Scripture-based Agile Coaching – Working Enthusiastically

I believe in God. I believe in the gift of salvation given to me through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe God has a purpose for me in my work. He has equipped me with the abilities and skills to do well in my role as an Agile Coach. Still, I find myself struggling daily to keep on working enthusiastically.

Being an Agile Coach is a thankless job. You will not do well as a coach if what you seek is recognition. Our work is the background to the success and accomplishments of the team which is the foreground on spotlight. It is a challenge to quantify and qualify the work being done by a coach. Most of the time the work of the coach is “hidden”.

I have the same struggle with writing on this blog. I can only guess at the impact I am having by sharing my thoughts here on my blog.

The Bible offers numerous verses for motivation so you can keep on working enthusiastically. Here’s one of them:

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.

Colossians 3:23 (NIV)

I take heart that at the end of it all, as long as I do my best to use the talents, skills and gifts that God has given me, I will receive the greatest recognition of all time. I will hear God say: “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”

The Working Genius Assessment

My long-time mentor and friend Lynn Rogala introduced me to the Working Genius Assessment. It is a model created by Patrick Lencioni, author of the book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. The assessment gives you insight about your working genius types and help you understand what activities give you joy and fulfillment. The model also tells you about your weaknesses and what drains your energy or frustrates you.

When you share your Working Genius Assessment results with the people you work with, and they share their results with you, you get more value from the assessment. The model is designed to help people learn how to work better with one another. The types of Working Geniuses represents the different activities done by teams to accomplish an objective, from start to finish.

I have the Woking Geniuses of Galvanizing and Tenacity.

• Galvanizing – The natural gift of rallying, inspiring and organizing others to take action.
• Tenacity – The natural gift of pushing projects or tasks to completion to achieve results.

At work I have earned the reputation of being the “Jiminy Cricket” of the organization, making sure we are staying true to our objectives and following through with what we said we are going to do. Other times people say I am a trickster and trouble-maker, like Loki, asking tough questions or making trouble to get people to do something or rally them to new ways of doing work.

You can learn more about the model here – https://www.workinggenius.com.

If you are wanting to take the assessment, Lynn is a Certified Working Genius Assessment Facilitator and you can book an appointment with her using this link. If you want to know more about Lynn, here is her LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynnrogala/. Please note that I am not getting any commission for this. I am putting my Working Genius of Galvanizing in action and just sharing something I have found to be helpful.

Passionate Product Leadership

Last July I attended Jeff Patton’s Passionate Product Leadership Workshop. It was a live online training course which ran for 4 days and each session was 4 hours long. Zoom and Mural were used for the workshop. It as an amazing, superb learning experience! Jeff is an excellent teacher. You can read more about him here: from this page.

I was presented with the opportunity to take this course and at first I was hesitant to take it. I was thinking how this will help me become a better Agile Coach. Fortunately, I have a great mentor, Daniel my boss, who reminded me of my aspiration to be an “enterprise level” coach. And so I took the course and I learned how to help my company be better in the area of Product Leadership. I engaged more with the Product Managers and shared what I have learned to everyone in the company: from Development Teams to our Marketing Team and to the Customer Success department as well

Key Takeaways from the Workshop

There are three important questions that everyone involved in product development should be asking at every step of the process:

• Is it valuable?
• Is it feasible?
• Is it usable?

Anytime you do not have a satisfactory answer to any of these questions, you should be thinking and discussing a change in your plans. Anytime your team spends significant time arguing about any of these questions, you should pause and rethink your strategy.

The answers to these questions come from different perspectives on the product. This leads to the next key takeaway, it is good to have a triad of leaders in product development. The triad consists of: a leader on the business side of product management, a technology leader, and a user experience leader. Actually it doesn’t have to be a trio of leaders, this could take form as a “core product team” consisting of people who collaborate to make decisions.

To make smart decisions, the Core Product Team needs all the valuable inputs it can use. Another key takeaway is, everyone contributes what they can to the product development process. Silos should be broken down and collaboration among people from different departments should be encouraged. Product Managers should not lock themselves in a room while they “design the product and write specifications”. Development teams should not just wait to be handed requirements before they contribute to the product.

More to come…

I have more learnings to share and I will do so in other posts. I am grateful to have attended Jeff Patton’s workshop and I am eagerly sharing and applying what I have learned. Without a doubt, the knowledge and wisdom I have gained is helping me become a better Agile Coach.

Scripture-based Agile Coaching: Staying Out Of Arguments

A few years into my professional career, I was a Software Developer back then, I was a hot-tempered fool who easily got into arguments. I was proud of my accomplishments and I felt that I always had the right thing to say. I felt that I always had something to contribute, something important to say.

Fortunately, through the years and through many humbling experiences, I have gained wisdom and self-control. Many Bible verses have helped me learn and relearn this lesson of having more restraint and not getting into pointless arguments. This verse is one I have read recently:

Any fool can start arguments; the honorable thing is to stay out of them.

Proverbs 20:3

One main reason I easily got into arguments, is because I was in a hurry to express my point of view. I hastily assume that I understand what I am hearing and quickly form my response. