student, maybe there would be a demonstration, but before we all, you know, go to the stories and all that, what's Vertical Facilitation? Because you've already defined for us what vertical learning is. Lyssa Adkins I want to set the stage for Michael to say what it is because this is where Michael's thought leadership is really coming to bear in the world. He's creating a new composition for us to live in because he's taking what was once implicit about Vertical Facilitation, learning environments, and making it explicit. And so many people have components of this in their leadership development programs, in their agile coach training in their, whatever they're doing, but to make it more explicit and usable for them would really amp up the results they're getting from whatever program they're in. And so that's, those are the people who we're trying to reach and I just want to say this is a new composition. Ula Ojiaku Thank you, Lyssa. Michael, please. Michael Hamman I feel incredibly humbled by what you've been saying, Lyssa. Thank you. Yeah, I would say that Vertical Facilitation is a way of working with groups leaderfully. So it's a leaderful way of working with groups. So it's not, you know, the typical sort of neutrality of facilitation that we ordinarily think of it. So there's a leaderful intention, but the leaderful intention has to do with being able to be attentive to what's the quality of the sense making that's going on in this moment with this individual, in the interactions between these two  individuals or the interactions among the individuals within a group, and the group energy. So it's a, so Vertical Facilitation is about paying attention to all of these things with an ear for what's going on here developmentally and developmentally is just another word for vertically. What is the sense making that's going on? And Vertical Facilitation is about creating moments, creating situational moments in which people experience what Lyssa just termed a moment ago, a disorienting dilemma, and it could be a, and a disorienting dilemma, again, is the recognition that something about the way that I'm making sense of this situation is insufficient to be able to successfully manage myself in that situation. So it's a kind of an ‘aha' and sometimes it's a moment of fear or anxiety, right? And so Vertical Facilitation includes having this sort of loving manner that allows for people to come face to face with whatever emotional emotions they're experiencing as they encounter a particular disorienting dilemma. And just to say one more thing about that, the disorienting dilemma can be experienced within an individual or within a group, and Vertical Facilitation is simply about surfacing moments in which that disorienting dilemma becomes present for people, whether individuals or the whole group, such that they can make a choice. So the important thing here is awareness and choice, and I called it an existential choice because it's a choice in how to exist in relation to this situation. And when people can make that choice toward a more complex way of making sense, not only does it alter the way they relate to this particular situation, but in that very alteration, it alters the sort of neural connections by which they make sense of other similar situations. And so that's what we mean by transformation. A transformation occurs when there's the, an alteration through the exercise of this existential choice of those that the kind of neural network by which we've come to make sense of a given situation or set of situations. So that's about the shortest way I could say it was. Lyssa Adkins Well, and let me just highlight how incredibly powerful this fulcrum is, because once we can get up underneath the unexamined lenses that people are looking at the world through, and once we can help them encounter this thing that used to be like perfectly fine and it's somehow limiting now, then it's not only the situation that they're presented with right now that has different outcomes and maybe more success, but it's everything like this and everything in the future that is related that gets a lift. I mean, so like the leverage capability is really, really high with this kind of development and this kind of transformational experience. Michael Hamman Yeah, and at the expense of elongating this, this part, but I just want to build on something that Lyssa said here that part of what happens when vertical learning happens, or when transformational learning happens, is that people have a state, have state experiences, and so a state experience, we've all had them, it's a moment, it's a kind of an ‘aha' moment, so it's a sort of cognitive insight, which is combined with an emotion. It's a certain emotion. And you could say that at those moments, something in us gets connected to something much deeper. It's like we have a moment where we're drilling down into some deeper part of ourselves and being able to pull up a kind of wisdom. Now we've all had these, you know, these moments of, we call them state experiences and oftentimes we pooh-pooh state experiences because, well, you know, that was so, you know, last week because quote unquote state experiences fade. Now part of what happens with deliberate Vertical Facilitation is that we stage sequences of moments in which people experience state experiences. And what the research shows is that when people can repeat state experiences, it tightens up the new neural connections that get created during any given state experience. And so there are many pieces to the art of Vertical Facilitation, and one of them is this kind of engineering of situations that bring about these state experiences where people have an ‘aha' by virtue of having gotten to the other side of some sort of disorienting dilemma. Ula Ojiaku Right. Wow. Are there any stories that you could share highlighting, you know, like where you facilitated or you implemented Vertical Facilitation, created a situation or scenario where people were put into, you know, where they experienced dilemmas and then you were able to facilitate them to get to that state experience, are there any stories that you could share just to give some of, myself included, you know, a kind of example that we could identify with? Michael Hamman Yeah, I think I would like for us to offer a couple of examples, maybe one that's, maybe from when we were doing the Coaching Agile Teams classes. And then I'd like to offer an example from something that's a little bit more personal in tone. So, I don't know, do you want to speak to the first one, Lyssa? Lyssa Adkins Well, what I'd love us to do is for you to offer the example and then let me help you make it clear how that example created heat experiences, connected to the bigger game, like the different aspects of Vertical Facilitation that you are now exposing for the world. Does that sound good? Michael Hamman Yeah, that sounds good. So, the first example used to happen a lot when we were teaching this class Coaching Agile Teams. And a lot of our listeners probably took it years ago. And there's a moment in that class, this is just one example of many such moments, but there's a moment in this class where we teach a skill that we called Level Two Listening, and the distinction between Level One and Level Two Listening and Level One, just to say something about that distinction to get the example across, Level One Listening is listening to my own thoughts and paying attention to my own thoughts, I'm with this other person, but I'm really not with them, whereas Level Two Listening is as I'm really with them, and I'm not only hearing what they're saying, but I'm actually,  I'm not only listening to what they're saying, but I'm listening for who this person is. So there's a quality of genuine relationship in this moment. And I'm not trying to take this person anywhere, I'm not trying to get them, you know, I'm not trying to figure anything out with them. And so then we invite people to practice this and what happens invariably is that people have this, first of all, it's very uncomfortable initially, that they have this disorienting dilemma because they're so used to like having to figure out, okay, well how can I help this person, or what can I say, or, you know, I'm not really understanding what this person's saying, or, you know, all the stuff that goes on when we're in that Level One Listening. So there's a disorienting dilemma. But then there's the ‘aha' that happens when something shifts in the way that the other person is expressing themselves. You know, like they suddenly become more, maybe coherent or they become more self-expressive, or maybe authentic. And so they have the experience of that connection and it becomes possible for them to make that existential choice. Wow. That was really amazing. You know, typically we have those kinds of experiences when we're falling in love, but not when I'm talking with somebody that I just met earlier today. So that would be one example. Ula Ojiaku Would you say Level Two Listening again, and this is me trying to make sense of the terminology, would that equate to what, well, I know as active listening, because that is really about just listening, not just for the words that are being said, but what's the, you know, are there any emotions being conveyed with it? What's the body language, can you read in between the lines, but just focusing on what they're saying without thinking about what your response is going to be or what your counter-argument is going to be. Michael Hamman Yeah I would say that Level Two Listening, how I would really clearly differentiate is that it's me being silent, you know? So I'm not trying to establish camaraderie with this other person, quote unquote, camaraderie. I'm simply being present and hearing what they're saying and listening to what they're saying and being attentive to who they're being. And what I understand about active listening is that sometimes you want to say things to indicate to the person that you're following them, that you're with them. And, you know, we find that to be actually, counterintuitively perhaps, a bit distracting, whereas Level Two Listening is just, it's actually more uncomfortable, because we're not really saying and to clarify Level Two Listening there. Lyssa Adkins Yeah. And for people who are more interested in that language level of listening comes from the Coactive Coaching School, it's often also called focused listening or listening for, those are and active listening is an adjacent and related topic, but has been, has the history that Michael just talked about that sometimes is counterproductive. Okay, so Michael, for that situation that you just talked about, which used to happen every single time and every single Coaching Agile Team's class, we could rely on this being a disorienting dilemma for people, right. So, just to be clear about the four perspectives, heat experiences, stretch practices, social container, and bigger game. So how does that situation, how is it an example of heat experience? Michael Hamman So a disorienting dilemma is a heat experience. And by a heat experience we mean it's an experience in which something in us gets challenged, some known category gets challenged, and we often feel it at first as anxiety. Sometimes we feel it as a sense of excitement, oftentimes it's a mix of feelings. But it's always this sense that something is getting challenged, some category. I don't mean us as a person's getting challenged, but the way in which we are making sense of something is getting challenged in the moment in which that sense making is occurring. So it can't happen, you know, retroactively, it can't happen with respect to something that I did or said yesterday. It has to be elicited in this moment and that's the key to creating a heat experience. And there are lots of different ways to create heat experiences. But that's one of them, that's the most classic way. Lyssa Adkins Yeah. And I would say that people did experience that heat experience as very confronting. We would often ask, so what was that like? And they'd be like, I hated it, oh my God, I felt so weird. You know, it was like this whole mix, and then there would also be the person who would say like, oh, I found it so relieving, right. Like, so there's a whole mix of how people are dealing with it. And I think that moves to the second of the four that we could talk about now, which is social container. So like how in that situation was there a social container, Michael, that helped make this a Vertical Facilitation moment? Michael Hamman Yeah, great. So this was toward the end of the first day of Coaching Agile Teams. And by that point we had, there's a way in which, Lyssa, Michael Spayd and myself, the three of us who led these courses, there was a way in which we held the space, we use that term holding the space, which is paying attention to not only what's happening with individuals, so we might be interacting with an individual, but also scanning, we're constantly scanning the space to see what's happening. How is this landing? You know, does the space feel stuck, and from time to time, giving feedback to the group or to the class, you know, wow, the space, the energy feels stuck, what's happening. And so inviting people to get involved, to elicit their own awareness of the space or the group, or the emotional energy, which oftentimes, you know, we don't pay attention, as human beings we are aware of these things, but we have so long ago lost our ability to have our awareness of that awareness. And so part of what happens is we elicit this awareness of group energy and what that does in combined with, you know, the fact that we're bringing people to these disorienting dilemmas is a certain kind of bondedness happens. There's a unique quality of bondedness and this is something that people always remarked about these courses and in other courses that both Lyssa and I do, the quality of social bondedness creates an environment of safety, right? So we talk about, you know, emotional safety, right? But it makes it possible for us then to challenge each other, it makes it possible for the environment to be challenging. So it's both safe and challenging. So in that moment, it was, that environment was really starting to come alive. Ula Ojiaku On that point about the social container and, you know, saying you create a state where, well not state, but you create a situation where there's a social bond with the group. Would you say that what something that would help with that bonding is trust, an element of trust that I can be vulnerable is there? Lyssa Adkins So trust is a tricky one, because everyone's got a different definition of it. And so one of the things that we would do, and that I would suggest everyone do in a transformational learning environment is to just consciously and explicitly design the alliance of how this is going to go between all of us together. And the purpose for doing that is to put the participants in the driver's seat in terms of being responsible for their own experience, but also to empower the course leaders to lead people through these experiences. And so when someone would say, well, we would say something like, so what do we need in this environment for you to really get the most out of it? Oh, I need it to be, I need to trust it. Okay, great. What do you mean by trust? So once we get below sort of the easy word, then we get to what people really need in the container. And the most important thing then, as the chorus or as the program or as the leadership development longitudinal thing goes on, whatever thing you're doing, as it goes on, what the most important thing is, is for the leaders to constantly be affirming of, bringing in Vertical Facilitation to whatever program you're doing, and the other two are stretch practices and bigger game. Michael Hamman So stretch practice is a practice that requires that somebody stretch some known category. So it's very much related to, by the way, all four of these qualities, we call them design elements, overlap, and they, you know, they synchronistically, you know, interact with one another, so they're not really to be seen in isolation. So stretch practice is one that, the practice of which requires that something in my way of understanding things has to shift. So for instance, in this case, you know, inviting people to practice Level Two Listening, which by the time they did it for the third time, they were starting to get it. You know, there was that shift from awareness of the disorienting dilemma to an existential choice, wow, this is really a profound way to work with other people. And so the stretch practice here was a very simple one, which is this thing of Level Two Listening. So, you know, oftentimes, in fact, almost always transformational learning happens through the introduction of some sort of stretch practice, that the stretch practice is a kind of vehicle, a kind of catalyst for creating a situational moment in which transformational learning becomes possible, because I want us to keep in mind that this is not about reflecting on things that happened yesterday or last week. This is about bringing situations present in the moment,  and there's a whole psychological research called memory reconsolidation that's in the background of all of this. We're not going to get into that right now, but it's an important technology and this is why it's important to make these situations that are happening in the now. And so that would be an example of a stretch practice, the practice of which something has to shift in the way that somebody makes sense of something. Lyssa Adkins And to just be really clear about what the stretch practice was, like the first stretch practice was so simple on its face. It was basically this. Now that you have heard about Level One Listening, which is all about you, your ideas, how you want to be valuable, how you want to be smart, how you want to show this person you're listening. Shift to Level Two, which is you being focused on what they're saying, what's behind the words, and as you said earlier, Ula, what's the emotional content that's going on there? So here's the instruction. You're going to listen to this person talk about something real and something that is on their mind for three minutes, and you're not going to say anything. And the reason you're not going to say anything is because you want some space in your mind to notice, ah, when am I with them at Level Two? And when do I fall back to Level One? No big deal, just come back to Level Two. So it created a new, on the face of it, very simple practice, but it confronted people's as yet unexamined beliefs about how they bring value. Ula Ojiaku That's powerful, powerful. Michael Hamman And again, keep in mind that this is a synergy. So we need all four of these, right? So we've just related our thinking to three of these design elements: heat experiences, social container best practices, and so now there's a fourth one. You can kind of think of this as, you know, the legs of a table. You know, the table will stand up with, may stand up with three legs, but it's going to be very wobbly, you need all four of these to create a solidly transformative learning environment, and the fourth of these is what we call a bigger game and a bigger game is that we relate to what we're doing with a commitment to our own growth. So for instance, in this example, many people came into this course with a commitment to growing themselves as an natural coach, and because of the way we open and start the class, people start to confront what does it really mean to be an agile coach? And people realise that the commitment is ultimately to their own inner growth,  they don't necessarily know exactly what that means, and it's a shared commitment, there's a quality, so this is, the bigger game has to be a shared commitment, it can't just be, you know, I've got this commitment, and maybe you do, but we're clear we're kind of in the same boat together, and what holds us together is this shared commitment. It's what gets us through those moments, say, of conflict, you know, when it's hard, or when, you know, I'm having kind of a really tough moment, right here, and what gets me through it is this commitment to, maybe even to other people, but certainly for myself. Ula Ojiaku It's a bigger game, shared commitment to a common goal. Lyssa, what do you want to add anything? Lyssa Adkins I would say so common goal makes it sound like we all want exactly the same thing, and that's not necessarily, so I like what Michael says, like, we're all in the same boat together. This boat is going in one direction, right? There's a lot of variability between people's bigger games and how they think about those and how that pulls them forward to get them through these heat experiences and all of that. And so that's, I think, another function of the bigger game that is really important is oftentimes people will come to a transformational learning experience thinking, I'm going to get some more tools and techniques, and fair enough, certainly they will along the way, but those tools and techniques, that sort of content, that knowledge that's getting transferred to people is happening in the context of those people confronting the lenses, the glasses they had on, they didn't know they had on, confronting the fact that they're just sort of maybe bobbing through life and they're not connected to a bigger game. You know, so all of that is happening at the same time. And so I would say that the, in a Vertical Facilitation, from a Vertical Facilitation perspective, the content that you are trying to convey as a leader of, let's say it's a leadership development program, or a five day transformational learning experience, whatever it is, that content is a peer to the transformational learning experience itself. They go together, and that's what makes it transformational. Otherwise, we could just, you know, record a video and say, download this information to your brain, operate here, and that would work fine as long as the world weren't getting more complex, but it is. Michael Hamman You know, so for people to get a real genuine taste for this, we are starting what we call a learning journey, a Vertical Facilitation Learning Journey. And the journey actually has two parts: the first part is a free series of webinars, emails, us providing resources so that people can get a strong foundational orientation around what Vertical Facilitation is, both conceptually, but also they will get an experience of it because it's very, very hard to demo it unless you're actually doing something with a group, so people who would like to see this at work, we invite you to go to https://www.theverticalfacilitator.com and sign up and join the learning journey. The first part is free, the first three months is free, and then if it's something that is truly compelling, the second part, which is the paid part, takes you on a very deep dive into developing yourself in terms of skills and leadership stances as a vertical facilitator. So I think that's what I would invite people to do. Ula Ojiaku Okay. You said that if there's a learning journey, three part experience, there's the webinar, and the part one is on, you know, the intro to Vertical Facilitation per se, and the second one is paid. I don't know if I got the third part, what would be part three? Michael Hamman The third part is for people who do the deep dive, the paid deep dive portion, and it's a set of follow up emails and other resources that help people to integrate what they learn, because what happens during the deep dive, among other things is that people actually design and hopefully facilitate a small either workshop or intervention of some sort where they actually practice the skills and distinctions that they have learned, both in that free orientation part, but also in the deep dive. So that's the third part. The name of the course is the Vertical Facilitator. Ula Ojiaku And there is something on, you know, the latest post you made on LinkedIn, about something starting in August. Is this related to that course or is it different? Lyssa Adkins It is, that's the deep dive portion. So between now and August are going to be the webinars, the free resources, but basically getting us into this new composition together. Ula Ojiaku And would it be in person, or virtual, the August dive? Michael Hamman It will be virtual. Lyssa Adkins Because that's the hardest, so virtual's the hardest, we figure we might as well go ahead and go there since that's going to be people's context, not all the time, but more of the time. Michael Hamman Yeah. So at a future time, probably the second time we do it, we will do the deep dive portion or part of the deep dive portion as a live event. Ula Ojiaku Okay, and then one last thing, any final words for the audience in terms of what we've covered so far? Michael Hamman The only thing that comes to mind is that join us on this learning journey so you can get a taste of this. So, you know, we've, the best we've been able to do is sort of maybe elicit a little bit of the quality that's present when Vertical Facilitation is happening and, people may have noticed perhaps the way of being a way of Lyssa and I working together, and Lyssa and I are both very skilled vertical facilitators and so we would invite you to come and join us. Ula Ojiaku Thank you, Lyssa, anything? Lyssa Adkins No, I think we have said so much and I've so appreciated the richness of this and also that Ula, I'm so appreciative that this podcast gets to be part of the kick-off of what's truly a new thing. Michael Hamman Yeah, I also want to express my appreciation for you, because this is, you know, you have a certain grace in your manner, and I felt like this has just been a really wonderful podcast experience for me, thank you. Ula Ojiaku Thanks, both of you are very kind and very gracious, and the honour is mine and (it's been) a great experience for me. That's all we have for now. Thanks for listening. If you liked this show, do subscribe at www.agileinnovationleaders.com or your favourite podcast provider. Also share with friends and do leave a review on iTunes. This would help others find this show. I'd also love to hear from you, so please drop me an email at ula@agileinnovationleaders.com Take care and God bless!     

Join Brian as he rediscovers and relives the most captivating topics, memorable guests, and impactful topics from the first year of the “Agile Mentors” podcast. Overview From deep dives into Agile methodologies and practical tips for using your knowledge to benefit others and foster change, the first 50 episodes of the “Agile Mentor” podcast have been filled with fascinating topics and memorable guests. In this episode, Brian Milner embarks on a retrospective journey through the inaugural year of the show. Listen in as he shares the real stars of the podcast, the moments that surprised him, those that took him out of his comfort zone, and the ones that inspired him to push to be better every day! Plus, what’s next for the show. Listen Now to Discover: [00:45] - Brian introduces the retrospective episode to celebrate one year and 50 episodes of the "Agile Mentors" podcast and share what's next. [01:54] - A thank you for YOUR role in the show. [02:17] - The role of marrying the right topic to the right guest. [02:56] - The format that allows listeners to choose the episodes that interest them the most. [04:03] - Pointing you toward the best of the best. Our first several episodes were focused on the Agile Framework and some core topics, including having Mike Cohn on to talk about the different roles and generally accepted practices. [05:13] - Sending out thanks to a few of our guests, including the trainers at Mountain Goat Software, including Lance Dacy. [05:45] - Kert Peterson joined us to share his knowledge, and Scott Dunn shared his insight from the product owner's perspective. [06:05] - On episode 16, Mitch Lacey joined us to discuss The Hidden Secret Ingredient And Julie Chickering brought a great perspective from a project management background and applying that to some of the stuff we've discussed here on the show. [06:39] - The time when one of my mentors joined us on the show to discuss transformation. [07:08] - Learning about coaching and marketing from the best! [07:27] - Roman Pitchler joined us to discuss product roadmaps and planning things from a product owner perspective. And John Miller shared about using Scrum in the education environment. [07:46] - On EP25, Henrik Nieberg came on and talked to us about scaling, and on EP27, Tricia Broderick walked us through leadership without blame. [08:18] - How Scrum can be applied outside of software development and mob programming. [08:42] - The key to working with humans. [09:03] - The episode that surprised Brian a little bit. [09:34] - Three episodes all about change: The first one was about how one organization uses Scrum to help impoverished micro-entrepreneurs succeed (and change their lives). The second featured Chris Li sharing his insight on how to know when it’s time to strike out on your own, and Karim Harbott walked us through the difficulty of transforming an organization's culture. [10:25] - The episode that inspired Brian to try to push in different ways to get better. And how to cultivate an Agile culture in a virtual world. [10:53] - Why transformations take people, how to assess a company’s culture before you accept their job offer, and lean thinking in Agile with Bob Payne. [11:49] - The real stars of the podcast. [12:30] - What’s ahead for the podcast? [13:02] - Stepping off the gas a bit. [13:45] - Virtual dial—targeted tips. [14:32] - The lifeblood of the “Agile Mentors” podcast. [15:06] - Mike Cohn and Brian are both presenting at Agile2023 in Orlando, July 24 through 28th. [15:39] - The most significant benefit of BIG conferences. [16:41] - Thank you for getting us to a year and 50 episodes! Join the Agile Mentors Community to continue the discussion. If you have topics for future episodes, email us by clicking here. And don’t forget to subscribe to the “Agile Mentors” Podcast on Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode. References and resources mentioned in the show: Agile2023 | Orlando, Florida | Agile Alliance #1: Scrum vs Agile & Keys to Success with Mike Cohn #3: What Makes a Great Product Owner? With Lance Dacy #9: Scrum Artifacts with Kert Peterson #10: Why User Stories are the Best Way to Capture Requirements with Mike Cohn #17: Getting There From Here: Agile Transformations with David Hawks #18 Coaching in an Agile World with Lyssa Adkins #21: Agile Marketing Teams with Stacey Ackerman #22: How to Create Helpful Product Roadmaps with Roman Pichler #23 How Agile Works in Education with John Miller #25: Scaling with Henrik Kniberg #27: Leading Without Blame with Tricia Broderick #29: Influencing Up with Scott Dunn #32: Scrum in High School Sports with Cort Sharp #33 Mob Programming with Woody Zuill #34: I'm Trained, Now What? with Julie Chickering #37: Servant Leadership, Not Spineless Leadership with Brad Swanson #38: Using Agile for Social and Societal Transformation with Kubair Shirazee #40: Is it Time to Go Out on Your Own? Tips and Insights with Chris Li #41: Cultural Transformation in Organizations with Karim Harbott #42: The Importance of Self-Mastery with Bob Galen #43: Cultivating Agile Team Culture in a Virtual World with Richard Cheng #44: Transformations Take People with Anu Smalley #46: How to Assess Company Culture Before Accepting a Job Offer with Christina Ambers #47: Exploring Lean Thinking in Agile Development with Bob Payne Mountain Good Software's Certified Product Owner course Mountain Goat Software Certified Scrum and Agile Training Schedule Join the Agile Mentors Community Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast on Apple Podcasts Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work.

In this exciting episode of Joekub, we had the pleasure of interviewing the renowned Agile coach, trainer, and author, Lyssa Adkins. We discussed her book, "Coaching Agile Teams," which is known for its dense, insightful content that provides value to agile coaches even years after they first read it. We also delved into how AI is currently affecting the Agile coaching discipline and how Agile coaches can use technology to enhance their practice. Lastly Lyssa paints a picture of how Agile methods are perfectly suited to tackle the uncertainty we face in our future. The next step in agile coaching may be in solving the world's problems, not just building the next products or services. Lyssa's positive outlook on the future of Agile coaching and her deep knowledge and passion for the field made for a fascinating and inspiring interview. Tune in to Joekub to hear Lyssa Adkins share her valuable insights and wisdom! Links discussed in the interview LyssaAdkins.com Coaching Agile Teams: Kindle, Audiobook, Paperback The two 12-week programs: Coaching Agile Teams Guided Study & Practice Group (new one starting in late June) What else? Feels like I'm forgetting something here. Agilists and Planetary Challenges Collection site for stories - AgilityImpact.org Agility Impact Meetup - https://www.meetup.com/agility-impact/ More stories on Joanne's Wick'd Wisdom podcast - https://www.get-wicked.com/wicked-wisdom --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/joekub/message

Bio Lyssa Adkins is a coach, facilitator, teacher and inspirer. Her current focus is improving the performance of top leadership teams through insightful facilitation and organization systems coaching. Making difficult decisions faster and with clear alignment, unknotting challenging multi-department impediments, creating the conditions for smooth organizational delivery, helping leaders take up the “Agile transformation” that is theirs to make…this is where she thrives and helps thrive. Her Agile community focus is amplifying women's voices, which is why she is a founder of the TENWOMENSTRONG #WomeninAgile programs. She has been pleased to serve the emergence of Agile Coaching as a profession. In 2010, she co-founded the Agile Coaching Institute which has developed over 10,000 people in the knowledge, skills and being-ness needed to yield genuinely competent agile coaching. Since 2011, she has been a member of the ICAgile working committee that defines the learning objectives for Agile Facilitation and Coaching and she assesses candidates for the ICAgile-Expert in Agile Coaching competence-based certification. She has also served the Scrum Alliance as an application reviewer for the Certified Enterprise Coach (CEC) designation. She is the author of Coaching Agile Teams which, as a top ranking Agile book, was released as an audiobook in its 10th year. She likes to explore facilitating intense conflict, societal change, organizational change, the benefits and costs of being human in the workplace, agile coaching, agile transformation, adult human development, human systems dynamics, the role of nature, and books of all sorts. She tends toward a balance of the provocative and practical. Lyssa holds an alphabet soup of certifications: ICAgile Expert in Agile Coaching (ICE-AC), Scrum Alliance Certified Enterprise Coach Emeritus (CEC-E), International Coach Federation Professional Certified Coach (PCC), Organization and Relationship Systems Certified Coach (ORSCC) and Certified Integral Facilitator (IF).  She is also a trained Co-Active Coach and Leader. Social media/ website(s): LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lyssaadkins/ Twitter: @LyssaAdkins Lyssa's Website: https://lyssaadkins.com/ Interview Highlights Timestamp 05:35 How can we stop going faster while our ability to see further ahead is decreasing? 08:00 Coaching leaders – Lyssa's 5Cs 21:05 Agile Mastery 24:55 Using agile to author a book 30:52 TENWOMENSTRONG 37:50 Expanding leaderfulness Books/Resources Mentioned InspireMe! card deck Lyssa's 5&5 Podcast: Essential Shifts for Leading in Turbulent Times https://lyssaadkins.com/55-with-lyssa-adkins-season-three/ Listen on Spotify Apple or your favourite podcast platform  One-on-One Leadership Coaching & Mentoring TENWOMENSTRONG: Influence & Impact in the Agile World plus other great programs Episode Transcript Ula Ojiaku (Intro): Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I'm Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. Ula Ojiaku (Guest Intro): Hello everyone. It's my absolute honour to introduce my guest for this episode, she is no other than the legendary Lyssa Adkins herself. We met at the Agile Coach Conference in Amsterdam and she graciously agreed to be my guest. Lyssa is renowned for her groundbreaking work in defining the Agile coaching discipline and she is known for her book as well, that is titled Coaching Agile Teams. She is also one of the original founders of the Agile Coaching Institute. In this conversation, Lyssa talked about some things that are currently on her mind, and a little bit more about her work that she is currently doing which is focused on coaching the leadership teams in organisations. Without further ado, my conversation with Lyssa. Ula Ojiaku So, Lyssa, thank you so much for being a guest here on the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast. Lyssa Adkins You're welcome. I took a little peek at your previous guests and I'm like, oh wow, there have been some really amazing people on this podcast. So I'm hoping that this goes well for you and me and all the people who listen to it. Ula Ojiaku I have no doubts, Lyssa. It's a known fact that I'm a big Lyssa Adkins fan. So for me, this is like a dream come true. I am speaking, well, virtually, face to face, with someone that I absolutely admire and it was a pleasure meeting you as well at the March Agile Coach Conference back in Amsterdam. So do you want to tell us a bit about yourself so we can know how your journey has brought you this way? Lyssa Adkins Yeah, I sure will. I think that the thing to know about me is that the places where I find out that I am not a match for what's going on in my environment is the thing that propels me forward. So I'm thinking about the things I've been learning about recently, and they are things like trauma informed coaching, how to deal with grief and loss and suffering. And this is all because, you know, we're sort of in a time where these things are up and I don't have the skills for it. And so, you know, as you mentioned, those things like, you know, I like to sing and all this work and I've just, I was realising that these are the places where I find in myself that I'm just not capable to meet the complexity of the world around me. And so I try to do something different. One of those things in meeting the complexity of the world around me is that we've just bought a collaboration space property in Portugal. So that's a little bit about what's happening in my life and my home and my work. And my adult daughter is going to go move there with her partner and they're going to be the full-time caretakers of it. So that's a whole new thing that's just opened up for us and will allow us to do some really deep and wonderful work with people. Ula Ojiaku So are you planning to do some sort of retreats there as well? Because you said it's a collaborative working space? Lyssa Adkins Yeah. So people who have programs, and want to bring people to the property, it's a beautiful property, on more than an acre of land and beautiful, mature fruit trees and all of this and lovely property. And so people who want to do deep work with their groups or people who want to come and co-work together, you know, just to be in the same spot, you know, they don't even have to be from the same company necessarily. So that's something that's happening now, more in the world. And we just want to create this as a space for people to really get in touch with the fullness of what's going on in their work, in their life, and ask themselves some really different questions and perhaps even start to generate a completely new way of forward. Ula Ojiaku Interesting, given the world we're in now with the whole change caused by COVID 19, it means that we can remotely work from almost anywhere in the world. So that is something I think is very relevant to the times we're in and the opportunity to as well, do the deep work you're talking about. So we will put the links to more details on this in the show notes of this episode, but can we then go, because we are also interested in knowing about you Lyssa, you know, the person who is Lyssa Adkins? Lyssa Adkins Oh, I'm someone who is, on a daily basis, confounded by the world and by the difficulties we're in. I find myself experiencing a significant amount of grief about the things that are falling away in our society, and my outlook on where we're headed is that things are going to continue to fall away. And so a really big question I'm sitting in, I guess, two questions I'm sitting in for myself right now are, one is, you know, who do I want to be as a leader while things are collapsing? And the second question I'm sitting in is, it's so funny, because I just drew this Inspire Me card right before we got here. And I was thinking about this question. This is a card deck that I created with my husband and another agile coach, Deb Preuss, years and years ago. And so for the people who are listening to the audio version, it's a picture of someone driving like into fog and they can't see much, and the question is from Peter Senge and it's this, How can we stop going faster while our ability to see further ahead is decreasing? And I think that's a really big question for me, as a leader in the world, like how can we get off the crazy merry-go-round we have created because we can't expect the same level of performance we did before. We can't expect that things are going to remain certain and stable, actually, I'm pretty sure they're not. So I, you know, who is Lyssa Adkins is someone who sits in these big questions, and for like months and months and months, like a really long time, I sit in these big questions and, according to the strengths binder, my top two strengths are connectedness and futuristic. So that's where my mind tends to move a lot of the time. And what I'm realising as I'm working with leaders is that they hang on to all those things that aren't going well. And that compounds the problem that, that makes it so, now our nervous systems are on high alert, in addition to the thing that's going the way we didn't want it to go. Ula Ojiaku What could be those things that actually lead us down that path of holding on to things when we should be letting go? Lyssa Adkins Well, so there are three broad areas I'm talking to leaders about right now, and I've created them sort of like little bumper stickers so we can remind ourselves of them. And the first is upgrade your complexity of mind. The second is downshift your nervous system. And the third one is expand your team's core capabilities, core competencies. Five Cs for short, because there are five of them. We remember them. So, I mean, so your question is squarely in the bumper sticker of upgrade your complexity of mind, right. So when we upgrade our complexity of mind, this isn't requiring a new skill or a new model or a new whatever best, it's definitely not a new best practice, what it is, is being able to take in so much more information, especially contradictory and competing information, which is happening to us anyway. But to be able to bring on a deeper level of meaning-making about all of that. And in part of what is required, there is not necessarily to stop going fast, but what's required there is to start listening and bringing in different essence energies that allow you to make different kinds of decisions. Because I see leaders right now making the same kinds of decisions over and over, and we're just trying harder. We're just trying harder at the things that don't match the world, where supply chains are failing, where we're having multiple climate disasters at the same time where, you know, we can just keep going on and on about the things that are walking our world. Ula Ojiaku Are you able to also talk about the other two, you know, you said, downshifting our nervous system, I couldn't get the C, and then upskilling your team's competency as well. Those other two. Lyssa Adkins Sure. Let's just touch on those briefly. So downshifting your nervous system is actually one of the key capabilities for having a more complex mind, because what happens to us is that when we encounter something that is a threat of some sort and a threat can be to our sense of identity, to our ego, to our intellect, those are all very related. You know, a threat can be that there's just, you know, now a global supply chain meltdown, and all of a sudden, as an executive, I'm going, oh my God, what do I do? You know, I mean, it's like deer in headlights moment. Like now I'm at the edge of my meaning-making and I don't know what to do and what happens is that our bodies respond and our bodies respond, according to something called neuroception. It's a type of perception, but it's based on your biology, it's based on your actual, your animal body, this thing that you, that you are in, this animal body, responds to these threats in the world before you have cognitively realised them. And so what it does is a very smart thing. It floods your body with all kinds of anxiety hormones, you know, adrenaline, all of these. Yeah. Right. And it gets you ready to take some immediate action because your body does not know that the idea that feels like a threat to you is not the same thing as a sabre tooth tiger chasing you. Your body actually doesn't know that, right. Now, good news is that we have this amazing prefrontal cortex. Human beings get the luxury of a prefrontal cortex where all our executive functions, reside and work. And we can recognise when the animal of our body has taken over and flooded our body with these stress hormones, and we can go, okay, I have the ability to interrupt these. There are really easy ways to interrupt it, actually, and to bring back online those executive functions, because that's the important thing. Things like decision making, critical thinking, empathy, logic, they all leave the building when your body is getting ready to have you run or freeze or fight. Right. And so what I'm noticing is that this happens in really subtle ways on leadership teams and people don't know that their body has been hijacked. They don't know it's happening, but I can, because I'm working with teams, leadership teams on sort of like the pattern level of their interaction. I can sit there and go, huh? It looks like she's hijacked, and I can watch this interaction, and a couple minutes later. Oh, he is too. Well, there's a third. And so, pretty soon you have an entire executive team operating without their executive functions online and no one is recognising it. So part of what I think is important for us to do in this particular time we're in, when things are incredibly stressful and our ways of coping don't necessarily work in the complexity that we're in. One of the things that's important is learning about our nervous systems, because it's actually super easy to interrupt this whole process of your lizard brain getting hijacked. It's super easy, but people don't know to do it. And people feel a little bit embarrassed about it. They're like, oh, well this is like my thing I have to deal with. No, actually it's a group thing. So that's maybe a little more than an introduction to the idea of downshifting your nervous system, but that's the idea there that I've just really gotten clear about how much people are operating, not at their best. Ula Ojiaku And then what about upskilling your team's competency? The third one. Could you tell us a bit about that? Lyssa Adkins Yeah. I think executive teams, as I watch them work and as I interact with them to help them work better together, I notice that they have the same, this might be a little bit unfortunate to hear, but they have the same sort of mediocre conversations that delivery teams have. And by mediocre, I mean, they don't have a high level of competence in conflict, in collaboration and creativity and communication, and definitely not in change. Because all they keep doing is driving, driving, driving, driving. They keep moving through these very surface level conversations and making decisions from there. And we're basically getting the same results we've been getting, you know, we're not going anywhere new and we're not able to take in the fullness of the context we are now in, which is something human beings have never encountered before. So as I work with executive teams, I'm like, okay, great, you've got your key result, great, fantastic. Those key results happen through a series of conversations, decisions, work sessions. In those work sessions, the way that is happening is through these five core competencies, communication, collaboration, creativity, conflict, and change. And then to the core of that is actually the intelligence that resides and how the relationship system is working. So if we can focus on that, then those five core competencies increase. Then we have much more effective working sessions and decisions. Then we meet our goals. So it's like working from the core out. Ula Ojiaku It's really an interesting framework. I don't think this is yet out in the world or in any of the materials you've released to us yet. So I hope to learn more about it at some point in time. Is there anywhere that I could actually…? Lyssa Adkins Yeah, I've just now realised there is somewhere. So I created a keynote around this last year, and it's one of the keynotes I give publicly and to make myself get clear about the contents of the keynote, I made myself record my own podcast, which is called the 5 & 5, five minutes a day, five days a week. And it's all around this topic of the five essential shifts for leading in turbulent times. And so we can absolutely provide that link in the show notes. So that definitely gives people, a flavour, in five minute bites, of these things we're talking about. Upgrade your complexity of mind, downshift your nervous system, and expand your team's five core competencies. Ula Ojiaku That's awesome Lyssa, we'll definitely have that in the show notes. Now I'm curious, in working with, you know, the leaders that you do, how do you go about setting the intention for the engagements and how do you measure the progress towards meeting that set intention? Lyssa Adkins That's a really good question, and I have to say, I have not found a secret sauce that I'm happy with here yet, because most executives and executive teams don't know that they're in over their heads in a way that they certainly are in over their heads. They keep thinking that if we just apply the same things we've been doing, we're going to get out of this mess. They keep thinking normal is going to come back. They keep thinking, well, maybe normal won't come back, but we'll just keep going. And I don't know that we're going to be able to just keep going, I don't know how much longer we'll be able to keep going, because we are absolutely encountering, now, the limits to growth that were predicted back in the 1970s, you know, so everything that we've predicated our business world on, the idea that growth is good, growth is what we go for, you know, and we always have to have this sort of sterling impression of our service and we can never let anyone down. Well, we're going to start letting people down. We are absolutely approaching limits to growth. We're not going to be able to keep growing as we were before. And so I think that what is going on is that I move into executive teams starting with this idea that I'm going to help them develop their leadership. And it usually is around a goal that the organisation has. So for example, the organisation will have a goal that, hey, we're going to expand threefold in the next year, which means we have got to make ourselves, leaders, capable of creating leaders. And we've got to do that at the next two layers down as well. So now, so that's a phrase that people understand. We now, as leaders, our job is to create leaders and we now realise that we're not very good at that. So that's one way that people think, oh yeah, maybe I need some leadership development help. And it could be around any kind of crisis. That's also a certain time that people will, executive teams will say, yeah, I guess we should look at the way we're working, but pretty infrequently, you know. So, I'm now sitting at the crossroads, wondering where is the greatest impact for me as a practitioner? Is it working with an entire executive team or is it working with those two people on the executive team that are really ready to level up? And so I'm actually in the process of expanding my one-on-one leadership coaching for the latter half of this year, because I want to just really find out and, you know, have a sense at least of how is the return on investment for them and me? You know, where is the greatest impact, basically? Ula Ojiaku That's really interesting. And I would be keen to know what the evaluation is at the end of the year, when you've… because it seems like it's an experiment to understand where are you going to make the most impact? One of the things that you are renowned for is the fact that you made some breakthrough contributions, you know, in the field of agile coaching, you, co-founded the Agile Coaching Institute in 2010, and you wrote the book, which is still helping, you know, lots of people, agile coaches and other people who, you know, play servant leadership roles in organisations that are in their journey towards embracing agile ways of working and mindset, coaching agile teams. What led you to that? If you don't mind, if we could take a walk down memory lane, what led you to writing the book and coaching, and co-founding the Agile Coaching Institute? Lyssa Adkins So I love this trip down memory lane, and actually it's not totally in the past, because as you say that book is still doing its work in the world, even though it is now 12 years old, it's still selling as much as it ever did, and so right now I'm actually recording what we call a guided study and practice group that we're going to open for ongoing admission. And it's sitting inside of this really beautiful community called Agile Mastery, so like it's the lessons from me, which are something like a book club on steroids. So we're taking just a section of the book at a time, a metabolisable section, there's field work that people are doing in between each session and they're interacting with each other on it, and they're helping each other learn. There are accountability conversations that are going on. And so that sort of action learning cycle takes place to help people really use what's in that book. Because what I kept hearing is like, gosh, I've read this book four times and I can't believe I'm still discovering something new, or like I've had this book for 10 years, I just opened it again, like, oh my gosh, how did I not see this before? So there's a lot in it, it's really sort of dense actually. So there's a way in which, although my personal practice is now with leadership teams, I am still very much involved with people who are working with delivery teams and the portfolio level and that sort of thing through helping people use what's in that book well, and where that book came from was my identity crisis. I mean, so we started this podcast by saying, well tell me a little bit about you and I'm like, well, I'm someone who, you know, grows by realising I'm totally in over my head and I don't know how to deal with this. And so instead of doing the same stuff I did before, like, what skill do I need to get? And what I love about people in the agile community is that's a very common mindset. You know, what I think is not so common is allowing the identity crises in and allowing them to inform us and allowing those crises to break us down, which is what I did. I allowed the identity crisis to break me down. And I started writing about that on this little blog called The road from project manager to agile coach. And so this is in 2008 or something like that. And so that's what eventually led to the book. I, you know, gave a talk at a Scrum gathering, my very first Scrum gathering. My very first public speaking thing called The road from project manager to agile coach. And talking about that, now the things I do as an agile coach now that I would have never done as a plan driven project manager, like I would've thought were stupid or ridiculous, or like magical thinking or just wouldn't work, you know, and of course they worked beautifully. So you know, from that point, I got asked to write the book, you know, and I had no intentions of writing a book and actually resisted it for a while, and kept getting all these sort of messages in the phone with people saying, gosh, that's good, you should write that down. And eventually, got in the place where the Coaching Agile Teams book just galloped its way into the world through me, it just, it was, it took one calendar year to write it and really, I didn't start writing it until May and it got turned in in November. I mean, so it just moved through very quickly. Ula Ojiaku Wow. Is there anything, because, you know, knowing what you now know, that you would do differently about the process of authoring a book and the messaging in it? Lyssa Adkins I think I would use the same process of authoring the book, and I think it's probably worth saying a little bit about what that is, because I actually went and found some mentors, people who've written books and said, so, you know, I don't know how to do this, you know, what's your advice? And so some of, the main process I used was agile. And so I had an outline of the book that had come to me over like a six month period of time before I turned in, before I finally decided to, well, I guess I'll go ahead and turn in this book proposal. It seems like I already have it written. And I, at the time we were in a Facebook group, I sent that out to the group and I said, put these in business value order. You know, and they put it in a business value order about 90% of the way I would have. And so I started writing the book in business value order. And when I met the publisher in August and the book was due in November, he said, I guess you probably want an extension. You know, cause you surely the book's not going to be ready in November. I'm like, hmm, yeah, it is. He's like, well, how can you be so sure. I'm like, well, I'm writing it in business value order. I mean, so I'm writing the chapters that are most useful to people. So if we get to November 1st and something's not written, it's just not going to be in the book because it's the lowest value content anyway. He was like, wow, really? And he still didn't believe me that I would make the deadline, but I did, November 1st. So, you know, so I think that's an important thing. What was, what was important then, and I think it's probably even more important now is timing. You know, I had the sense that the content of the book was important, and that the sooner it got out there, the better, and that was more important than it being great or amazing, definitely not perfect, definitely more important than being perfect, that's something that I struggle with all the time. So it turned out though that my husband quit his job, retired a little bit early and he became the proofreader of the book and he and I were in this amazing cycle for the last few months of the book. And it all got written, every chapter. Ula Ojiaku Wow. That's amazing and inspiring. So what about the mentors? What was their inputs in addition to, you know, telling you how, their own process for writing? Did you also get their input to, you know, proofreading and suggesting? Lyssa Adkins We got a lot of people's input to the book. The book went out for review to about 12 people, and there were some really useful things that came back from that, and that affected how it, how it rolled out eventually. But one of my mentors was a guy named Lee Devin, and he's written a few books, but the one he's most known for in the agile world is called Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know About How Artists Work is what that book is, and when we got together, he gave me two pieces of advice. He said, don't let your writer and your editor be in the room at the same time. And so what he meant by that is, your job when you are getting content out is just to write and don't even worry about spelling or punctuation or anything. And don't judge it, just get it out, come back in another time with the editor, who's got the red pen. It's like, oh, I don't like that language, this is not even a well-formed idea, punctuation, whatever. Now, to the extent that I can do that, the book flowed very beautifully. I can't tell you that I could do it all the time because I am so critical. Most of us are so critical of ourselves that we are writing and editing at the same time and what that, what that means is that our ideas die before they get to be born. And so the other thing that he recommended as a practice, which I did religiously, was before you start writing content for the day or whatever session you were, open a Word document and just start typing whatever is in your mind. And what you're doing there is you're trying to get your fingers and your body to move as fast as your mind. And so you're literally sort of warming up, you know, like a pianist would warm up or like someone playing soccer would warm up, so you're literally warming up this whole mind body instrument because the mind moves so fast. And it turns out, of course, that through that stream of consciousness writing, there were some real gems in there that got pulled into the book, but usually it was just a bunch of junk, you know, and I only, I set a timer for only five minutes. It didn't take a long time to do it, but the times that I didn't do it, the writing was not as good. Ula Ojiaku It's almost like, you know, priming a pump, because when you're speaking, I'm thinking of an ancient well, where you'd have the manual pump, you know, you'd have some prime it before the water starts flowing and you get into the zone and interestingly, that's also what, so Marie Forleo, she's more of a, she has a podcast as well and a course, I mean, what's it called, but the key thing is she said, interestingly, she said the same thing about, you know, just typing or writing and not minding whether it's quality or quantity and at a point in time, you know, you'd get flowing. Lyssa Adkins Yeah, exactly. There are all of these beautiful books of writing prompts too, you know, I mean, there's just, you're making me realise I need to start writing more. I think I've let the well go dry a little bit. Yeah. Thank you for the reminder. Ula Ojiaku Could we talk about your organisation, because there is your TENWOMENSTRONG Program. Is that still on? And if so, can you tell us about it? What's the vision behind, your putting that organisation together and how is it going right now? Lyssa Adkins Yeah. So I am a co-leader and a contributor to TENWOMENSTRONG. It's actually an organisation owned by Carolyn Dragon and Carolyn, and I've known each other for more than a dozen years. We were in a really intense year-long leadership program together in 2010. And so she had this program and this company, TENWOMENSTRONG, and about the time that I sold Agile Coaching Institute in 2017, you know, she would, she said, I'm going to put myself on your calendar every six weeks just for us to have coffee, and I want to hear that you're doing nothing but singing and gardening and whatever you want to do, and that you're actually taking a break because it had been, you know, about a decade of really intense work, following my mission to help professionalise the discipline of agile coaching, you know, and working with so many people on having, you know, such a focus on that for so long and, you know, and it totally worked because now dozens of people are carrying that forward, you know? So my role in sort of, again, priming the pump, we're back to this metaphor, right? So my role along with Michael Spayd, like our role together, priming the pump for agile coaching you know, was done, it was done. And the next question is, well, what do I do next? And so Carolyn, true to her word, we got together every six weeks. What a great friend in that, in that following year, while I was busy transitioning Agile Coaching Institute to its new owner, but not really having a new mission for myself. And she was telling me about the impact of this program she has called TENWOMENSTRONG, and it's basically a program to help women reconnect with their purpose, and go through this process of discovering who I am authentically, you know, what are all of my creativities, especially the ones that I've forgotten about or that I think aren't wanted in my work world or in other parts of my world. And then what's the creative expression I'm here to bring. And so, at the time I had been looking around the agile world and going like, where are the women? I mean, I kept looking and going, like, there are plenty of us at these conferences, there are plenty of us at these meetups there, you know, like there's plenty of women in the agile world, but when you ask, you know, who are the people who I should read, you would get a list of men's names predominantly. Maybe my name would be in there and maybe Esther Derby and maybe a few others, but just, just a few. And so, as Carolyn was telling me the impact of this program, where she'd been running it inside of corporations and publicly, all of a sudden out of my mouth, I was like, oh my gosh, we need that for women in agile. And so we started, I think it was probably in 2019 with virtual and in-person programs, maybe it was 2018. So and then we did those for a few years and then the pandemic hit, and it was a real reassessment of what we wanted to do. And it was also Carolyn's decision, which I thought was a very brilliant business decision, to pull back, because people had enough on their plates, you know, another constant self-improvement like this whole sort of constant self improvement thing we do is another trap, you know? And so she did things that supported women in her circles, women who've been through her program that she attracted through various free offerings. She did things to support them, but not to add anything that would, you know, just contribute to the stress of the moment, they were under enough stress. And so now, as it is, she's now starting to bring back more programs, but she's doing them shorter duration. And so the one that I'm contributing to TENWOMENSTRONG right now is called Influence and Impact in the Agile World and it's a workshop where women come and they share with each other, the places where they're not having the influence and impact they wanted, and they don't know why, they've tried all different kinds of things, and so it's a workshop to take, you know, to create community about that, to actually be vulnerable and say that to other people, and to know that you're going to be received. And then we go through some different steps that allow the women to have some insight about their specific situation and they leave with an idea of what they want to try next. So those are the types of things that she's doing there, couple of other programs, but that's the one that I'm leading with her. Ula Ojiaku Now, based on what we've talked about so far, what are the books you would say have influenced your thinking and, you know, your approach as a coach, as a professional? Lyssa Adkins Well the books that have influenced my development as a coach and a professional are the ones that are written by the people who are in the coaching schools I went to. So, Co-Active Coaching is one, and then there's just a new book out now that encapsulates what I learned in organisation and relationship systems coaching, and that book is called Systems Inspired Leadership. It encapsulates the coaching approach, but talks about it from a leadership perspective, so it marries those two worlds for me. And then there's the whole genre of learning about Zen Buddhism, which I think has been a really important contribution to my ability to be a good coach. And so Pema Chödrön is someone I read there. There are many, many others, but she's the one that comes to mind right now because she has books that are called, well, hang on, what are they called? Get a load of these titles. The Places That Scare You, Comfortable With Uncertainty, Welcoming the Unwelcome, The Wisdom of No Escape - those are just some of her books. So what she helps me do, is actually what we talked about at the beginning, upgrade my own complexity of mind to work with what actually is happening and not ignore it, or try to bypass it. Downshift my nervous system, and then expand my ability to see the web of the relationship system to expand those five core competencies in myself and in my interactions with other people. So I think that for me, that's an essential piece of learning and, I would say, not so much learning, but leaderfullness, expanding my own leaderfullness, and ability to be in the world and with the world as it is. Ula Ojiaku That's a new word for me, leaderfullness. It's almost like… Lyssa Adkins Yeah, it's a funny word, right. I think I picked it up from the Coaches Training Institute. They used to, have said that for years and years, but I think it conveys something really important, which is that leadership is not even primarily anymore about knowing better or doing more or any of these things that we promoted and we lauded leaders for, you know, leadership is about working with the world as it is and bringing to every moment, your authentic leaderfullness, you are full up with leadership. You are a full up, it's like a fully embodied way of expressing leadership and expressing our ability to take in what's really happening, to slow our minds down, to not be hijacked by the situation, to ask some deeper questions, and to look squarely in the face of the things that we don't want. Ula Ojiaku Awesome. Are there things that you'd like the audience to know in terms of what you're doing currently? Lyssa Adkins Yeah, I would direct people to lyssaadkins.com for what I'm doing currently, and of course you have to know how to spell it. L Y S S A A D K I N S.com. I know it'll be in the show notes too. The thing I think I want people to know is that something really exciting is just now starting, and I'm part of starting it. And I would say it's going to be, the kickoff or the beginning of a worldwide movement in the agile community, all centered around the question, if it's no accident that agile has emerged at exactly this time, what is its role in the planetary challenges and the paradigm shifts we are currently experiencing? That question, both enlivens me and haunts me. I've been holding that question for a long time and the first thing I know that is related to that question that's going to be moving out into the world will happen at Agile 2022 in Nashville in late July. And I am the moderator of a panel, essentially about what is Agile's bigger role and the panellists are all using agile in ways that help make our current situation better, help try to fend us off from the worst of the impacts of our previous behaviour. So there are people who, for example, are working in climate change, they're working and bringing agile into helping democracies arise. They're bringing agile into pulling girls out of poverty and the only option for themselves is sex trafficking, for example. All right. So these are some of the leaders who are going to be speaking about how, what they've been doing to investigate this question of like, if we agilists have something that's useful and we know how to do and be a different sort of person, have a different sort of skills, like what can we add to the people who are already doing this really important work on the planet right now. So I'm really excited to find out how that conversation goes. We're hoping to see that the sparks from that panel fly all over the world and ignite these conversations and agile communities all over the world, because I think we do have a role, and I think we have something that's so different and so useful, and I don't think we need to force it on anyone, but I think we're good at experiments, you know, so like why don't we run some experiments, go find out, like would what you know, as an agilest be useful for an organisation who's responding to climate disasters, for example. Ula Ojiaku That's inspiring. What one thing would you like to leave the audience with? Lyssa Adkins You know, there's a quote, I don't even know where it came from that I say to myself all the time and I think that's what I want to leave the audience with. For those of you listening, first of all, thank you for your attention. I know that is the most precious thing we have. So what I'll leave you with is this. It will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end. Ula Ojiaku That's a great one. Thank you so much Lyssa for your time, it's been an insightful conversation. Lyssa Adkins My pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. I've really enjoyed this exploration and I've found some new ideas too Ula Ojiaku That's all we have for now. Thanks for listening. If you liked this show, do subscribe at www.agileinnovationleaders.com or your favourite podcast provider. Also share with friends and do leave a review on iTunes. This would help others find this show. I'd also love to hear from you, so please drop me an email at ula@agileinnovationleaders.com Take care and God bless! 

Julie Chickering sits down with Brian to share the best gift books for the Scrum masters in your life. Overview We all have those books on our bookshelves that we’ve had for years and still refer back to time and time again, or that new title that we’ve just read that blows our mind with the way it makes a new concept more relatable. Julie Chickering is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), and a traditional Project Management Professional (PMP). Today on the show, Julie joins Brian to discuss the most valuable books they’ve read, the lessons they’ve learned from them, and the best ones for giving to the Scrum Master in your life this holiday season. Listen now to discover: [01:06] - Today, Brian and Julie Chickering will be sharing the most valuable books we’ve read. [02:10] - Julie shares how a book called Two Beats Ahead is helping her learn to let go of her creations. [04:00] - Julie shares an interesting story of how Beyoncé invited musicians in for collaboration and how that opened her mind to learning from her community. [05:07] - Brian shares why Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby and Diana Larson is his #1 book recommendation for Scrum Masters. [06:29] - Julie shares why she’s also a fan of Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great for the mix-and-mash recipe for creating menu selections. [08:06] - Julie shares why The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups insight into the three main things that make high-performing teams high-performing is her favorite book to give to the leaders on her list. [10:36] - Brian shares the three things from Daniel Pink’s Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us that align with Scrum. [12:34] - Julie shares how she learned to flip the script, start with the hard topics in a conversation, and finish with the positive from Daniel Pink, as included in his book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. [15:53] - Brian shares why Dan Pink’s books are most enjoyable via audio. [16:15] - Julie shares how a podcast interview with author Scott Sonenshein led her to his book called Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less -and Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined, which helps teams unlock their potential to achieve more. [17:11] - Brian shares Frédéric Laloux's concept of the different colors of organizations as laid out in his book called Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness and how we can better enable change in organizations. [18:57] - Julie shares a book she recommends in Scrum Master class that’s great for sports fans called The Captain Class by Sam Walker, which walks the reader through what makes great sports teams great. [22:15] - Brian shares why sports analogies are great for teaching Scrum. [23:28] - Julie shares how even the Rolling Stones delve deep into figuring out how to improve. [24:30] - Why retrospectives are a great tool for improving the outcome of any mission. [28:25] - Brian shares why we still need to adjust to the current climate, even when the goal remains the same. [30:11] - Brian shares books by recent guests on the show, including Lead Without Blame: Building Resilient Learning Teams by Tricia Broderick, Strategise by Roman Pichler and Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn)) by Lyssa Adkins. Listen in next time when Scott Dunn will be on the show. References and resources mentioned in the show Two Beats Ahead by Panos A. Panay and R. Michael Hendrix Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby, Diana Larsen The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle DRIVE by Daniel Pink | Animated Core Message Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel Pink The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward by Daniel Pink Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less -and Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined by Scott Sonenshein Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness by Frédéric Laloux The Captain Class by Sam Walker Lead Without Blame: Building Resilient Learning Teams by Tricia Broderick Strategise by Roman Pichler Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn)) by Lyssa, Adkins Mountain Goat Software Agile Mentors Community Scrum Alliance Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast on Apple Podcasts Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we'd love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an agile subject you'd like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Please share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode's presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Julie Chickering is the brains and brawn behind JC Agile Consulting, believes that Lean and Agile practices are packed with potential — to enable positive culture change, business agility, and breakthrough results. Julie is a past president and board member of the Agile Project Management Network (APLN), a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), as well as a traditional Project Management Professional (PMP).

Julie Chickering sits down with Brian to share the best gift books for the Scrum masters in your life. Overview We all have those books on our bookshelves that we’ve had for years and still refer back to time and time again, or that new title that we’ve just read that blows our mind with the way it makes a new concept more relatable. Julie Chickering is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), and a traditional Project Management Professional (PMP). Today on the show, Julie joins Brian to discuss the most valuable books they’ve read, the lessons they’ve learned from them, and the best ones for giving to the Scrum Master in your life this holiday season. Listen now to discover: [01:06] - Today, Brian and Julie Chickering will be sharing the most valuable books we’ve read. [02:10] - Julie shares how a book called Two Beats Ahead is helping her learn to let go of her creations. [04:00] - Julie shares an interesting story of how Beyoncé invited musicians in for collaboration and how that opened her mind to learning from her community. [05:07] - Brian shares why Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby and Diana Larson is his #1 book recommendation for Scrum Masters. [06:29] - Julie shares why she’s also a fan of Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great for the mix-and-mash recipe for creating menu selections. [08:06] - Julie shares why The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups insight into the three main things that make high-performing teams high-performing is her favorite book to give to the leaders on her list. [10:36] - Brian shares the three things from Daniel Pink’s Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us that align with Scrum. [12:34] - Julie shares how she learned to flip the script, start with the hard topics in a conversation, and finish with the positive from Daniel Pink, as included in his book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. [15:53] - Brian shares why Dan Pink’s books are most enjoyable via audio. [16:15] - Julie shares how a podcast interview with author Scott Sonenshein led her to his book called Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less -and Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined, which helps teams unlock their potential to achieve more. [17:11] - Brian shares Frédéric Laloux's concept of the different colors of organizations as laid out in his book called Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness and how we can better enable change in organizations. [18:57] - Julie shares a book she recommends in Scrum Master class that’s great for sports fans called The Captain Class by Sam Walker, which walks the reader through what makes great sports teams great. [22:15] - Brian shares why sports analogies are great for teaching Scrum. [23:28] - Julie shares how even the Rolling Stones delve deep into figuring out how to improve. [24:30] - Why retrospectives are a great tool for improving the outcome of any mission. [28:25] - Brian shares why we still need to adjust to the current climate, even when the goal remains the same. [30:11] - Brian shares books by recent guests on the show, including Lead Without Blame: Building Resilient Learning Teams by Tricia Broderick, Strategise by Roman Pichler and Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn)) by Lyssa Adkins. Listen in next time when Scott Dunn will be on the show. References and resources mentioned in the show Two Beats Ahead by Panos A. Panay and R. Michael Hendrix Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby, Diana Larsen The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle DRIVE by Daniel Pink | Animated Core Message Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel Pink The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward by Daniel Pink Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less -and Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined by Scott Sonenshein Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness by Frédéric Laloux The Captain Class by Sam Walker Lead Without Blame: Building Resilient Learning Teams by Tricia Broderick Strategise by Roman Pichler Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn)) by Lyssa, Adkins Mountain Goat Software Agile Mentors Community Scrum Alliance Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast on Apple Podcasts Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we'd love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an agile subject you'd like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Please share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode's presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Julie Chickering is the brains and brawn behind JC Agile Consulting, believes that Lean and Agile practices are packed with potential — to enable positive culture change, business agility, and breakthrough results. Julie is a past president and board member of the Agile Project Management Network (APLN), a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), as well as a traditional Project Management Professional (PMP).

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes. Jill was working in a team where all the team members knew each other well, it was almost like a group of friends. However, this team was not perfect. They struggled to complete even a third of all the stories they took into the Sprint. When looking back, she can recognize the pattern of the dominant/opinionated developer who wanted to take a lot into every sprint. This left the Product Owner and Business Analyst for that team frustrated, because the unpredictability had already become a problem. Listen in to learn how that team was able to move away from the “take as much as you want” mentality into the sprint.  Featured Book of the Week: Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins In Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins, Jill found an essential guide to her work as a Scrum Master. It was the book that helped her understand the different responsibilities of a Scrum Master, the difference between Agile Coaching and the Scrum Master role. It's a book she still refers to even now.    About Jill Stott Jill Stott is here to make friends! She's worked in IT for too many years to count. She is passionate about assisting ScrumMasters to be successful and happy in their roles. Jill knows that there is no such thing as a perfect chocolate chip cookie and she isn't afraid to use puppets. You can link with Jill Stott on LinkedIn. 

When considering the Retrospective format to use Allison invites us to consider what the teams are asking for, as well as what they are not asking for. But when a conversation about performance and team collaboration is necessary, Allison suggests we use the High Performance Tree model from Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins. In this segment we also refer to the models ORID and OODA, which help us consider what might be the right topic for the team, as well as facilitate the conversation around that topic.   Do you wish you had decades of experience? Learn from the Best Scrum Masters In The World, Today! The Tips from the Trenches - Scrum Master edition audiobook includes hours of audio interviews with SM's that have decades of experience: from Mike Cohn to Linda Rising, Christopher Avery, and many more. Super-experienced Scrum Masters share their hard-earned lessons with you. Learn those today, make your teams awesome!   About Allison Zimmerman Allison believes that all people have the power to succeed when they work together. As a teacher-turned-scrum master, she has spent the last five years helping enterprise teams build on their strengths to deliver customer value. She also serves as a Scrum Master Community of Practice leader, supporting growth and development of scrum masters across many teams. You can link with Allison Zimmerman on LinkedIn. 

Lyssa Adkins joins Brian to talk about the wonderful world of Agile coaching. Overview When you think of the term “Agile Coach,” what comes to mind for you? This term has meant many different things over the years. Are we talking about a role or an approach? Lyssa Adkins, author of Coaching Agile Teams, joins Brian to dive into this topic. Lyssa has written and spoken about this topic for years and many would say she had a large hand in defining what we now call agile coaching. Listen now to discover: 02:05 - Brian shares a story about Lyssa from the Vienna Scrum Gathering conference 06:40 - Lyssa answers the question, “What is an Agile Coach?” 08:10 - Lyssa explains the unintended consequence of using the term “coach” in her book 12:02 - Lyssa talks about the “X-Wing Diagram” and the 5 coaching stances 18:50 - Lyssa talks about not colluding when someone in power pushes something you disagree with 27:04 Lyssa talks about coaching in a remote world Listen next time when we’ll be discussing… Project Management with Julie Chickering. References and resources mentioned in the show Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins Agile Coach Competency Framework Developing Great Agile Coaches whitepaper describing 5 coaching stances What is an Agile Coach? talk with Lyssa Adkins and Michael Spayd Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. ● Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. ● Got an agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He’s passionate about making a difference in people’s day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Lyssa Adkins has been one of the foundational voices in the Agile community for years now. Her book Coaching Agile Teams has been a best seller for over 12 years now. She released an audio version of this classic book on its 10th anniversary. In 2010, Lyssa co-founded the Agile Coaching Institute which has developed over 10,000 people in the knowledge, skills, and being-ness needed to yield genuinely competent agile coaching. She is a member of the ICAgile working committee and has served as a reviewer for the Scrum Alliance’s Certified Enterprise Coach certification program. Lyssa is also dedicated to amplifying women’s voices and is a founder of TENWOMENSTRONG #WomenInAgile programs. Show edited by Rhett Gill.

Lyssa Adkins joins Brian to talk about the wonderful world of Agile coaching. Overview When you think of the term “Agile Coach,” what comes to mind for you? This term has meant many different things over the years. Are we talking about a role or an approach? Lyssa Adkins, author of Coaching Agile Teams, joins Brian to dive into this topic. Lyssa has written and spoken about this topic for years and many would say she had a large hand in defining what we now call agile coaching. Listen now to discover: 02:05 - Brian shares a story about Lyssa from the Vienna Scrum Gathering conference 06:40 - Lyssa answers the question, “What is an Agile Coach?” 08:10 - Lyssa explains the unintended consequence of using the term “coach” in her book 12:02 - Lyssa talks about the “X-Wing Diagram” and the 5 coaching stances 18:50 - Lyssa talks about not colluding when someone in power pushes something you disagree with 27:04 Lyssa talks about coaching in a remote world Listen next time when we’ll be discussing… Project Management with Julie Chickering. References and resources mentioned in the show Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins Agile Coach Competency Framework Developing Great Agile Coaches whitepaper describing 5 coaching stances What is an Agile Coach? talk with Lyssa Adkins and Michael Spayd Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. ● Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. ● Got an agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He’s passionate about making a difference in people’s day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Lyssa Adkins has been one of the foundational voices in the Agile community for years now. Her book Coaching Agile Teams has been a best seller for over 12 years now. She released an audio version of this classic book on its 10th anniversary. In 2010, Lyssa co-founded the Agile Coaching Institute which has developed over 10,000 people in the knowledge, skills, and being-ness needed to yield genuinely competent agile coaching. She is a member of the ICAgile working committee and has served as a reviewer for the Scrum Alliance’s Certified Enterprise Coach certification program. Lyssa is also dedicated to amplifying women’s voices and is a founder of TENWOMENSTRONG #WomenInAgile programs. Show edited by Rhett Gill.

David Hawks joins Brian to discuss the process of an organization becoming Agile. Overview When you read through the Scrum Guide, the picture it paints is of the desired end result - what the team/organization should look like when finished. There’s surprising little said though about how you get from where you are to where you want to eventually be. Enter the topic of Agile Transformations. There is a journey that organizations undertake when they decide to adopt Agile and like any journey, it’s always helpful to have a guide to help you get there who has been through it before. David Hawks joins Brian to share his experience in helping countless organizations make this journey to become Agile. Listen now to discover: 03:10 Brian asks David what the biggest hurdle is that organizations have when adopting Agile? 05:24 David explains that multiple levels the organization needs to focus on in the process 11:00 David talks about “Implementing Practices over Outcomes” 16:30 Brian asks what individuals who aren’t leaders can do to help? 20:20 Brian asks David to explain how his Path to Agility helps address these issues? 29:35 Brian talks about the Spotify Engineering Culture videos example Listen next time when we’ll be discussing… Agile Coaching with Lyssa Adkins! References and resources mentioned in the show Path To Agility & Agile Velocity SAFe and LeSS Yellowstone spinoff 1883 Oregon Trail Spotify Engineering Culture Video 1 and Video 2 Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. ● Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. ● Got an agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He’s passionate about making a difference in people’s day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. David Hawks is the CEO of both Agile Velocity and Path to Agility. He is a Certified Scrum Trainer as well as a Certified Enterprise Coach with the Scrum Alliance - their top two certifications. He received his Bachelor of Business Administration in Management Information Systems degree from the University of Texas at Austin. His love for his beloved Longhorns from UT is only eclipsed by his love (and expertise) in tailgating prior to their home games! Show edited by Rhett Gill.

David Hawks joins Brian to discuss the process of an organization becoming Agile. When you read through the Scrum Guide, the picture it paints is of the desired end result - what the team/organization should look like when finished. There’s surprising little said though about how you get from where you are to where you want to eventually be. Enter the topic of Agile Transformations. There is a journey that organizations undertake when they decide to adopt Agile and like any journey, it’s always helpful to have a guide to help you get there who has been through it before. David Hawks joins Brian to share his experience in helping countless organizations make this journey to become Agile. Listen now to discover: 03:10 Brian asks David what the biggest hurdle is that organizations have when adopting Agile? 05:24 David explains that multiple levels the organization needs to focus on in the process 11:00 David talks about “Implementing Practices over Outcomes” 16:30 Brian asks what individuals who aren’t leaders can do to help? 20:20 Brian asks David to explain how his Path to Agility helps address these issues? 29:35 Brian talks about the Spotify Engineering Culture videos example Listen next time when we’ll be discussing… Agile Coaching with Lyssa Adkins! References and resources mentioned in the show Path To Agility & Agile Velocity SAFe and LeSS Yellowstone spinoff 1883 Oregon Trail Spotify Engineering Culture Video 1 and Video 2 Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. ● Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. ● Got an agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He’s passionate about making a difference in people’s day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. David Hawks is the CEO of both Agile Velocity and Path to Agility. He is a Certified Scrum Trainer as well as a Certified Enterprise Coach with the Scrum Alliance - their top two certifications. He received his Bachelor of Business Administration in Management Information Systems degree from the University of Texas at Austin. His love for his beloved Longhorns from UT is only eclipsed by his love (and expertise) in tailgating prior to their home games! Show edited by Rhett Gill.

Earlier this year I attended Agile 2022; It was a fantastic conference. One of the undercurrent themes was the use of OKRs (objectives and key results for the uninitiated) to enable agility, align organizations, and cure Covid. There is no such thing as a silver bullet, especially with the wide range of interpretations of what an OKR is and how to apply them. Luis Gonçalves retunes to the podcast to set us straight.   Luis's Bio Luis Gonçalves is an Entrepreneur, Best Seller Author, and International Keynote Speaker. When consulting he works exclusively with Entrepreneurs, Founders, and Senior Leaders on the implementation of his game-changing "ADAPT Methodology". By following the "ADAPT Methodology" Executive Leaders will be able to transform their traditional project-oriented companies into modern digital product companies. OKR Guide: https://adaptmethodology.com/okr-guide-en Website: https://adaptmethodology.com/  Website: evolution4all.com  Podcast: https://adaptmethodology.com/podcast/ LinkedIn:  linkedin.com/in/luismsg Re-read Saturday News This week, Chapter 7 of Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins. While observing and facilitating might be the most prolific coach activities, at times teaching takes front and center. Teaching encompasses a wide range of behaviors, but the goal is always the same - to elevate the person or team you are teaching. Teachers are there to help PEOPLE to become better at something. Remember to buy a copy of  Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins (SPaMCAST Amazon affiliate line https://amzn.to/38G0ZD3) and read along! Previous Installments Week 1: Logistics and Introduction - https://bit.ly/3A1aNTe  Week 2: Will I Be A Good Coach - https://bit.ly/3nzDAHg  Week 3: Expect High Performance - https://bit.ly/3Rl4fFf  Week 4: Master Yourself - https://bit.ly/3zL8t2n  Week 5: Let Your Style Change - https://bit.ly/3Q8zHWa  Week 6: Coach as Coach-Mentor - https://bit.ly/3QLcSIi  Week 7: Coach as Facilitator - https://bit.ly/3AaP5KY  Week 8: Coach As Teacher - https://bit.ly/3AURGdL  A quick advertisement: Controlling work entry requires preparation and knowledge building to establish a path to control work entry (magic wands are normally not available), which is why Jeremy Willets and I have developed a work entry workshop. We recently delivered the workshop at the 2022 Path to Agility in Columbus, OH to rave reviews. Interested? Email us at tcagley@tomcagley.com or willetsjm@gmail.com Do you have questions that you would like Susan, Jon, Jeremy, Tony, or myself to answer?  Leave a voice message at 01.440.668.5717 or an email at spamcastinfo@gmail.com. Next SPaMCAST  The SPaMCAST will be on a three-week hiatus. We will be back with new programming on September 25. In the interim, I asked the SPaMCAST columnists (Jeremy, Jon, Susan, and Tony) for a couple of favorite columns they delivered. For the next three weeks, we will serve you the best of the best. 

Flow Load has a special place in flow metrics, it is a leading indicator of value delivery as exhibited in flow velocity (throughput) and flow time. We review one experiment and propose another. In the end, you either control work entry or it controls you. A quick advertisement: Controlling work entry requires preparation and knowledge building to establish a path to control work entry (magic wands are normally not available) which is why Jeremy Willets and I have developed a work entry workshop. We recently delivered the workshop at the 2022 Path to Agility in Columbus, OH to rave reviews. Interested email us at tcagley@tomcagley.com or willetsjm@gmail.com Also this week we are joined by Tony TImbol and his To Tell A Story column. In this installment, Tony focuses on the impact of delayed requirements on agile teams.  Do you have questions that you would like Susan, Jon, Jeremy, Tony, or myself to answer?  Leave a voice message at 01.440.668.5717 or an email at spamcastinfo@gmail.com. Re-read Saturday News Chapter 6 of Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins is titled Coach as Facilitator. As a coach, I suspect I spend more time facilitating and observing than playing any other sub-role. Chapter 6 provides a number of gems that piqued my interest more during this read than in the first. Remember to buy a copy of  Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins (SPaMCAST Amazon affiliate line https://amzn.to/38G0ZD3) and read along! Previous Installments Week 1: Logistics and Introduction - https://bit.ly/3A1aNTe  Week 2: Will I Be A Good Coach - https://bit.ly/3nzDAHg  Week 3: Expect High Performance - https://bit.ly/3Rl4fFf  Week 4: Master Yourself - https://bit.ly/3zL8t2n  Week 5: Let Your Style Change - https://bit.ly/3Q8zHWa  Week 6: Coach as Coach-Mentor - https://bit.ly/3QLcSIi  Week 7: Coach as Facilitator - https://bit.ly/3AaP5KY  Next SPaMCAST  SPaMCAST 718 features our most recent discussion with Luis Gonçalves.  Luis and I talked about OKRs. We will cover the gamut; the good, the bad, and the OMG they've turned into annual reviews all in one session! Luis last appeared on the cast in SPaMCAST 670.

This week Jeff Perry and I discussed learning how to consciously guide your technology career. We are all problem solvers, and Jeff provides a ton of hard-won advice. We also wrestled with the difference between a series of jobs and a career.  Jeff's Bio: Jeff Perry is the founder of More Than Engineering and serves as a leadership and career coach for engineers and technology professionals. His innovative programs and coaching help people take a mindful, intentional, and purposeful approach to career transitions, leadership, and personal development goals. Listeners of the SPaMCAST can find some free resources including the Career Clarity Checklist at https://www.engineeringcareeraccelerator.com/spamcast. They can also find and follow Jeff on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffcperry/. Do you have questions that you would like Susan, Jon, Jeremy, Tony, or myself to answer?  Leave a voice message at 01.440.668.5717 or an email at spamcastinfo@gmail.com. Re-read Saturday News Chapter 5 begins Part 2 of Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins and is titled Coach as Coach-Mentor. During my initial reading of this book, I found Part 2 the most immediately useful. During this re-read, I reflect less on techniques to engage people and teams and more on engagements that I have had and where my remit and my behavior took me off track. Remember to buy a copy of  Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins (SPaMCAST Amazon affiliate line https://amzn.to/38G0ZD3) and read along!   Previous Installments Week 1: Logistics and Introduction - https://bit.ly/3A1aNTe  Week 2: Will I Be A Good Coach - https://bit.ly/3nzDAHg  Week 3: Expect High Performance - https://bit.ly/3Rl4fFf  Week 4: Master Yourself - https://bit.ly/3zL8t2n  Week 5: Let Your Style Change - https://bit.ly/3Q8zHWa  Week 6: Coach as Coach-Mentor - https://bit.ly/3QLcSIi  Next SPaMCAST  SPaMCAST 717 we will focus on why Work in Process, flow load, is the leading indicator of flow metrics.  We will also be joined by Tony TImbol who brings his To Tell A Story column to the podcast.

Change is pervasive, perpetual, and exponential. Organizational efficiency is often hidden behind a veneer of busyness. Effective leaders embrace agile values and build a safe space for teams to succeed. In today's podcast, Lyssa Adkins shares the mindset executive leaders should consider if they want to embrace agile values.

A funny thing happened on the way to the essay this week. I was distracted by feedback from a colleague on a workshop Jeremy Willets and I developed and delivered this week. We discuss why the phrase work entry describes how work gets to teams and organizations, and why “work intake” masks problems in the real world.  We also have a visit from Susan Parente and her Not A Scrumdamentalist column. This month Susan answers a listener's question about whether it makes sense for a Scrum Master to also play other roles on a team.    Do you have questions that you would like Susan, Jon, Jeremy, Tony, or myself to answer?  Leave a voice message at 01.440.668.5717 or an email at spamcastinfo@gmail.com. Re-read Saturday News Chapter 4 of Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins, discusses the idea that a team, individual, or organization follows a path from a learner to mastery to a teacher using the Shu Ha Ri metaphor. The concept of Shu Ha Ri represents a continuum of learning. In martial arts or any demonstrable activity, practitioners must learn and practice before they can take the next step forward. Carol Dweck, in her book Mindset, postulated that even the most gifted athletes need an open mindset to succeed in the long run. To progress across the continuum of learning everyone needs to put in the work. I suspect that for many, the Shu state is the hardest to accept because we all want to believe we are special and we are all impatient to meet the prize of mastery. Remember to buy a copy of  Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins (SPaMCAST Amazon affiliate line https://amzn.to/38G0ZD3) and read along! Previous Installments Week 1: Logistics and Introduction - https://bit.ly/3A1aNTe  Week 2: Will I Be A Good Coach - https://bit.ly/3nzDAHg  Week 3: Expect High Performance - https://bit.ly/3Rl4fFf  Week 4: Master Yourself - https://bit.ly/3zL8t2n  Week 5: Let Your Style Change - https://bit.ly/3Q8zHWa    Next SPaMCAST  The SPaMCAST 716 features our interview with Jeff Perry.  Jeff and I talked about consciously guiding a career in technology. We also wrestled with the difference between a series of jobs and a career. Jeff delivers a ton of hard-won advice.  

Today's cast is a very short podcast.  Over the past week, I spent an amazing week at Agile 2022. My goal was to be re-radicalized. I reconnected with friends, made new friends, learned a new set of personal pronouns (while not for me, they really work well), picked up a bunch of swag, learned a ton, got re-energized and re-radicalized, and got Covid19. I could have done without the latter. I will get better, but right now it is moving up on my personal least fun thing to do list. I told Jeremy  Berriault (you will hear from him later) that Covid is somewhere between the sixth and seventh least fun thing I've ever been involved with. It was a solid #7 yesterday. With luck, things will be back to normal soon.   All that aside, the money shot presentation (for me) was given by Bethany Andres-Beck, titled “A Radical Culture of Culture Building.” Zie rocked it. The combination of small group influencing techniques combined with anarchist meeting design, community activism from the civil rights era, and the women's movent was simply brilliant. Better yet, none of it was pie in the sky theory but the relating of an experience report. I need to talk hir into appearing on the podcast. This presentation was worth the price of admission for me. I will share more in the near future.  This week we return to the QA Corner with Jeremy Berriault to discuss who is responsible for quality. In many organizations quality is on QA's shoulders, should it be? Upcoming Event Jeremy Willets and I have been accepted as speakers for this year's Path to Agility! Our workshop is titled “Managing Work Entry: How the Mushy Middle is Killing Your Agility.” I'm very excited to be part of this wonderful conference and hope to reconnect with long-time colleagues at a fabulous venue — The Ohio Union at The Ohio State University. See you soon Columbus!   August 1 - 2  in Columbus, Ohio Register Today: https://bit.ly/3otqg7u    Re-read Saturday News We WILL be back next week barring any catastrophes. Remember to buy a copy of Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins and read along.   Previous Installments Week 1: Logistics and Introduction - https://bit.ly/3A1aNTe  Week 2: Will I Be A Good Coach - https://bit.ly/3nzDAHg  Week 3: Expect High Performance - https://bit.ly/3Rl4fFf    Next SPaMCAST  Next week we will feature our interview with Jonathan Wright. Jonathan and I will discuss shifting right. If, after decades of listening to the mantra shift left, you just experienced whiplash, I understand. 

Jim Benson has a new book titled, The Collaboration Equation. Jim states that collaboration “is the base of the human condition, we need other people in order to live, but always seem to be at odds with each other.” Jim also states that unless you are striving for improvement, you are unprofessional. I really like talking to Jim; Jim is a force of nature.  Jim's career path has taken him through government agencies, Fortune 10 corporations, and start-ups. Through them all, his passion has remained consistent – applying new technologies to workgroups. In each case asking how they can be leveraged to collaborate and cooperate more effectively. Jim loves ideas, creation, and building opportunities. He loves working with teams who are passionate about the future, pushing boundaries, and inclusion. His goal with all technologies is to increase beneficial contact between people and reduce the bureaucratic noise which so often tends to increase costs and destroy creativity. Jim is the author of the Shingo Research Award-winning book Personal Kanban (use the link to buy a copy and support the podcast). He is a noted expert in business process, personal work management, and the application of Lean to personal work and life. Jim believes that the best process is the least process necessary to achieve goals. He has zero tolerance for process waste. All said, Jim enjoys helping people and teams work out sticky problems, an advocate of people actually seeing their work, and inventing new ways to work at the intersection of Lean thinking, brain science, and leadership. Contact Jim Twitter: https://twitter.com/ourfounder LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimbenson Personal Kanban: http://www.personalkanban.com/pk/#sthash.MtOA96sV.dpbs Modus Cooperandi: http://moduscooperandi.com/ Re-read Saturday News We are talking the week off on our re-read Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins (SPaMCAST Amazon affiliate line https://amzn.to/38G0ZD3 - buy a copy). I was traveling to Nashville for Agile 2022 (let me know if you are here).  Next week we will be back on track but in the interim remember to buy a copy of Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins and read along. Previous Installments Week 1: Logistics and Introduction - https://bit.ly/3A1aNTe  Week 2: Will I Be A Good Coach - https://bit.ly/3nzDAHg  Week 3: Expect High Performance - https://bit.ly/3Rl4fFf    Next SPaMCAST  We will map our basic flow metrics palttet a simple organizational hierarchy. Some metrics tell us where we were and some tell us where we are going. This essay reflects work that Jeremy WIllets and I are exploring.  We will also have a visit from Jeremy Berriault who brings his QA Corner to the Software Process and Measurement Cast.  

This week we make a quick side trip. Earlier this week I was asked why I “did” the Re-read Saturday column. Today, I offer a short explanation and highlight the experiments I am running as part of our re-read of Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins. We also have a visit from Jon M. Quigley. In this installment of his Alpha and Omega of Product Development, Jon and I discuss the role of the team lead in agile teams that have coaches, scrum masters, and just might be self-organizing. There is a role but it is not the classic version that is in common use. Why Do I “Do” Re-read Saturday. Re-read Saturday is a long-running column featured on my blog (tcagley.wordpress.com) and at tomcagley.com. The books selected for the column are nominated and then voted on by readers. Because most books are selected by the acclaim from readers of the blog, the re-read is sometimes actually the first read for me. During the re-read we read, discuss, and highlight concepts chapter by chapter.  There are three major reasons for the column. One, the column draws eyes. A blog without readers is a diary. Over the years, many of the top 10 annual posts have been from the re-read feature. A second reason, and perhaps the original reason was that I had not read some of these books before and really needed to read them. For some of the other books we have re-read, the re-read drove home the point that memory erodes over time. For example, I am embarrassed to say I had forgotten the story of Herby (check out the re-read of The Goal). Reason two is that the re-read is a forcing function to guide behavior. The books we read and re-read help shape how we behave. The third reason is that the column generates a lot of interaction. I have heard from readers and authors with ideas and opinions. The interactions have certainly improved my understanding of how work is done and how to improve. The level of interaction suggests that the readers get similar benefits. Recently, I decided to run weekly experiments based on the chapter I am reading. The weekly experiment is another forcing function. Doing the activity drives home a point so it is harder to forget. For example from the re-read of Chapter 2 of Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins titled Expect High Performance I am focusing on using metaphors to guide behaviors. As an experiment, I am establishing a metaphor for myself. The goal is to see whether having a metaphor changes my behavior. The concept of the weekly experiment might end up being the best reason for me to “do” Re-read Saturday and perhaps the best reason for you, the reader, to participate. PS -- I am not convinced that the person that asked was really looking for this much information. I actually think they we asking why read books at all when you watch videos which lead us to a different discussion which I will share another day.  Finally, have you downloaded the book referenced in last week's interview? Check out Seeing Money Clearly at www.agileagonist.com  Re-read Saturday News This week, Chapter 2 of Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins (SPaMCAST Amazon affiliate line https://amzn.to/38G0ZD3 - buy a copy). The chapter's title is Expect High Performance. As a coach, you need to have high expectations of yourself and those you are coaching.  Remember to buy a copy of Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins and read along. Previous Installments Week 1: Logistics and Introduction - https://bit.ly/3A1aNTe  Week 2: Will I Be A Good Coach - https://bit.ly/3nzDAHg  Week 3: Expect High Performance - https://bit.ly/3Rl4fFf    Next SPaMCAST  Jim Benson has a new book titled, The Collaboration Equation. The first sentence in the description of the book is:  “It is the base of the human condition, we need other people in order to live, but always seem to be at odds with each other.”  We went from there,  

Daniel Doiron's new book Seeing Money Clearly challenges Agile Centers of Excellence to view decision-making through the lens of Throughput Accounting.  Throughput Accounting is a lot of things: An accounting system,  A financial application,  A process of ongoing improvement (POOGI), and  First and foremost, the decision-making arm of the Theory of Constraints.  Daniel's Bio “I am the only CPA in the world - negative assurance provided - to give a one-day Throughput Accounting class to a CPA chapter (Québec) within the scope of their mandatory Professional Development Program. A few CPA chapters in the world give diluted Throughput Accounting classes in a recorded format and ignore the Five Focusing Steps, thereby disqualifying them from the spirit of Throughput Accounting”, states Doiron.   “For Agile CoEs (Center of Excellence), I wrote the only Throughput Accounting book dealing exclusively with Knowledge Work. It has received rave reviews from the top minds in Throughput Accounting as I have brought numerous novelties never thought of before.” In short, Seeing Money Clearly:  Teaches CPAs how to make more money now and in the future. Teaches Agile CoEs how to mint money.  Download Seeing Money Clearly at www.agileagonist.com and reach out at daniel_doiron@hotmail.com and on Twitter @AgileAgonist Re-read Saturday  News This week, Chapter 1 of Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins (SPaMCAST Amazon affiliate line https://amzn.to/38G0ZD3 - buy a copy). The chapter tackles more than just the question embedded in the title exploring why a coach is needed, the path to becoming a coach, and both the mindsets and skills a coach needs.    Read all of Week 1's entry https://bit.ly/3A1aNTe and next week we will cover Part 1, Chapter 1: Will I Be A Good Coach.    Remember to buy a copy of Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins and read along. Previous Installments Week 1: Logistics and Introduction - https://bit.ly/3A1aNTe  Week 2: Will I Be A Good Coach - https://bit.ly/3nzDAHg  Next SPaMCAST  We will map the attributes of flow explored in SPaMCAST 708 to a basic palette of flow metrics. This will complete the circle defining flow, establishing basic attributes, and then identifying how to measure flow through its attributes.    We will also have a visit from Jon M. Quigley who brings his Alpha and Omega of Product Development to the cast! 

Definitions provide several benefits. The first is that once a definition for an object or concept is agreed upon, it is far easier to have a discussion without getting confused. A second and equally important benefit is that definitions provide a platform for establishing attributes that can be used to describe the object or idea. Attributes are critical because even with a definition we need to communicate and measure nuances. Just think if you only had one word to describe rain or hot; a lot would be lost. Today we identify four basic attributes of flow.  We will also have a visit from Tony Timbol who brings his “To Tell A Story” column to the podcast. In this installment, Tony and I talk about agile requirements. They really exist…really! Re-read Saturday  News This week we began our re-read of Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins (SPaMCAST Amazon affiliate line https://amzn.to/38G0ZD3 buy a copy). I am re-reading my Kindle version of the book.  The front matter includes Forwards by Mike Cohn, Jim Highsmith, Acknowledgments, Introduction, and a section titled, About the Author. The main body of the book is in three parts comprised of 13 chapters. It is indexed -- useful for reference books! I estimate 16 or 17 weeks to complete the re-read depending on my travel. Note: The Kindle edition of the book has not been updated and will not run on the Paperwhite Version 10 models, so we will re-read it on the iPhone and Laptop -- I did not have a happy chat with Kindle support on this issue.  Wake up, Addison Wesley! Read all of Week 1's Entry https://bit.ly/3A1aNTe and next week we will cover Part 1, Chapter 1: Will I Be A Good Coach.    Remember to buy a copy of Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins and read along. If you are still catching up on the re-read of Why Limit WIP are are all of the links”: Week 1: Preface, Foreword, Introduction, and Logistics – https://bit.ly/3iDezbp Week 2: Processing and Memory – https://bit.ly/3qYR4yg  Week 3: Completion - https://bit.ly/3usMiLm Week 4: Multitasking - https://bit.ly/37hUh5z  Week 5: Context Switching - https://bit.ly/3K8KADF  Week 6: Creating An Economy -  https://bit.ly/3F1XKkZ  Week 7: Healthy Constraints - https://bit.ly/3kM8xqh  Week 8: Focus - https://bit.ly/3PkE0hg  Week 9: Awareness - https://bit.ly/3LBZfIl  Week 10: Communication - https://bit.ly/39Tji7Q  Week 11: Learning - https://bit.ly/38HQNtJ  Week 12: Epilogue and Final Notes - https://bit.ly/3y3LH4M  Next SPaMCAST  Daniel Dorion returns to the podcast next week to talk about his new book, Throughput Accounting - Seeing Money Clearly. Daniel begins the Prologue of his new book with the statement “My aim is to have you think differently and lose your reflexes and cognitive biases that are the fabric of society.” You will have a lot to think about after you listen!

Full episode video available here: https://youtu.be/gWWkD9hQVtA  Ula's Bio: Uloaku (Ula) Ojiaku is a Business Agility Strategist, coach, mentor and trainer with a focus on helping leaders and their teams in large organisations embrace a Lean-Agile mindset and adopt its associated ways of working to improve how they operate, effectively respond to changes in the marketplace and ultimately deliver value to their customers. With nearly 20 years of professional experience, she has worked in multiple countries, in a variety of technical, business and leadership roles across industries including Oil & Gas, Telecommunications, Financial Services, Government, Higher Education and Consulting. A certified Technology Business Management (TBM) Council Executive, SAFe 5.0 Program Consultant (SPC 5.0) and ICAgile Coach, Ula has a Masters degree in Computer Science from the University College London (UCL) and a Bachelors degree in Electronics Engineering from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN). She is the Founder/ Principal Consultant of Mezahab Group Ltd (a UK-based Lean Agile Innovation training and consulting company). She also currently serves a multi-national retail organisation as a Senior Agile Coach and is a guest lecturer at Coventry University.  Social Media/ Websites: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/uloakuojiaku/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/uloakuojiaku Website: www.agileinnovationleaders.com  Episode Transcript Ula Ojiaku Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast. I'm Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more, with actionable takeaways for you the listener. Hi everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast. I had the privilege on the 30th of March 2022 to speak at the Agile Coach Conference organised by Gladwell Academy. My talk was focused on the SLoMoSH Canvas, which is the tool that I had developed to help with facilitating conversations amongst teams, to clarify roles and responsibilities. The SLoMoSH Canvas has other use cases, however my talk was just focused on the clarification of roles and responsibilities and how it could be used in that situation. Without further ado, my talk at the 2022 Agile Coach Conference in Amsterdam. Thank you, it's a great privilege to be here, live and in person. The last time I attended and participated in a face to face conference was back in 2019, December 2019, San Francisco, so you can't imagine how refreshing it is to be out here. So I'm here, all the way from the United Kingdom, I'm here to speak to you about the topic ‘Set up for Success: Clarifying Roles and Responsibilities using the SLoMoSH Canvas.' I know, ‘what's that word SLoMoSH'? I made it up, as you're going to come to realise. But without further ado, let me tell you about myself. I have about 20 years of professional experience. I started off in engineering, hands-on engineering roles in telecommunications, oil and gas industry, and then kind of moved on to that more business-facing, interfacing type of role with teams where you're kind of translating the conversations, and my first foray into agile ways of working was about 16 years ago as a field engineer, with Schlumberger as a field engineer. We had standups, we had kanbans and all that, but we didn't use the term agile, it wasn't a buzzword then. So as coaches, and I'm sure as we're predominantly agile coaches in the audience here, I've noticed. And we do have those… part of our satisfaction that comes from our jobs is when the teams, the leaders, the people we're coaching, have those ‘aha' moments, and I love what Lyssa (Adkins) said in the morning, it's really about taking a holistic view, building those relationships, meeting people where they are, so that's what I love about being an agile coach. I host a podcast, Agile Innovation Leaders, and I've been privileged to have people like Jeff Sutherland, Steve Blank, Alex Osterwalder, but that's not why we're here. So, we're going to do an ice breaker. I have two children, I have a son who's 11 and a daughter, Kiki, who's 9. So one day Kiki comes back from school and says, and I'm busy working and in the zone, and she says ‘mum, I have something for you, I have a game I have to play'. And I'm like, in my mind, I don't need this right now, but I have to be a loving parent with my children isn't it, so I say ‘all right Kiki, what do you have for me?' All right, so I'm going to teach you that. I don't need to tell you the story, but the key thing is now, I'm going to mention three words in succession, and after each word, you know, you use A, shout out A and raise your left hand if it's an A, if that word matches with an A, so if it's an animal, you raise your left hand, if it's a food, the word that I call, raise your right hand, you can also shout it out if you feel like that, and if it's a place, C, then raise both hands and say C. Does that sound clear enough? OK, let's do a trial run. So, A, well, you did it. So I was going to say ‘poodle', A, awesome. Burger! B. You guys are rocking it. And a castle. C. OK, awesome, you guys have gotten it. Now let's do the real thing. OK, so, I'm going to mention it in a random way. I know you're watching and wondering what I'm doing. Yoghurt. B. OK, B, good, good. Lion. A. Are you sure? Yes, it's an animal, lion is an animal. All right, third and the last, Turkey. (Laughter) That was exactly what my daughter did to me, you know she said, Turkey and I was like OK, where does it go, because mine was more like, A is stand here, B is stand here and C is stand here. But I will take the blame, as a responsible agile coach I will say, if I had wanted you to understand, I would have explained it better. That is the words of the famous Johan Cruyff. And I should have explained it better because, you know, I kind of, hands up if you know, you didn't quite go into the outliers, because you didn't, because the impression based on the instruction was the, you know, the words would fit into one box. Either it's going to be A, or B, or C. Hands up if that was your impression? OK, the rest of you could see that two, three steps ahead, awesome, please call me, because maybe we have a business to start because you can see into the future. But that's the case with transformation initiatives. There are lots of moving wheels, it's about change on a massive scale, and the fact is, with all the changes happening, and people are complex beings, and as Lyssa mentioned again, in her talk earlier on today. I was taking copious notes for all the speakers, when you all were speaking. It's really about moving from that mindset of an organisation and people as machines to an organisation as a complex eco system. And I don't know about you, but for most transformation, and no matter where you are on your transformation journey, whether you are very mature or whether you are just at the beginning of the journey or somewhere in between, the fact is there are always going to be moving parts, and we change, and we need to change and adapt as we go on. So, again, Lyssa, by now you all know I'm a massive Lyssa fan, but the key thing is how work has really impacted a lot of the things we do as agile coaches and the agile coaching competencies that she and Michael Spayd developed, you know has kind of helped with clarifying, what are those multiple hats, those balls that we need to juggle as agile coaches as we support and lead and help the teams as they move under transformation, the journey towards ways of agile working, and developing an agile mindset. Now, usually it would start with some sort of training, you know, to train people into the roles, to understand, because people need to be trained. And I think it was, you know, and I think it was during the session with Marcel, there was something about needing to combine education with coaching. So, in terms of like the initial starting point of training people, let's say classroom-based training, there would be, if you, as an agile coach, are the one running that training, you need to have your teacher's hat on. Lyssa, am I correct, or am I bungling it up? Lyssa Adkins You've been beautiful, I'm overwhelmed. Ula Ojiaku Ok, well please correct me, because you are the expert, and that's your work there. Anyway, so you have to have that teaching hat on, but the main message today that I want to bring to you here, the key point it this, more often than not, just classroom-based training or training of any sort isn't quite enough for the teams to start adapting or applying their learnings to their context. Even within the same organisation, you'll find out that no two teams are alike, and you might have a product owner in team A and a product owner in team B. They are on paper, they have the same role, the title, however, the nuances of what they do with it, it might mean that there are other things that they would need to take on as a result of the nature of their work and the team that they belong to. And so, in what I'm going to be sharing with you in terms of the case study, I've also had to become a neutral process holder, you know, to facilitate conversations with the teams. And this is with the purpose of helping them to connect the dots. OK, just to help them to connect the dots, because they need to get to a shared understanding of whatever topic it is that they are having. So I picked this graphic from the internet. Unfortunately, I don't know who the author, the original originator is, but credit to them, it kind of beautifully illustrates the concept. You might have the same people in the room, listening to this talk right now like we are, you know, if you look at this picture here, there are three people looking at a picture of a truck, but what you can see is something, different elements of the picture is coming out, jumping out at them. But you need to make sure that they also have a joined up view, you know, to have the bigger picture in mind. So how does that apply to us as agile coaches? It's not about having lots of different frameworks, and we don't want to go into that rut of being like the proverbial person with their hangman seeing everything as a nail, it's about taking the time to understand the context. And as Sharon and Yasmina said in their talk, you know, you need to have tools in the toolbox, but you also need to know that it's not about the tools in the toolbox, it's, according to my colleague Scott Henault, who says the power of the tool is in the conversation it creates. It goes back to the people, it's about helping them to have a conversation so that they have a shared understanding to work together more effectively. And so, a bit of the case study in my case. So I am currently a senior agile coach with a multi national retail organisation, if you read into my LinkedIn profile, you'll know which organisation that is. So there is this, there were these teams and when the organisation started its agile transformation about four years ago or something like thereabouts, for that team they were pivoted into agile, single agile team like team level team teams, OK. And then over time some further analysis was done and the leadership decided, that's a story for another day, but go with me here. So they decided they wanted it to be a SAFe ART and so the team was now being pivoted into the combined SAFe ART. Now I had joined the organisation after the initial, the first, you know, pivot to agile teams, and what I noticed interacting with those teams was that they, the teams, already struggled, because they were moving from a traditional projects management waterfall based approach to delivery into agile, and as agile teams, you know, scrum teams, Kanban teams, they were already struggling. I mean, they were delivering, it's almost like, have you ever had a toothache where you're able to eat, but how you ate and enjoyed your food when you had a toothache versus when your, when everything is OK, is much different. So they were delivering all right, but it's almost like you're chewing with a toothache, or hobbling with a bad foot, you're moving, but you're not moving in the most effective way you could. So I realised they had this problem, and just waving, if I could be a fairy godmother and wave the SAFe wand over them with all due respect, it wasn't going to make the problem go away. There was something we needed to get to the root cause. So, sometimes, yes, it's all about trying to make a light touch and as simple as possible reduce the cognitive load as Mariëlle said in the workshop earlier, but there are times that, you know, the hard things have to be done. There are times you have to strip down, get into the weeds, get into the detail, and based on the conversation with the RTE, I designed a session for the key roles, because those were the key points, if you know the theory of constraints, it's about looking at where the bottom leg is and then addressing the bottom leg to improve the flow, and of course you know as the system, because, you know, there would definitely be something else to improve, but right now the key bottom leg was with the Epic Owner roles, the product management roles, the product and scrum master roles, so those were the areas we decided to focus on, because you can't boil the ocean. So, the SLoMoSH Canvas. Now I wouldn't say that it all was original, but it's more of a synthesis of ideas , concepts, mental models that I've been exposed to over the past 20 years, but the main influence for this SLoMoSH Canvas was the work of Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, the business model canvas, and of course when I last spoke with Alex Osterwalder, you know, I had him as a guest on my podcast , he said it's really about making things visual, it's important, it makes it easier for conversations, it helps people to get on the same page. And another influence in developing this was from the work of an executive coach known as Tony Jeary, Jeary with a J, and he wrote this book ‘Strategic Acceleration' and he had the MOLO matrix, which is like 'more of, less of'. So based on that I kind of developed this, which I was using as well for personal reasons, you know, in terms of thinking where do I want to be in the future, how do I get there, what do I need to do more of, less of, what do I need to stop entirely, hand over. And I kind of, as I was thinking about this in the middle of the night, I thought, this might work for the teams we're talking about. So let me explain the SLoMoSH Canvas. Has anyone figured out why it's named SLoMoSH? OK, here you go. Audience member It's the first letters OK, yes, so the first letters, Start, Less of, More of, then Stop and Handover. So that's where the SLoMoSH came from, and I'm still thinking of, is there anything better to call this, so if you have any ideas, please let me know. But that's what it's called. Now, the key thing, how does it work? It's more in the centre you have the core responsibilities, that would be, let's say, common to all the roles, it's better when you do it role by role, so if it's about a particular role, it's something you're facing, you have those responsibilities and tasks in the centre, and there's no change, no action needs to be done, and usually that would be a starting point, OK, for the conversation. Now, the actions that will come out in the conversation will be when you're now looking at those key things, you kind of have a conversation about it, as we'll look at it later, and then you  find out, are there things that you need to, that you should be doing that you're not doing that you should start, you put it there, and the other thing is that you should be doing as part of your role that you're not doing as often as you should, maybe put them in the ‘More of'. You know, ‘Less of' would be the reverse of ‘More of' and then other things ‘Stop'. This part is really important, because as human beings we are adverse to, you know, kind of losing things and taking things out, kind of losing things, we'd rather pile up things without taking off some other things consequently and that is a mindset that we, you know, because there should be the art of maximising the work, the amount of work not done. So it's also important to challenge your teams, are there things that you should stop doing, and stop means stop. Don't hand it over to anyone because it's not adding value now, it wasn't adding value then, it's not going to add value in the future. And then, just as important, is the Handover part. Are there things that you're doing in your current role or in the current context, which in the new role, in the new structure, which don't necessarily apply to you, what your role as you understand it now, but someone needs to do it or else things will fall through the cracks and it's going to impact on delivery, and that would be in the Handover space. OK. So, this if for you now, two minutes, can we all take the time to pause and reflect, and I acknowledge it might not be applicable to you, we all have different situations and contexts, problems that we're solving right now. So if it doesn't apply to you, that's fine. Can you pause and reflect individually on what you've heard so far. Think about scenarios in your current context, your current work, where you could use the Canvas, or where you have, you're needing to have the conversations that this Canvas could help you with. What are those scenarios? So it's an individual pause and think. Can anyone share the result of your conversations? Audience member We were just discussing challenges that we have in multiple teams and the conclusion of the challenge was the team motivation and the relationship with the team members started deteriorating due to the moving to remote working, right. So, there were misunderstandings about what the team lead needs to do, what the product owner needs to do, what the scrum master needs to do, or even every single member of the team. So, what we did, we did different kinds of workshops, but now, when I see this, it perfectly fits into the, what I think we could use, or what we could benefit a lot from this. It was not structured like you did, but this is more clear and straightforward, yeah. Ula Ojiaku Wow, thank you for that, and yes, I'll be sharing my context, so thank you for sharing that. We have just enough time for you. Audience member I think we can use this in our organisation. I'm working for the government, for the POVmark we call that, the Product Owner Vakgroep Manager and agile coach, it's like, we talk about the teams, but not about the individuals, but not about the teams, but what are we talking about? Because we say the product owner is there for the product, and the manager is there for the people, and the agile coach is there for the team. But sometimes it feels like no one has the responsibility so we can use this very wise to, hey, what can we stop talking about? Ula Ojiaku Awesome! Well thank you for sharing. Right, thank you. So, what did I do? Let's move on. So, a case study with the very team that I was talking about, a team of teams in this case. Now, something else I didn't share about the challenges they were facing was this, you know. Having gone to the training, because, let's say for example some of them were previously project managers and as part of the transformation pivot, you know, they were now set, OK, the way it was done is another conversation. And it was more of a combination of OK, where do you think we fit in now that, you know, this is what this role does, and that's what that role does. So it was a combination of that and, you know, my management kind of making joint decisions to give people new roles. And so as a traditional project manager, you'd expect that you're making sure things are on time, you budget and schedule, you liaise with third parties, maybe vendors as required to make sure everyone is cooperating. That's the traditional project management role. You're also, you'd also be monitoring the spend, how much are we spending on this project? You know, the financial reporting, the compliance, to make sure you're being compliant, and being a publicly traded organisation, you also have to make sure that, you know, on the straight and narrow, it's not directly giving value to the end customer, but it needs to be done if you want to operate as an organisation, if you want to be legally trading. So, these things still need to be done. But in the new roles, you know, the new product owner role generally, it doesn't have anything about managing compliance issues, it doesn't have anything about financial reporting, and so when we're operating as that agile team, these things were falling through the cracks. You could have said, yes, I used to be a project manager but now I'm a scrum master, there's nothing that says, you know, as a scrum master, that I need to do that same thing with the product. So, who does it, because it needs to be done. OK. So in this simplified example, let's assume we're doing this session with product owners. Now, I populated the core area, or the continuum area with the generic responsibilities that a product owner would do. Of course, this is not exhaustive, this is only for illustration. And then at the start of the session I'll be like, OK, now these are the things, you know, generic things that the product owner would need to do. But are there other things that you currently do that's not in the box? Feel free to create a sticky(note) and put it there, because we need to have a conversation, we need to make it visible. Because most people have what they do in their heads, and other people, remember the picture with the, you the bus and all that, and three people are looking at, one is seeing the driver, the other one is seeing the cargo, the other one is seeing the vehicle. So, let's all visualise it and talk through it. I told you sometimes you need to get into the weed of things so that everyone has a shared understanding. So, imagine that the ones or the items in the bold italics are the ones that I can't add in, oh, I also manage compliance issues, oh I also participate in release value, oh and I also produce reports for the senior management. Let's put it there. Now, after having the conversation, sticky by sticky, let's assume in this hypothetical session, this is what we came up with. So, remember in the core part it's more of whatever it is that you're doing and you're happy with it, you think you're doing OK, there's nothing that needs to change, that's fine, you leave it there. So, for, let's assume, that the product owner group you know, you already create to start the stories. We prioritise our backlog and we also participate in release planning  and we think it's relevant to where we're going so we have to keep stay there. But there might be other things that they have, you know, had a conversation about, and they say OK, you know what, we haven't really been conducting backlog refinement sessions and we need to do that a bit more, thoughtfully and, you know, we need to just start doing it basically. That goes in the start place. And maybe they say something about contributing to the product vision and roadmap, and say it's been someone else that's been doing that, the product manager has been doing that, but we feel like, you know, the, it trickles down to us and it comes as a surprise, we need to contribute earlier so that we can also give the team perspective into things, so we can put that in the ‘More of' etc etc. But the key thing is, it's about facilitating those conversations. And it doesn't stop here. Once we've done this part, it's now about focusing on the elements in the outer rectangle to identify what's the action that's required for this. So, if you said you don't facilitate or you don't do backlog refinement sessions, what action needs to be done and who's going to own it after this session? And they, as a group, you know, there's this saying, if they write it, they won't fight it. As a coach, as an agile coach, it's not about being the sage on the stage, it's about being their guide by their side. So you ask them, OK, so you have, and of your own free will, I didn't tell you to start doing it, but you said you do need to start doing it, so what are you going to do about it? Because, you know, if you tell them, then the ownership for following up with that action is going to be on me if I told them, but if they said, this is what we think we need to do, and this is who, I mean, I think I'll own it, then they're more likely to follow through with the actual action, so they will, you know, identify who owns it, what they're going to do, and the writing of the same happens with the rest of the items on the board. So for this case study, some of the outcomes were, there was an improved visibility and shared understanding of what people were doing. And of course, during the session, the fact that it was visual, it wasn't like a spreadsheet or a long Word document, not that there's anything wrong with it, but most people process, you know we all process information differently and having it visually on stickys helped with, you know, bringing or bridging that gap in communication and giving us a point of reference that we all could zone into. So, it helped with relevant conversations, both as a group and after the session they were also able to show this to their line management, and have necessary conversations with them. And for some of them, the product management group, they were able to demonstrate, because they would say, I had a lot on my plate, and the line management would be like, she's complaining again, but by the time we did this, and they showed an electronic copy of it to the line management, they said, oh, you actually do a whole lot, right, and that meant a case for an additional set of business analysts to be added to the team to help them with those sorts of things, to invent the responsibility on their plate. It enabled them to identify actions to move from their current state to the desired future state and, you know, they have also role descriptions that takes into account the context of the work they do, that they can share with their stakeholders, because there was a confusion about who does what. So, some facilitation tips as I round off this. It's more effective if you do it role by role. You know, don't try to boil the ocean, there are instances you can do it as a whole team, but my focus right now, on this case study, is more about, you know, on a role, so if it's for scum masters, within a team of teams, then bring them together so they have a joint understanding. If it's a product management, or product owner etc etc, but do it role by role, because that helps with focusing the session. And don't start with a blank slate. Prepopulate the centre of the board with generic responsibilities and then have them add things or remove things as they see fit. Now it's really about being a neutral facilitator in this process, because it's now them having conversations. Now, encourage conversation and debate whilst keeping focused on desirable outcomes and then remind them that, you know, this is not a once and done activity. Things will change, and as they do, you don't have to do it often, but as things change, and you feel they're significantly changed that you need to have another of these conversations, you do so, and inspect and adapt as required. So, before we summarise, what would be your key takeaway from this talk? Anyone? OK, I'll walk to you, I'm not throwing. Audience member  Thank you. Maybe we all recognise, because I also saw it in your model, that stopping and handover are mainly the most difficult topics to discuss. How did you handle those things? Because if you look at the model now, it doesn't seem a lot went off their plate.  More or less it shifted or put on their plate. Ula Ojiaku OK, I was asking for key takeaways, but you know, you've given me a question so I will answer that. No problem. So you said stopping and handover are the most important aspects, and how did I get them, keep them focused on that conversation? It's all about asking questions but I can't tell them you have to stop it, you need to have them come to a realisation and sometimes it's a conversation that you might have with them a few times before they come to the realisation themselves, but it's not about telling them what to do, so I, when I facilitate these sessions, I don't tell them what they need to do, I just ask questions to clarify, OK, what you are doing, do you think you still need to keep it? Yes, OK. Is it adding value to your stakeholders, your customers, does it make it more efficient, no? So why do you think we should keep it, because it's the way we've always done it. OK, so I leave it there and it might not be the right time to pursue it, but I try to encourage them to, you know, consider things that they can stop and handover. So it's a interfaced question and it's also like there's no one-size-fits-all-approach. But thank you very much sir for that question. So, I'll just round up. Classroom based training is almost never enough. We need to support them to kind of, make sense of whatever they've learnt, and teams, because they as teams and individuals sometimes, I personally sometimes struggle to apply what I've learnt in the classroom, on a course, into my real life context. So sometimes that additional support is needed, sometimes we have to roll up our sleeves and help them to have those conversations. And my humble submission is, would you consider using maybe the SLoMoSH Canvas for these sort of conversations, would that help you? For me, for the team that I've used it with, it's made things clearer for them. I wouldn't say it's a Fairy Godmother. You know, I wave the wand and they lived happily ever after, but that hobble has definitely gone. I'm now going to find a dentist to go help me on with the toothache, because there are always going to be problems to be solved. So, with that, that's all I have. Thank you so much for listening and for not falling asleep on me. That's all we have for now. Thanks for listening. If you liked this show, do subscribe at www.agileinnovationleaders.com or your favourite podcast provider. Also share with friends and do leave a review on iTunes. This would help others find this show. I'd also love to hear from you, so please drop me an email at ula@agileinnovationleaders.com Take care and God bless!

Welcome to Defining Moments of Leadership, a podcast hosted by Marsha Acker. We're joined today by guest Lyssa Adkins joins the discussion to explore what it looks like to lead from behind. Lyssa is gifted in her ability to articulate a passion or need that she sees in our world and inspire others to action. She is an internationally recognized agile thought leader, speaker, author of the book Coaching Agile Teams and co-founder of the Agile Coaching Institute.

This week, Dan Neumann is joined by two colleagues, Alba Uribe and Hal Hogue. In this episode, they are discussing what a Scrum Master does outside of the Scrum Team bubble. They dive deep into the roles of a Scrum Master as a teacher, coach, facilitator, and also as an impediment remover. Listen to this thoughtful conversation and find meaningful examples and valuable and applicable suggestions to live the Agile principles and promote their right implementation throughout your organization.   Key Takeaways What does a Scrum Master do outside of the Scrum Team bubble? A Scrum Master is an impediment remover. Hal shares an example of a Team that was just exhausted from the number of meetings they meant to attend. The Scrum Master can help with external Teams that are dependent on services or any kind of other development. Teams can cooperate with each other. If there is dependency among Teams, what can be done to remove them? When dependencies are removed or minimized, Teams can be in control of their own destinies. A Scrum Master teaches, coaches, and facilitates. A Scrum Master must look for opportunities to teach and coach while having conversations with the people in the organization to find those teachable moments. A Scrum Master must teach the Agile concepts at all levels as well as coach and mentor constantly. A Scrum Master has to show people the benefits of following Agile Principles and tell them how they can experience those benefits. A Scrum Master must help employees and stakeholders understand and enact an empirical approach to complex work. A Scrum Master can also support innovation and creativity. Scrum Masters can work with other Scrum Masters in the organization and other coaches to make sure there is an alignment among them and also be aware of what each other is doing. What can you do as a Scrum Master to find other people who are participating in the Scrum Journey with you? How can they be engaged? Get out there, communicate and bounce ideas with others. Build that culture and get those allies together. A Scrum Master can enable conversations with other departments. A Scrum Master should be the management ally.   Mentioned in this Episode: Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action, by Simon Sinek The Zombie Scrum Survival Guide, by Christiaan Verwijs, Johannes Schartau, and Barry Overeem Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition, by Lyssa Adkins   Want to Learn More or Get in Touch? Visit the website and catch up with all the episodes on AgileThought.com! Email your thoughts or suggestions to Podcast@AgileThought.com or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes. Bevan was working with a product tenma that ghad started their move towards Agile. But he started to notice an anti-pattern in their behavior. They acted as if Agile meant freedom to do “anything we want”. The team was focusing on their own comfort, and happiness, but did not seem to be worried about the product they were trying to develop. Listen in to learn how Bevan helped this team step out of their comfort-only anti-pattern and grow.  Featured Book of the Week: How Emotions Are Made, by Lisa Barrett In How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Barrett, Bevan learned how important it is to understand the people we work with, and starting with ourselves. This book helped Bevan understand deeply the role of feedback and empathy on the Scrum Master role.  In this segment, we also refer to Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins, which provides “a good overview of what is expected from the Scrum Master role”, as Bevan puts it.  How can Angela (the Agile Coach) quickly build healthy relationships with the teams she's supposed to help? What were the steps she followed to help the Breeze App team fight off the competition? Find out how Angela helped Naomi and the team go from “behind” to being ahead of Intuition Bank, by focusing on the people! Download the first 4 chapters of the BOOK for FREE while it is in Beta! About Bevan Williams Bevan is an Agile Coach & Trainer at Think Agile. His career has been driven by his passion of creating inclusive environments where people can be at their best.  You can link with Bevan Williams on LinkedIn and connect with Bevan Williams on Twitter.

Full video interview available here: https://youtu.be/oJbZF1yiWvg  Guest Bio: Aino Vonge Corry (born 1971 in Aarhus, Denmark) is an independent consultant, who sometimes works as an agile coach. After gaining her Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2001 she spent the next 10 years failing to choose between being a researcher/teacher in academia, and being a teacher/facilitator in industry. She eventually squared the circle by starting her own company, Metadeveloper, which develops developers by teaching CS, teaching how to teach CS, inviting speakers to IT conferences, and facilitating software development in various ways. She has facilitated retrospectives and other meetings for the past 15 years during which time she has made all the mistakes possible in that field. Aino has lived in Stockholm, Lund, and Cambridge, but she is now back in Aarhus, Denmark, where she lives with her family, and a growing collection of plush cephalopods.   Social Media/ Website LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/aino-vonge-corry-9a23801 Twitter: @apaipi Website: https://metadeveloper.com   Books/ Resources Retrospectives Antipatterns by Aino Corry https://www.amazon.co.uk/Retrospectives-Antipatterns-Aino-Corry/dp/013682336X Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins https://www.amazon.co.uk/Coaching-Agile-Teams-ScrumMasters-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321637704 Agile Retrospectives by Diana Larsen, Esther Derby https://www.amazon.co.uk/Agile-Retrospectives-Making-Pragmatic-Programmers/dp/0977616649 Retrospectives for Organisational Change by Echstein https://www.amazon.com/Retrospectives-Organizational-Change-Agile-Approach-ebook/dp/B07NS796KY Fearless Change Patterns by Linda Rysen https://www.amazon.com/Fearless-Change-Patterns-Introducing-Ideas-ebook/dp/B0054RGYNQ Prime Directive by Norm Kirk https://retrospectivewiki.org/index.php?title=The_Prime_Directive   Full Interview Transcript Ula Ojiaku: Many thanks Aino for making the time for this conversation and for being my guest on the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. Aino Corry:  And thank you for inviting me, Ula. It was great to have you in the course, you had a lot of good questions. And that's how we met. And I've been looking very much forward to this day. Ula Ojiaku: So could you tell us a bit about yourself, you know, who is Aino Corry? Aino Corry: Yeah, so Aino Corry is 50 years old, she lives in Denmark, she's got three children. And she, she's always wanted to teach. Actually when I was in primary and secondary school, I wasn't so happy with mathematics teaching, so I decided after school, I wanted to be a mathematics teacher in secondary school. Actually, I thought about it and I thought I didn't really like school. So maybe I should be a teacher in high school instead. And so I decided to try to go to university to study mathematics to become a high school teacher. But then I had to do some programming in the mathematics course. And I really, really fell in love with that. So I changed subject to computer science. And then I did my Master's degree with a focus on design patterns, which was very new at the time. And when I finished, I wanted to continue working with design patterns. And that's why I applied for a Ph.D. I applied for a Ph.D., actually, just to prolong my university studies to make more of the fun thing that I've done. And then when I finished, I thought, I wanted to be a researcher and a teacher and I had a job at the university as an assistant professor. Aino Corry: And then I decided that I wanted to go out in industry instead, because I, I had a child already, and I wanted to have another child. And I really, I was dead poor, so I wanted to earn a lot of money, so I went down industry to get some money. And that worked, I got some money. And after a few years there, I went back to university to do some research and some teaching, because they had a research project, which was interesting. It was when Bluetooth was quite young and was about programming pervasive computing devices, what you would call IoT today, yes. And then I was there for a few years, and then went back to the industry, and was there for a few years. And then I went back to university. And then I did my research in how to teach computer science and how people learn. So that was also interesting. But then I wanted to stop again because then I was full-time at university and I also did some consulting in the IT industry. So I thought I would go back to the industry. Aino Corry: And then I thought, Naah, I want to do something else. I want to be my own boss, I don't want to work that much anymore. I had three children at the time. So I decided to be an independent IT consultant, thinking that then I would work less, that was a huge mistake. I, I like having my own company, but I wouldn't say that I work less because if you have a job and you have a boss, you can tell your boss ‘Oh, it's too much. I don't want to do that much. And please take some of the tasks away from me.' But when you're your own boss, and you're a time optimist, like I can be, you think ‘I can do that. And I can do that.' And especially now with COVID, it's even worse because at least prior to this, I had to calculate time in to get from one meeting to another, you know, from one client to another from one country to another. But now I can actually I can work with clients in four different countries in a day. And I've actually, one week I spoke at six different conferences in one week. So normally I would only be at one conference. So it's actually made me a little bit confused and looking very much forward to actually spending time on trains and planes and cars again, Ula Ojiaku: To have the downtime… Aino Corry:  Yes, I thought I'd never miss that, but I do, so I guess I guess that's my career. Ula Ojiaku:  Great. Now, just a little bit more about your research you did on teaching, on how to teach computer science. Now I would expect there would be an intersection of you know, disciplines; it wouldn't just be computer science itself. Was there an element of maybe psychology (of), you know, how people learn and all that? Aino Corry: Yeah, it was a lot of that it was about, well, the psychological aspects of how people react to different, being in different situations, and being spoken to in different ways. And there was something that I don't think maybe you call it neurology but thinking about how to model the brain in order to make it remember what you're saying. And just something like what does it actually mean to learn something? And in Danish, the word for teaching and learning is the same word, but in English teaching and learning are two different words. And that's actually a subtle difference, which is a big difference, which makes it maybe even harder for me as a Dane to start thinking about this because you think about it as the same process. Aino Corry: But it's two very different processes. And one of the biggest things that I learned when I started doing research and teaching, and that was after having taught for 16 years or something like that, the thing that I learned was that I was so immensely focused on how to condense this book into presentations and assignments so that the students could listen to me and do the assignments. I didn't think enough about the relation between the student and the material. So I was thinking more about the relation between me and the material, and me and the student. So the really important thing is that, when you have any sort of conversation with people, it's a student, or it's a presentation that you're doing, what you want to do is that you want to change their brains really, right. But you can't see the change in the brains. So you need to figure out how can I, how can I assess that they've changed the brain? So, the first thing you have to do is think about what is it actually that you want them to be able to do differently? Do you want them to say something else? Do you want them to be able to program, to design, to facilitate, what is it that you want them to do? Because then you can set up? What is the assessment? How do you assess what they can do? Do they actually have to look at the design at an oral exam? Do they have to process some words in a written exam? What is it that you want them to do? And then when you know what you want them to do to assess it, then you can figure out what is it that you want them to do while training do you want them to do the same when you're training them, that they have to do in the assessment. Aino Corry: So that the exam is actually what they have been doing for the past hour, month, year, instead of examining something completely different than what they have been doing. And then when you know all that, then you start thinking about okay, so what material do I need for them to read? And that's, that's actually the last thing. And prior to this, I would take a book and I would think, this is the thing that I want to put in their brains. And then at the exam, I would ask them, do you understand that? Can you explain that, but maybe they never explained it during the course, maybe they just did exercises or something like that. So that was one of the most surprising things is I guess, maybe it's neurology, maybe it's psychology, it's definitely different. It's lending, from different fields. And, and you can say that the computer science part of it is actually the least part. But the interesting part about computer science and teaching computer science or natural sciences is that it's mostly not so much about discussing things. It's more about being able to understand things and relate things and apply things. Now, I guess well, you can say that all issues, all subjects are like that. But with the natural sciences, it's much more about understanding the world, changing the world. So yeah, I think it's very interesting, but also trying to explain difficult subjects to people. How do you actually do that? Ula Ojiaku: So you've already mentioned that you, you know, started your business because you wanted to be an independent, and then you realized, oh, well, there are other things because as a business owner, you probably would do all the other admin tasks that someone else would have in person. Yeah. Now, am I right? In the understanding, you still run, you know, your business, which is the meta developer, right? Do you have employees right now? Aino Corry: No, I don't, and I don't want to. And I've had a lot of people asking me over the years if I want to employ somebody and I, I did try once for just a small gig that I needed a helping hand and I employed that person and that person was not a problem, but all the extra paperwork, with taxes and insurances, and what do I know. So if I'm working with people, now they have their own company, and then they can send me an invoice and then I can pay them like that because I really want to be independent and five, no six years ago, my family and I, we moved to Cambridge in the UK for a year. And it was so easy for me, I could just do it because even though I had to really work a lot less because I didn't have my network in England and I had three kids who had to move to a different country so I had to focus on them. I could just do it, I could just work less and not make any money or almost no money. Because I didn't, I wasn't responsible to anybody, I was only responsible to myself. That gives me the freedom that I want to have. And during COVID I lost everything in my book. My calendar just was empty. Wow. And I didn't know how to continue with the company. But I only had to worry about myself. I didn't have to worry about anybody that I employed. So that was nice. Ula Ojiaku: Yes, I completely agree. I mean, it would be a lot of responsibility, having other people's livelihood as well as yours to think about that. Yeah,  Aino Corry: Especially. I mean, this is such a fluid thing. It's difficult to promise anything. Ula Ojiaku: Now, but hopefully, with the, you know, lockdown restrictions on I mean, unfortunately, we're still not out, you know of the red and unfortunately, many lives have been lost, and many people have been affected but it seems like there is light at the end of the tunnel with the (covid) vaccination (roll-out) and all that. So would you say your calendar is filling up again? Aino Corry: Yes, it actually became overfilled, yeah during COVID. Because my book came out. So I had hoped that when my book came out, I would travel everywhere in the world and sign my books. Unfortunately, that couldn't happen because of COVID. But that's the least of the things that could happen to people during COVID. I've been very lucky. But my book came up... Ula Ojiaku: Retrospectives Antipatterns… Aino Corry: Yes. and, and that meant that there were a lot of people who wanted to talk to me about retrospectives, which was why I wrote the book. So that was great. So I don't know if it had filled up as easily without the book, but it definitely helped, I think. But I'm looking so much forward to getting out and speaking at conferences again. I taught at the university yesterday, and I will again tomorrow. And that was in real life. It was so nice, people were laughing and we were clapping. And we were like doing icebreaker exercises where we were standing up and moving towards each other. And it was really nice. Ula Ojiaku: Yeah, I mean, nothing can ever replace that, you know, face-to-face in-person interaction. Whilst we're grateful for technology, you know, for bridging the gap, you know, but once in a while, it's definitely important. Yeah. Great. Now, so since you've shown us your book, Retrospectives Antipatterns. And you've talked about it briefly, why don't we delve into that a bit. And for the audience who are listening either (via) audio or video only, there will be the links to the, you know, to the book, and other resources that we touch on in the show notes. So what you said people were, you know, asking you lots of questions about retrospectives, and asking for advice, which was one of the motivations for writing the book. Could you tell us the story behind that? Aino Corry: I love to tell the story behind the book. Thank you for asking, Ula. So I started facilitating Retrospectives because Linda Rising gave me a book by Norman Kerth called Project Retrospectives. And then I started facilitating them. And then Diana Larsen and Esther Derby wrote a book about Agile Retrospectives - Making Good Teams Great, which condensed all the retrospective activities into smaller bite-sized ones that you can use after each sprint. And I facilitated retrospectives at in the time I worked for a company called Trifle, inside Trifle with the customers. When I went back to university, I facilitated retrospectives there. And I just really, really liked it. I even facilitated retrospectives with my family and myself, and everybody basically who couldn't get away. And I, I got a lot of experience. And then once I was at a conference that I'd been part of organizing the conference and inviting speakers and what I do at these conferences is that if a speaker gets sick, or can't be there, then I fill in with a presentation. So they came to me and asked me is ‘Could you fill in with a presentation? Just 20 minutes?' ‘Okay, I said, When do you want it?' And they said ‘In 20 minutes, and we would want it to be a new talk, could you do that?' I was like, how can I? How can I prepare a new talk in 20 minutes for a 20-minute talk? And then I thought the only thing that I really, really know about that I can talk about for lengths, are all the mistakes that I'm continuously making when facilitating retrospectives So I thought this is definitely something I can talk about. So I just, I just, I think I drew some pictures, or I found some pictures online. And then I just spoke out from those I, I spoke about three different things that I called Antipatterns for Retrospectives, things that often go wrong for me and how to solve it. So not just explaining the problems, but also how to get out of the problem situation. And they really liked it. And then I started giving that talk. And I extended it to 45 minutes to an hour, I extended it to a day. And people kept asking me, ‘Where can we read more about this?' And I said you can't really because it's, it's in my head. And then somebody said ‘Maybe we you should write a book.' And so I thought I'm not going to write a book, I already did my Ph.D. dissertation, and I'm not doing that again. Not the best part of it for me. But then I started just writing, you know, first, it was just a few Word documents that I shared with people in my retrospective network. And they gave me feedback on that. And then I started a Leanpub book. And it turned out people wanted to buy the Leanpub book. So I thought, well, maybe I should add some more chapters. And then I thought it would be interesting to see if there's any publishers who would like to publish it. Aino Corry: And luckily, I have a very good network in IT, so I asked a lot of people who are already authors and, and Martin Fowler introduced me to somebody from Pearson, Greg Dench, and he, he read my book, the PDF that I sent from Leanpub, and he said that they thought they'd like to publish it. And there was a lot of back and forth and back and forth. And could you change the title? Because Antipatterns sounds so depressing and negative? And I said, but it is an Antipatterns, so I cannot. And then those things about I want this octopus, this big octopus? Ula Ojiaku: Yes, yes. Aino Corry: Well, it looks a little bit like a children's book, are you sure you want it to look like a children's book and I said actually, I'm, I'm really like a child myself. So I want it to be me. And then I said, and it has to be printed in color. Because I want all these Antipatterns to have not just a name, but also a picture. Because with Antipatterns, what you do is that you create an awareness, so I described, this is the context you're in, this is what normally happens, but that's the Antipattern solution. That's actually another good solution that gives you these drawbacks. But then you have the refactored solution, which gives you these benefits. And I want the patterns as well as Antipatterns, it sort of enables you to have a discussion and a higher level of extraction. So you can say, for instance, with patterns, you can say, then I use the observed or I implemented composite, and then you don't have to explain all the nitty gritty details. And it's the same with these Antipatterns. So instead of saying, ‘Well, we tried to vote, but then some people held up their vote, and I allowed them to do so. But maybe I could have done it differently', you can just say, well, then I ended in political votes. And there's also the name and then the picture because for some people, the name is easy to remember, but for other people, the picture. Ula Ojiaku: The pictures, yes. Aino Corry: I definitely am very visual. So I, I really remember pictures like that. And graphs, it really helps me understand I love UML, and when I work with architecture, it's very important for me to be able to draw these things. So that's how the book came about. And there were other publishers who didn't want it because they thought it was not technical enough or they didn't like the Antipatterns in the title or they thought it was too negative, but Pearson wanted it, so that's great. I'm very grateful for that. Ula Ojiaku: That's fantastic. Again, we'll have the link to the book in the show notes. And I mean, so I do identify with, you know, the things you said or where you kind of held your ground and in terms of how the book was meant to look for pictures. And if it's playful, it's easier to absorb. There is the saying in English, you know, a picture is worth more than a thousand words. Definitely. And in that way, you're kind of trying to cater for different people with different learning styles, because there are some of us who can read you know, but pictures kind of makes it, breaks it up and kind of, you know, conveys the message even more effectively in some instances. On that note though, are you, do you already have an audio version of it? Or do you think it would bode well as an audio version? Aino Corry: Yeah, that's a bit embarrassing, Ula, because I have narrated, I think five of the chapters. But then I stopped, but I will narrate it. I am doing it and it will happen, hopefully, yeah, but it turns out it's much more difficult to make an audiobook than you think I want to narrate it myself. I agree. Have you tried it? Ula Ojiaku: Well, no, just with, you know, starting the podcast and you know, kind of speaking, there is a whole lot to it. So I can imagine trying to bring a book to life, you know, kind of enunciating, and there'll be some places you need to emphasize. That's why I've never done it yet. But I can imagine. Aino Corry: Yeah, well, I could have hired an actor to do it, but I wanted it to be me, because it's my experience. It's, it's my voice that should be in this book. And then so I'm Danish and English is my second language. I normally think, Okay, I'm pretty good at English, I can speak fluent English, people understand what I'm saying I can express myself and the book is written in English. But then when you start recording it, and you'll listen to it afterwards, you make so many mistakes, or at least I do. So I have to repeat that again. So it just takes a lot longer than I thought, but it will be there, it's my plan. Ula Ojiaku: We'll be looking out for it, definitely, yeah. Okay, so, in your view, what are Retrospectives, and why are they important? Aino Corry: Well Retrospectives is a way for a team to set time aside to reflect on where they are, inspect, you'd say, and learn from, that, appreciate what happened, and see how can we improve going forward, the way that we communicate, the way that we work, the way that we program or design, or whatever we do. It's simply taking time aside to appreciate and inspect and then adapt to the situation. In a sense, it's the core of Agile, right, inspecting and adapting. And for a team to have regular Retrospectives, I think it's so important. Sometimes they'll think we don't have anything to talk about, we don't have any problems. But there's always something that can be improved, even if it's a small thing. And having those regular Retrospectives helps you remember, to continue to improve in all different aspects, but also, I think Retrospectives is a way to gain trust between team members, it's not the only thing you need to gain trust, but that sharing thing that showing, “Okay, that didn't go very well”, or “I need to learn this”, or “I got stuck with this”. But also, “I was really happy about this”, ”this made me so energetic, and really optimistic about these things”. It helps people understand each other as human beings and as sort of parts of the machinery or parts of the system, that's the team or even the organization. So I think it's important in all aspects. And for everybody. Ula Ojiaku: It's interesting, your definition of what a retrospective is, and I'd never really thought about it as a way for team members to, you know, build trust with themselves, so thanks for mentioning it, that really stood out for me, do you have any examples in your experience where, you know, this happened where there was maybe little or no trust and, you know, subsequently through the Retrospectives the team, started having more trust towards themselves? Aino Corry: I would like to say yes, but I have to say that when I realized in the retrospective that there's not enough trust, it is something that you have to work with also between the Retrospectives in a sense if there is not enough trust to share anything, then, then the retrospective will not be trust-building in itself, but it can help you reveal that there is not enough trust, and then you can start working with it, and to me trust is sort of the equation between relationships and that you can rely on people that you rely on people and you have a relationship. So if you have a relationship, if you know a little bit about each other as human beings, it makes it easy for you to trust people. And also if you can rely on other people, for instance, if they say, ‘Oh, I'll do this', then they'll do it. Or they'll say they can't do it, that's part of the trust as well. And if you understand, if you learn at the retrospective that there isn't enough trust, the retrospective can become a waste of time. Aino Corry: Because if they don't want to share the things that are really difficult, then you will just talk about the meal in the canteen, or whether we should have a meeting that's two hours long, or one hour long, or something like that, which is not really changing anything. It's usually things about how to give feedback or whether the code reviews can be done in this way or the other and whether we need to learn something more. So, but you can definitely be aware that there's trust issues that you can work on outside the retrospective, but then I think another important thing is that if they have already sufficient trust to be able to share things, then I've heard from a lot of people that it can, it can feel almost like team therapy to have a retrospective because they don't have to think about it, they can sort of relax and let the facilitator carry the conversation forward sometimes. And then if it can help them say, now, we talk about this, Now perhaps we've talked enough about this, now we should talk about this or could you see this from the other side, which is something that I sometimes do as well. So it can be a little bit conflict handling as well to be a facilitator to say what did you hear him say right now? Or can you imagine what his day was like yesterday or something like that? So it can be therapeutic if you want to, but that depends on the facilitator. You can also have a retrospective facilitator, which is perfectly fine, but only wants to talk about how we can improve the way that we actually design things, the architecture we make, the meetings we have, it can still be helpful, doesn't have to be therapy, but it can. Ula Ojiaku: Yeah. In running the retrospectives I would assume, I would imagine, there would be some sort of advanced preparation from a facilitative perspective. Now, would you when you get asked to do this by you know, other organizations and teams? Do you normally have a point person and you'd get the brief in terms of what they're trying to achieve from the point person, and that would set the agenda? So have you always found yourself sticking to the agenda? Or have you ever had to kind of flex depending on what you sense the team needs? Aino Corry: Yeah, I've definitely had to change my agenda. So if I get invited to facilitate a retrospective, I talk to the one who sponsors me to ask them why, why have you reached out? Do you already have Retrospectives? If you have Retrospectives, why do you need an external facilitator? What normally works for you in retrospective? What doesn't work? Is there any conflict? I should know about it? Is there anybody who's really quiet? Anybody who's really a loudmouth? Is there anything that can help me plan this retrospective in the right way? Then sometimes they say, oh, we'd really, really like this retrospective to focus on how they can learn as a team, or we'd really like this to focus on their communication with other teams. And then in some, sometimes I'll say, okay, so, so we'll say that's the theme for the retrospective. And then I'll let people know that that's a theme for the retrospective. But other times, if it's a new group, then I'll probably encourage that sponsor to allow me to make some, just a generic retrospective. So for a new group who has to work together, maybe he or she will allow me to create a futurespective for them, which is the kind of retrospective where you imagine that you're in the future, looking back at what happened. And then they say, okay, then we, then somebody got fired, or this didn't work, or the users hated it. Aino Corry: And the way that I have this futurespective, with the new team is that then I get to understand and they get to understand about each other. What do they hope and what do they feel will happen in this project, and then we can have action points, which will allow them to get the things that they hope and avoid the things that they fear. So sometimes I'll let the sponsor know, well, actually, we should do it a little bit different way. And sometimes I'll say, that's fine, we'll focus on that. But it is often so that you need to have an extra agenda when you prepare for a retrospective, at least a little bit. Because sometimes you suddenly end up in a situation where you have somebody who's speaking all the time or somebody who's really quiet. And then all the plenary discussions that you decided on, you can't have those because plenary discussions are not very nice if you have like a big difference in how much people wants to speak. And then you have to divide them into smaller groups, or you have to change it in writing. Or you have to make round robins where everybody takes turns in saying something, so just as an example. But it could also be that you notice that all the things that they're talking about are problematic, turns out to be things that we think are sort of out of their hands, not really something they can do anything about. And then if you spend all the time discussing things that you can't change, then it's just like a session where you're just complaining about everything. And in those cases, I sometimes get out the soup exercise that I learned from Diana Larsen where you make the three circles, things the team can do, things the team can influence, and then you have the soup outside. And then I say well out of all these problems that you're complaining about, how many of these are things you can do something about, how many of these things you can influence, how many of these things are in the soup, and for the things in the soup, you might just have to accept that this is the world we live in, like Corona right now. Yeah, It's what it is. Ula Ojiaku: Amazing. So, so what would you say would be, from what you've observed, I'm sure you've had a spectrum of or a continuum of teams from what you'd consider high performing to maybe people… I mean, a team that's still up and coming. What would be your view of the characteristics of a high-performing team? Aino Corry: Yeah, that's a good question. In my experience, it's not so much the individual's skill set that makes a high-performing team, an individual with the highest skill set can do a lot on its own. But if we talk about a high-performing team, it's about a team that can communicate, it's about a team where you feel there's psychological safety to say when you're stuck, or when you need help. Because if you're only working on what you want, first and foremost, and only helping other people, if you really have to, then it's not really high performing, and things will clot up and it'll be slow. One of the symptoms that I see in teams that are high-performing is that they're laughing together. So I evaluate sometimes teams based on how much they laugh, and not how much they laugh over each other, but how much they laugh together. And how, yeah, I think, I think it's a good litmus test. Because if they laugh together, then it makes them happier for each other, because the laughter starts, you know, all the happiness hormones in your brain and sensing around your body. So if you laugh together with somebody, you like them a bit more. And if you like them a bit more, you might trust them a bit more. And if you trust them a bit more, you might reach out and ask for help. Or you might offer help, when you see that somebody needs it. And if you are in an environment where you will you think that you can work freely, and you can speak freely, and you feel nice, then you're much more efficient together with other people. So that's what I see in high-performing teams. Ula Ojiaku: I mean, everything you've said because I was going to ask you to define for the benefit of the audience who might not be familiar with the term what psychological safety is? So would you say, you know, it's pretty much what you've broken down, you know, how much they laugh together, how safe they feel in asking for help, and, you know, yeah, being able to work together. Aino Corry: Yeah, I think that Gitte Klitgaard has, has taught me one of the most important things about psychological safety. And that is that it's actually not about being comfortable all the time, but it's about feeling comfortable about being uncomfortable. So even if you're saying something, which doesn't feel nice, you should still feel comfortable about it. And I think that's an interesting difference. So it's not just about making everybody feel good all the time and not having problems and only laughing and talking about positive things. That's not psychological safety. It's being okay to say I have a down day, or it's being okay to say that I don't understand what you're saying, or I feel negative, or I'm worried about this, or I don't think that this was done well enough, we could do it differently, that to me is psychological safety. Ula Ojiaku: Would you say that psychological safety, you know, having an environment that encourages the sense of psychological safety, is that only up to the team to foster? (If not) So who else would be involved, in your view? Aino Corry: I think that there's a culture in an organization and there can definitely be a culture of organizational safety and there can be a culture of non-psychological safety. And if, if the management is also showing that they're comfortable with saying uncomfortable things, I think that helps. If they're comfortable with saying, ‘Oh, we didn't do very well about that, or I made a mistake, or, if they're okay with telling people to do things differently, instead of making it really awkward or being very angry about it. That's, that's brilliant. And I remember one of the great managers, I had once that I made a huge mistake, that was really embarrassing. And when I noticed it, I felt so bad. I was beating myself up about it, but I had to tell my manager, and I had to come forward and say I messed up completely. And the way that he reacted was just wonderful. He said, ‘Well, we'll have to look into that. We'll have to figure out how we can change the process so that that doesn't happen again.' Because of course, I mean, I probably could have avoided that mistake if I thought about things in a different way. But what he said was that we should have a process where you know, that you should do this at this point in time, that should help you, support you. And I thought that was one of the things that created psychological safety for me because now I felt much safer about saying that I had a problem or made something wrong. Ula Ojiaku: In facilitating retrospectives, because you mentioned earlier that if there was anything you could talk about at length, you know, without needing preparation, it would be about the mistakes you've made in facilitating retrospectives. And hence, maybe they could also be some of you know, lead to some of the Antipatterns, could you share some of these Retrospective Antipatterns that you've observed? Aino Corry: So one of the Retrospective Antipatterns that I see most often or that I ran into most often myself is the one that I called Prime Directive Ignorance. So the Prime Directive is what Norman Kerth wrote about retrospectives. There was a longer text that states ‘everybody did the best they could at all times, and remember that before you enter a retrospective', but the problem is that, at least in some of the organizations that I've worked in with some of the people that have worked, they thought it was a bit ridiculous to expect that everybody did the best they could all the time. And to really believe that they couldn't have done any better, because they knew that somebody was slacking. They knew that somebody was being lazy. They also knew that they themselves didn't do the best they could. Aino Corry: So how could they really, genuinely believe that? So sometimes I've had retrospectives where I didn't, I didn't state that, I didn't say it out loud, I didn't state in an email or the invitation, I didn't say remember, this retrospective is not about finding a scapegoat or naming and blaming, it's about figuring out how we as a system of people can move on better together. And then I've had some awful retrospectives where some people had been made scapegoats, and they got really sad, and some of them left the retrospectives because they didn't feel safe. And then, and I think some of them may never have entered a retrospective again because it really ruined it for them because in their head now, the retrospective is a free for all, just sending arrows towards somebody, some poor person and shaming them and blaming them. So I think that the Prime Directive Ignorance Antipattern is one of the most important ones and the refactored solution, obviously, in the Prime Directive Ignorance is not to ignore the prime directive. So remember to bring it, put it on the poster in the wall, say it out loud, write it in the email, you can do it with your own words, it doesn't have to be in Kerth's words, if you like your own words better. But just make sure that people try to do that. Because the thing that Norman Kerth wanted to achieve with this was that people had the mindset of everybody did the best they could. But it's difficult to have that mindset. We're probably all brought up with our parents asking who left the milk out on the morning table? Who broke that vase, who started that fight, right? We're always trying to find a scapegoat and punish them. Although it's not very constructive, not even with children, and not even with grownups either to find that, it's, it's better to figure out how can they play? And where can they play so that they don't break the vase? How can we remind people to put milk into the refrigerator? Instead of saying you're stupid, you're forgetful, you're lazy, right. But I also appreciate that it might be a bit naive, that you might think, okay, but they could have just done a little better. But helping them out with processes, I think it's a good idea. Ula Ojiaku: With reference to the Prime Directive, you know, one of my mentors said something to me that also stuck which is that, you know, most people come to work wanting to do their best job, but sometimes it's the system that restricts them. So if we, like you said, you know, kind of move away from trying to find a scapegoat or someone to point the finger at, you know, to blame for what's going wrong, can we look at how we can shape the system in such a way that those things, you know, it would be hard to fall into those mistakes because the system is already shaped in a way that would help them focus on the right behaviours and practices and not fall into the wrong undesired ones? Yeah. Amazing. Any other Antipatterns you'd like to share? Aino Corry: Yeah, I think that the other one I'd like to share is one that I am becoming more and more aware of how important it is with so many people starting to facilitate retrospectives, because so many people are understanding how powerful it is. A lot of people who maybe aren't, let's say fully dressed, not very experienced in facilitating retrospectives are being thrown into facilitating retrospectives, by people thinking that it's easy. And it's not easy. It's really, really hard. It's hard to do it right. It's easy to understand, but it's difficult to do, it's like that one minute to learn, a lifetime to master. And a lot of people become disillusioned. So one of my retrospective anti-patterns is called the disillusioned facilitator. Because a lot of people are thrown into this role of oh, you can start facilitating retrospectives next week. And then they, maybe they hear something in a podcast like this, oh, this is an activity, you should definitely try it, or they read it online, and then they do it. But then probably they haven't done it before. They're doing it in real life the first time and they might be a bit, not really sure about it, not really having the heart in it. And people can feel that right away. And then they won't put their heart into it either, and then it will fall to the ground, you won't get what you expect to get out of it. So, I always encourage people when they start facilitating to try doing it in a sandbox, first, try out the activities with somebody that you trust and know, maybe you have some other people who want to learn how to facilitate retrospectives, and then you can try these activities out with them. Because explaining these activities can be difficult, coming up with examples that make people understand what they should do can be difficult. But also, really understanding what is the expected outcome, as we talked about right in the beginning Ula, the learning goals, what is it actually that you want to achieve? You're not doing the activity to do the activity, you're doing the activity to achieve something, to figure out what it is you want to achieve makes it easier to perform the right way. So with the disillusioned facilitator what I'm trying to say is, don't worry, you're doing your best the prime directive holds for you as well. Try it out with people, start with things that you're absolutely sure of, take boring activities for a start if you understand how to explain them. And if you understand what the expected outcome is. And we remember to debrief after the exercises to make sure that the people in the retrospective understand what they just got out of it. Because sometimes if you go just from one activity to the other, maybe they're wondering, why did we do that? Why did we spend half an hour on that? They don't understand that actually, what we got out of it was sharing this experience, or perhaps seeing the weight, how many people thought this or something like that? Ula Ojiaku Yeah, never assume, I guess is the cardinal rule there, don't assume, explain why you're doing what you're doing. You're carrying them along on a journey. And you have to (do so) like a good tour guide. This is what I, I tell the teams I coach or some of the coaches that I'm coaching: you're a tour guide, so you have to, you know you're saying ‘this is the destination we're going (to)' and as we get to some notable, you know, attraction points, call it out to them, because you can't assume that everyone is following. Aino Corry No, no Ula Ojiaku Amazing. Now what books, in addition to yours, can someone who wants to learn more about retrospectives and activities, ideas for activities to run during retrospectives? What books would you recommend to them? Aino Corry Well, the interesting thing about retrospectives is that there's a lot of different books that apply. Like when we talked about teaching computer science, it's not just computer science. It's also psychology, ethnography, neurology, things like that. And when you want to become a good retrospective facilitator, you also have to look at other things. You have to look at books about body language. A book that I keep returning to is the book Coaching Agile Teams (by) Lyssa Adkins. It's not necessarily about retrospectives, there is a little bit about that in there, but Coaching Agile Teams is about all the different ways of thinking about helping people coming from this place to this place. And that's actually what retrospectives is about. But also Jutta Eckstein has written the book Retrospectives for Organizational Change. And I think that's important as well to think about retrospectives in a different setting because then you might see that okay, so these retrospectives that you have been asked to do every sprint for a team, maybe that's actually something you can use for the whole organization to help a change or something like that. So I think sort of not just talking about the retrospective books, but other books in general about coaching or communication are very important. Ula Ojiaku: Fantastic. So are you on social media? And how can the audience who would want to get in touch with you do so? Aino Corry: Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. LinkedIn, I think Aino Corry, just that link, and I'm on Twitter with my name, @apaipi. I'm also on Instagram, but I never use it. So that's the best place to reach me. And it's really easy to Google me because as with you, we probably have very unique names. Ula Ojiaku: Yes, yes, definitely. Aino Corry: And I have to say, Ula, thank you for that thing from the coaching that you said about pointing out the different parts of the landscape in the journey that people might not have noticed. I think that's a very, very good analogy that I'll use in my retrospective teaching as well. Ula Ojiaku: You're very welcome for that. Thank you for that. Thank you. You're welcome. Any final words before we just wrap this whole thing up? Aino Corry: Yeah, make sure you have something that you enjoy every day in your life. Ula Ojiaku: Amazing. Thanks again Aino.

Elena Maksumova LinkedIn profile link Leadership/Coaching training recommended by Elena: Leading Amazing Teams - Training by Tricia Broderick and Jake Calabrese - eventbrite link Podcast: Five & Five podcast by Lyssa Adkins - apple podcast link Books: Black Box Thinking by Michael Syed - amazon link Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins - amazon link Switch: How to change things when change is hard by Chip & Dan Heath - amazon link *Music for this episode was provided through my paid subscription to TechSmith Camtasia Asset store: Intro track - Burning Spark Outtro track - Jump --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/quokka-cast/support

Live from the keynote given by Lyssa Adkins

Here's a wrap-up of 5&5 about identifying your values -- the ones that are resonant and essential for you. In this 5&5, Lyssa Adkins offers you 5 ways to detect your values to thrive in the modern world of work.

Jessica Katz on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeskatz/ Liberated Elephant - https://liberatedelephant.com/ Jessica conducts a yearly survey on Agile Coach Salaries to help provide income transparency so that Agile Coaches around the globe are empowered to negotiate fair and equitable pay for the valuable service they provide. If you're an Agile Coach, please join the effort and fill out the Survey today: Coaching Income Survey: https://survey.zohopublic.com/zs/hvCC6h A little bit about "Waterfall" - https://medium.com/@ScepticalMeerkat/waterfall-was-originally-described-by-winston-royce-who-did-not-actually-used-this-term-in-his-6f88e178c26f Journey Line Exercise - https://medium.com/@Barryovereem/the-journey-line-e9faae129fc5 Scrum Guide - https://www.scrum.org/resources/scrum-guide ICAgile - https://icagile.com/ Lyssa Adkins - https://lyssaadkins.com/ Coaching Agile Teams book by Lyssa Adkins: Amazon Link Team Coach Cohort Programs - https://teamcatapult.com/top-5-reasons-to-join-an-agile-team-coaching-cohort/ Home (animated movie) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_(2015_film) Threat Centers: Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn - https://www.katezenchenko.com/blog/4f-types-comparing SoftEd training w/ Jessica - https://www.softed.com/us/about-us/our-team/jessica-katz/ Enterprise Coach Mastercamp – https://www.the-collective-edge.com/ The Art & Science of Facilitation by Marsh Acker Evolvagility by Michael Hamman Agile Transformation by Michael K. Spayd & Michele Madore podcast music supplied by Epidemic Sound featured track: The Last Guardians by Coma Svensson --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/quokka-cast/support

This inaugural episode features a conversation with my dear friend, the inimitable, Dean Kynaston. Dean and I cover a wide range of topics in this segment, such as: Examples and benefits of coaching and mentoring relationships. A growing awareness within many businesses to make the shift from a Project mindset to Product Development mindset The epic adventures of being in an agile team The motivational factors of master, autonomy, and purpose Love, Trust, Psychological Safety - the power of saying "How Can I Help?" Transactional managers vs. Transformational Leaders … people managers who are discovering effectiveness by adjusting their stance to be more supportive of teams instead of trying to be directive as a primary driver of teams Building capabilities in our people by connecting them with high-quality training, plus the gift of sufficient time back on the job with the help of coaches to reinforce the unlearning process as teams and people insert new learnings and new skills The value of learning from our failures Building relationships by co-creating a vision of what a team can become Books we referenced: Lyssa Adkins' Coaching Agile Teams Dean co-authored Agile Project Management for Dummies Dan Pink's Drive Andrea Tomasini's Organic agility Foundations Other works bearing Dean's imprint: Dean's blog article - Agile Transformation Is A Journey Dean's course offerings - Disciplined Agile Scrum Master Training podcast music supplied by Epidemic Sound featured track: The Last Guardians by Coma Svensson --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/quokka-cast/support

Announcement: Do register for the Agile Coach conference (30 March 2022) at www.gladwellacademy.com/events. Theme: ‘Changing Times Require Agile Minds'. Hosted by Gladwell Academy with a dynamic line up of speakers (amongst whom I'm honoured to be counted), it promises to be an exciting event for networking, learning and sharing experiences. For more information and the opportunity to grab an Early Bird price, go to www.gladwellacademy.com/events. Bio: Renate Cremer is a trainer at Gladwell Academy. Renate's interest in learning and growth is rooted in her background as a labour and organisation psychologist. She specialised in Training & Development and has been actively involved in innovating HR processes as an HR Business Partner for companies operating globally. Her professional background, along with a strong empathetic nature, gives Renate a wealth of knowledge about human interaction & behaviour, complex organisational structures and corporate environments. She thrives on helping individuals and groups to carve out learning paths in their professional trajectory. Renate is an Associate Certified Coach (ACC), issued by the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and a certified Scaled Agile Program Consultant (SPC). In addition, she is authorized to teach, facilitate and examine for Agile Scrum Foundation, Professional Product Owner (PSP01), Professional Scrum Master (PSM1) of Scrum.org and is DISC certified. Renate is an authorised instructor for ICAgile. Renate believes in continuously exploring our potential and 'a life full of learning'.   Social Media/ Website: Renate Cremer LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/renatecremer/ Gladwell Academy Agile Coach Conference (March 2022). Theme ‘Changing Times Require Agile Minds' https://www.gladwellacademy.com/events Books: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0141033576 EQ, Daniel Goleman https://www.bol.com/nl/p/emotional-intelligence/1001004002776713/?bltgh=rj36wwi4m4AvAjRuKW5PDA.2_18.22.ProductImage Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgement by Daniel Khaneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08LCZFJZ2/ The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do and How to Change by Charles Duhigg https://www.amazon.co.uk/Power-Habit-Why-What-Change/dp/1847946240 Atomic Habits by James Clear https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01N5AX61W/ Empathy: Why It Matters and How to Get It by Roman Krznaric https://www.amazon.co.uk/Empathy-Why-Matters-How-Get-ebook/dp/B00FAXJJHM/ Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip & Dan Heath https://www.amazon.co.uk/Switch-change-things-when-hard/dp/1847940323/ Transcript: Ula Ojiaku: Hello everyone! My guest today is Renate Cremer - an Agile Coach and Trainer with Gladwell academy. Prior to becoming an agile coach, she trained and practiced as a labour & organisation psychologist. Amongst her multiple qualifications, she is a certified SPC (Scaled Agile Program Consultant) and an Associate Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation (ICF). She is also the chairwoman of the Agile Coach Conference – an annual event for coaches and leaders in agile teams and organisations. I had lots of ‘ah-ha!' moments recording this episode with Renate. We talked about what the Agile Coach does for a team and the wider organisation; explored some proven effective coaching techniques that have worked for Renate and many other interesting topics. Without further ado, my conversation with Renate. Thanks for listening and watching! Ula Ojiaku: Thank you so much Renate, for making the time for this conversation. Renate Cremer: Yeah. Thanks for inviting me. Ula Ojiaku: Great. My pleasure. Now, could you tell us a bit about how you ended up where you are currently right now, Renate? Renate Cremer:  Yeah, sure. So, I'm currently working as an Agile Coach and an Agile Trainer in a more or less consulting firm. So, what we do is we broadcast the Agile mindset, and then see where there might be any opportunities for either individuals or teams or whole organizations to go in a transformation. And in that perspective, I'm coaching teams. So, like more operational on a team level, and it's about thinking on longer term perspective. And then your question was, how did you get there? So, this was something that wasn't my idea in the beginning. So, I was like, when I was a kid, I wouldn't be thinking like, ‘I'm going to be an agile coach, for like, …' Ula Ojiaku: We didn't know what that was. I didn't know what that title was. Renate Cremer: It didn't even exist, maybe? I don't know. agility did. But um, no, I am coming from a family, which has really engaged in people and human behaviour and how we all relate and the community thinking and building and both of my parents are psychologists. So, I always thought I will never ever study psychology, because the only thing we will talk about is like, what happens when we do such a thing or how do people react or what's productive, was kind of productive? And there I ended up studying psychology in the end. Ula Ojiaku:  Interesting. And do you have any regrets for going the path, going down that path? Renate Cremer:  Well, the funny thing is, it's interesting if you say this, because even as a psychology student, I went for the labour and organization. So, it's really more on teams and on work motivation and on the workplace. Because obviously, our workplace has been changing tremendously in the last decades. And I never thought it I'm like, as a psychologist would end up in like these more organizational structures. But then the path has now been shaping just through coincidences and interested in team dynamics. And now I'm really glad that I'm here. And the funny thing is never anticipated on it happening like this. Ula Ojiaku:  So, how did that bridge you know, when you went into the, you studied psychology, and then you were, you specialize in, in the psychology of organizations, if I may put it that way, how did you get end up being an agile coach and trainer? Renate Cremer:  This basically came for you one of my friends. So, I was at that moment in a position where I was mentoring or maybe supporting team managers. So, they were facing some struggles with their team, and how could they optimize to high performance. And my friend told me, hey, this is interesting, because what you're doing links directly to a lot of the practices we see in agility or in Scrum, even. Only you name it differently, you're talking about personality styles, or resistance or conflict behaviour. Well, in Scrum, we use a structure. And we follow a cadence of the structure in order to resolve all the issues that you're thinking about as well. But we, there's a little bit of a gap. So, this like, I thought that in agility, we don't talk about that undercurrent, the softer side. And in psychology, we don't talk about the frameworks and the structures so those could be bridged really nicely. Ula Ojiaku:  Interesting and actually both are complementary because you can't have one without the other. But you need the hard, will I say data and facts but you also need the you know, the softer side because not everything is encompassed in data or framework and you have to be able to adapt to contexts. If it were to be a computer, you know, you could put in a program and you get the same thing out consistently. But when it's humans never, you can never have the same outcome for with two things never. Renate Cremer: And that makes it fun as well, right? Ula Ojiaku: It makes it fun and yeah, and that's what (why) you know, they say variety is the spice of life. So, what would you say then or who would you say is an agile Coach in your definition? Renate Cremer:  In my definition, interestingly, you specified like that, I would say that what I try to be as an agile Coach is the go-to person for either any, like, impediments that members or roles or organizations face and that you're going to think along with the person or the team in order to strive for a better next step. And obviously, try to make it small and incremental on top of that, because it's not only about receiving questions, but on top of that, I think a very, very crucial role of an agile Coach is being the person that's able to zoom out. And looking to get a perspective, (the Agile Coach is) there to take the time to observe what's going on, and there to reflect on (what's happening in order to identify), hey, this is what's happening. In out of (that is, based on one's) experiences, or like knowledge or theories, we know that it (the situation) can be improved. So, let's prompt (come up with) a new idea (for solving problem) and then set (up) a pilot or an experiment (to see if this works). Ula Ojiaku:  Now, that's an interesting concept. And something that jumped out to me, as you were speaking, is that you know, as an Agile Coach, you zoom out… So you're looking at the big picture, not just focusing on what's happening at that time, point in time. So, would you say that it's helps for the Agile Coach to kind of be a bit removed from… you know, what's happening as a kind of a third party, but still part of the team? Renate Cremer:  I think that's a nice way to phrase it. You definitely want to build on creating this trust. And this is a trustworthy relationship with psychological safety. So, it is a connection, but then still, indeed, on a little bit of on the side, because you're not involved in the product or the solution that the team is working on, but on the process. So, you are attached and (yet) not attached. Ula Ojiaku:  Yeah. In a way that's a good thing to have, cos you wouldn't be as… you'll be a bit detached from the happenings and might be, hopefully a bit more objective about what's happening instead of being too emotionally attached to the outcome of conversations, for example. So, apart from because you mentioned, you know, observing, helping the teams to, you know, look at their processes, and hopefully, you know, work towards getting better outcomes. Now, what else, what other roles could an Agile Coach play? Renate Cremer:  It's interesting (thing) is that it's very diverse in the perspective of ‘are you an internal agile coach, or external?' So you can really go from operational to tactical to strategic decisions or application of what you're doing. So, in a kickstart of a new transformation, you would be very operational, teaching about the agile mindset. So, you share the (Agile) manifesto and the principles behind it, the values that we know like respect and transparency and openness and such, and really advocating why this can be relevant, then we can address the phrase of you better be agile than just do agile or… with Scrum, it's the same, because otherwise you're just missing your goals of coming to high performance. Yeah! So, that would be like, like very operational, but also on road mapping in where do we see an organization, like moving towards? Or how can we optimize the time to market or new markets to reach for customers? This could also be in collaboration with an Agile Coach. Ula Ojiaku:  Yes. So, what about, you know, the framework proposed by Lyssa Adkins, which you also taught us during the IC Agile Coach course? Because I was your student on that course. And I really found it very valuable. So, I mean, in her framework, she was also suggesting - you've already mentioned the part of a teacher. There's also facilitator, maybe technical expertise or business expertise and all that. What's your view on that (i.e. Lyssa Adkins') framework and guidance? Renate Cremer:  It's a beautiful framework to explore, your competences also your background and optimizing your skill. So, Lyssa Adkins is talking about the process side; you want to facilitate the Agile process moving further. This would be… like, with your detachment you've spoken about before, you're next to the team. I think you walk the path together (with the team). And then like the team executed, the organization executes, but you're like facilitating it to be happening. And on the same process side, you also mentioned mentoring. This is where you bring in your experience that you have been gaining with other assignments or maybe at other departments in the organization. And you mention okay, this is a question that has been raised, like, for example, how to move forward with a team that has… ermmm.. too little time and therefore cannot execute on Scrum because it will become (an) overhead. And then from your experience, you're going to share some ideas. That's on the process side. And on the other side, content wise, which is what we just touched upon with teaching. It's also important to share and advocate the knowledge of the agile reasoning and mindset and this - the teaching, it would be really transferring knowledge. So, then you're the content owner, you transfer the knowledge. Yeah. And on the coaching side, (even though) you have the answers yourself – of course the coachee has the answers herself. You're just asking questions to bring that further (that is, draw them out). Yeah. So that's the four competencies from our framework. Ula Ojiaku:  Thanks for going through those, Renate. You know, when I mention the word ‘coach', most people you know, tend to… their minds tend to go to the sporting context. And sometimes I've had to resort to explaining my role as an Agile Coach in that context because that's something they can identify with. And I usually tell them, ‘you know what? The coach might not be the best player at that sport, but because they have that – to use your words – they're able to zoom out and see the big picture. They are committed to making (enabling) the players to play their best game. And to equip them to play their best game. The same thing with me as an Agile Coach. I may not know the intricacies of your role as well as you do – and that's ok. The key thing is I'm here to help you to play your best game and to incrementally get better over time. Now, what's your view on this perspective? Are there any parallels between, you know, the role of an Agile Coach and a coach in the sporting arena? Renate Cremer:  Yeah, yeah, I love the way how you, you explain this just now as well, because there, there are definitely parallels and as a sports coach, you will help the team in order to come to that high performing, I love the word high performing, because we wanted to have the same in the workplace once optimization of all these individuals that are all totally different, that have their own story to tell that communicate and behave in their own way. And how can we, yeah, be undecide? Indeed, with us, and then and not being like a content owner, but you're more process owner, so to push them forward? And to be some sort of like, what would you like to call as well as servant leader, so it's not about you, it's about the group. And it's about the transformation there and the transformation goals, they set themselves. So, if the parallel works, and it's, it's a proper way to explain, and definitely that works, because maybe previously, we have been thinking about managers in a traditional form, which are maybe more of the expert, which tell you what to do. And we're nowhere like that, we really want to see like the you, you know, all the access to expertise, and you have the expertise and you know, about all the like relevant information with regards to the solution you're heading towards, and a coach is just there to make that more smooth. Ula Ojiaku:  Great response. Now, from your perspective, on your experience, what are some of the effective coaching techniques that have worked for you? Renate Cremer:  Yeah. Yeah, interesting. This is something that a lot of coaches are like, exploring well, what has impact? And how do we move this forward? Because there's so much to do, and what will be our first step. So, what I love to do, just with any new assignment or like team is just first explore the context as it is now. So, setting interviews with each thing, every one of the team, and the people surrounding the team, or the organization like the most relevant stakeholders, and just assess, where are we at, what do we really, really see that is that helps us to move further and what are like, blocking issues? And if you assess all these blocking issues, then that's your first step in towards making your roadmap for new interventions. And then very targeted, very, very specific, it's about active listening and asking powerful questions like, what makes your work valuable for you? What provides you energy? What's your energy drainer? Like these are the questions that sometimes, people are not even used to, like responding to or getting asked. Ula Ojiaku:  So, what makes a powerful question powerful? Renate Cremer:  If there's a silence like this… so this is what we have powerful question. If it's a question, I would say that brings reflection on where we're at now, but what would I actually want? And then the next step would be how to get there. Ula Ojiaku:  Great, so powerful question makes the receiver of the question reflect on where they are now, where they want to be moving forward and also how to get there? Renate Cremer:  Yeah. Oh, and you need multiple powerful questions in order to address all of these but indeed, this is what we're trying to achieve here. Ula Ojiaku:  Yes, in the coaching process. So, what do you say for every coaching session that you do and do you always like sets targets for the conversation in terms of expected outputs and outcomes? Or do you sometimes have, you know, like, well, I say like free form conversations which with no set agenda? Renate Cremer:  Well, in even if you have an informal conversation, it's very, very helpful to think and think yourself of what do I want to get out of it? What should the other person get out of this, but also just address it? So, just before this conversation, we had a coaching conversation, which was about an hour or a little less than that, I would always start with, obviously, how are you? And then what's going on, but what would make this conversation impactful for you? Because our time is spare (precious), and if, like in informal conversations are important, so you do need to, like, have icebreakers and connect to each other. But I would always want to know, like, what's in (on) your mind? What do you want to talk about? Well, where are we heading towards? Ula Ojiaku:  Yeah. So that you're able to evaluate at the end of the conversation, you know, was it really successful or not? Renate Cremer:  This is, this is indeed one of the more important things and on top of that, also to make sure that we don't go into assumptions because there's like, our, brain is full of feeling… like continuously filling gaps. So, we continuously go and jump into assumptions and we anticipate on what the other person most likely wants to do but without checking, we never know. Ula Ojiaku:  True. And the thing is, we see the world from our worldview, which is coloured by our individual experiences and what we've been taught. And for each person, even if we're from the same family, sometimes, we still tend to have like different worldviews, because we have our personalities and all that. So, I really like the fact that you pointed out, you know, you don't want people to base, to kind of impose their assumptions - unstated assumptions especially - in a conversation. Now, you are also hugely into the you know, emotional quotient and leadership. Could you tell us about this? Renate Cremer: Yeah. So, this actually originated again, back to my studies, when I did some research in conflict resolution, and within a manager or leader in how to deal with relational conflict and task conflict, and this is where my interest it's like, started to happen with regards to KV actually need conflict as well in order to innovate again. So, that triggered me a bit. And then what we noticed is that our leaders that had a higher like EQ how you say it out? Yes, Emotional quotients. They, it was easier for them to adapt towards going from a like disruptive conflict towards a productive conflict because we need to conflict but they need to help us instead of totally block us out. Ula Ojiaku: Yeah. Renate Cremer:  So, it's dependent on the leader in order to, like, tilt the conflict into a new way of behaviour. And I thought that was extremely relevant because we, as a society, focus on IQ, like the intelligence rather than on the emotional quotient. So, how can we have such a focus to that intelligence in IQ, but then EQ is not there? So that's, that's fascinating. Ula Ojiaku:  Yeah, I agree that, you know, for a long time, the focus has been on the IQ, you know, the intelligent quotient how intelligent someone is, and you know, who's admitted to the Mensa, I can't remember what the name of that society is. But life is not just about, you know, one type of intelligence. Can one improve one's EQ and then, if so, how can leaders identify where they are and what to do to improve this? Renate Cremer:  Well, if you find me the answer to the first question, then we're gonna start our own organizations together. Because this is a few, I think, two years ago, I was with one of the one of PO in the training, we were talking about this, and we made a little workshop about emotional intelligence. And then we went into some research and then it stated that you like very like in life that I'm going to frame to now, but on this side of the spectrum, you have people that are totally experts, they know every single detail about one element of whatever technical expertise they're in. And on this side of the spectrum, you have people that are more generalists, and they are very this meta viewing, or they love it and they are about narratives and storytelling. Well, if on this side there, there would be experts, you go for storytelling, and they provide you facts. And we try to link this, because in the brain, you see that it's about bridging from this side of the brain towards the other side and maybe the neurons, would you hire all over the place. So, it's just a different brain structure, which fascinated me and every kind of, it blocked because, if it's a structure in your brain, and it's how are the connections with the neurons are made, then it is trainable. I definitely think it's to train in a certain extent, but I don't have the answer to what extent because maybe, obviously, what you mentioned, so it's sports, maybe you're perfect, you like running and then you have your effort actually, body for running. I don't and that's in our like, how we are like the built the structure of our body. And we can train it obviously, but I will never be as good as in running as you are. And I think this is what we try to what we want to explore with regards to this whole leadership topic. Everybody can set the fundament and that I'm 100% sure of that's just a matter of being aware of the impact of emotional intelligence and intelligence and training yourself in asking the right questions or stopping and doing in the meta viewing and going into system thinking and, and like etc. But the answer to how to assess where you're at, I'm not sure. Ula Ojiaku:  Well, I think it's a homework for myself. Maybe you can feel free to join me if you want to look at that. So, what books would you would you recommend for someone who wants to learn more about these topics? Renate Cremer: All right, great. Great. Yeah. So um, there's definitely Daniel Goleman, which is called, Emotional Intelligence he's really known. So, these books I'm really fascinated about just another one would be the book, Empathy, which is obviously there on the shelf, but just about Agile right now. And then on top of that, with regards to this, the brain structure and how to go around like this flexibility in moving for motivation, styles, behaviour, I like Switch a lot. So, it's very interesting on, like, how does our rational and our cognitive relate to each other and how can we even use to go through it, a transformational journey. Ula Ojiaku:  Yeah, I think Switch is written, was written by the brothers, Chip and Danny I believe, yeah, I have listened to a couple of their books. And yeah, and have you enjoyed that writing style? Sorry to interrupt that, was there any more books you had in mind to share? Renate Cremer:  Yeah, the last one I keep on referring every single time is the Power of Habit and why? Because the principle of the Power of Habit it is so simple. It's, we are all known to go into this habit and it connects us to assumptions and to jumping into conclusions. That's habits because we need that in order to measure that, not getting overwhelmed, or that they're like we can handle everything that happens during the day, knowing at the workplace, what our habits are, and how to move from the one trigger to. Ula Ojiaku: A reaction? Renate Cremer: Yeah, no, not a reaction. But a reward from the trigger to a reward, we can build ourselves new routines. And I think that was really fascinating. Because as a leader, what, also as a Coach, or also as an individual, think about triggers, rewards, and then building new routines in order to go into change behaviour. Ula Ojiaku:  It's almost like, the book, it reminds me of the book, Atomic Habits by I can't, is it James, I can't remember the author. But you know, there was also something about when you want to create positive habits, also kind of associate with it, you know, some sort of reward is almost like the Pavlovian response, where you know, but you know, the experimenter was, he would ring the bell, and feed the dogs. And then at the point in time, where he rang the bell, the dogs were salivating. In the same way, for example, if I want to get into a more, you know, healthy routine, exercising regularly, I could put my you know, place my exercise gear in place, and then maybe reward myself with an episode of my favourites series, you know, for that day, so I'm associating it with at the end of this exercise, I'll get to watch 30 minutes of my favourite series. And at some point, in time, there'll be a positive connection between these beneficial habits, and something that I'm going to get from it as well. Renate Cremer:  Yeah, it looks so similar. And just if we bridge that to our workplace culture of an organization has exactly the same patterns, right? So, how can we use any relevant triggers in order to bring ourselves to our transformational behaviour, because that's what we want to do. Ula Ojiaku:  But it wouldn't mean this is something I could talk about for ages and ages but we don't have the time. Now, but I'll ask you this one last question. Now, once there are meant to be like positive associations, or we should create that those connections between you know, the change or the actions we need to make towards the change and positive rewards that would be associated with them, is it possible that at some point in time, you know, these could be turned into weapons, you know, like a carrot and a stick? And if it's possible, how can we strike the balance survey, you know, we don't go too much into okay saying, okay, we're getting people to conform, or they would just temporarily adapt how they're behaving just because of the reward. They're not doing it, you know, it doesn't get to be a culture or a norm, but it's more like, okay, this is a behaviour, I think leadership would reward and I'll do it as long as it pays. Renate Cremer:  Would you say that you like the context of reward in this extent? How do you, do you see that as a, like a salary or bonus or would we refer reward is more than justice? Ula Ojiaku:  It could be anything. I mean, because for different people that vary, I mean, and research has proven that there is an extent to which you improve someone's salary, then it stops being of any consequence at all. So, it now goes into the back to Simon Sinek's… who was it that wrote (the book)…? But yeah, so there is a limit to what you know, so in a bonus, or salary could do, it does to an extent, improve people's performance, but at a point in time, it stops the matter. So, reward could be anything. Renate Cremer:  Right. And yeah, so I agree with you. There, like there's been like the intrinsic or extrinsic kind of reward, right? And if we can find a way to connect to everybody's intrinsic rewards, then I think it's really about something doing for yourself, rather than because leadership wants to. Ula Ojiaku:  Now, that's a great answer. Thanks, Renate. So, thanks for sharing, you know, some book recommendations with us. These will be in the show notes. Now, would there be anything else you'd like the audience to know about? Renate Cremer:  Right. Yeah. So, what's interesting, what we see happening in like the function of being an agile coach is that we really see a need for communities. And people are trying to find each other talking about what we have been talking about today as well, what is our techniques, but also what is our perspective, which way are we heading us like a community of coaching and an ambassador of the Agile Movement? And therefore, at Gladwell Academy, where I'm working, we introduced a conference, which is the Agile Coaching Conference. And we're heading towards the new edition on the second edition. And it would be really great to just to spread the word, because there aren't going to have like lovely speakers like yourself as well. So, glad that you can join us. Ula Ojiaku: My pleasure. Renate Cremer: Yeah. And I think it's a great start to sharing all our knowledge and ideas, because this is something we can never do alone and we need each other. Ula Ojiaku:  Definitely. And it is an exciting, it promises to be an exciting event. So, could you clarify, is it going to be in-person or virtual events? Renate Cremer:  Right? Yeah. So obviously, we don't know exactly what's going to happen. But at this moment, we anticipate an event in Amsterdam, obviously, which speakers locally but also virtually connecting to arts with breakout so that we go into small workshops with keynotes etc. If by things might change, and obviously we go 100% remote, which we did in the previous year, as well. Ula Ojiaku:  Okay, and where can the audience find out more about the Agile Coaching Conference, as well as how can they reach you? Renate Cremer:  Right? Yeah, so if there's any interest into the gladwellacademy.com website, this is where we indeed find both are efficient on transformation, the coaching and the training itself and also a direct link to events and then it says the Agile Coach Conference. So, this is the best way to reach out. Ula Ojiaku:  Okay. And what about you personally? Are you on social media, do you, welcome people getting in touch with you? Renate Cremer: Yeah, definitely on their LinkedIn, it's an open account. So, Renate Cremer and then you find me for Gladwell, always very happy to connect and also to share some ideas for it and messages. Okay, Ula Ojiaku:  Thank you so much Renate for sharing these details, we will put them in the show notes for the audience to access. Now, before we round up, do you have any final words for the audience to close this out? Renate Cremer:  Definitely, definitely. I'm so glad that these sorts of conversations are happening because this is the only way to start talking about like, what are we trying to make happen? How do we support each other, as Agile Ambassadors and, and just learning from each other is as in the ideal mindset? So, keep on connecting all the dots and trying to find how can we best work together. Ula Ojiaku:  Great words of wisdom Renate. Thank you so much for sharing your vast knowledge and experience with us today. Renate Cremer: Thank you, Ula. Ula Ojiaku: My pleasure! That's all we have for now. Thanks for listening. If you liked this show, do subscribe at www.agileinnovationleaders.com. Also share with friends and leave a review. This would help others find the show. I'd also love to hear from you, so please drop me an email at ula@agileinnovationleaders.com. Till next time, take care and God bless!

Here's a wrap-up of 5&5 about values. Specifically, how to use your values to make confident decisions, lever up to your next level and chart your path to fulfillment at work. In this 5&5, Lyssa Adkins offers you 5 ways to use your values to thrive in the modern world of work.

Lyssa Adkins is an Agile and Executive Team Coach and author of Coaching Agile Teams. Check out the full show notes at TheAgileWire.com YouTube: https://youtu.be/l31m45IV1hI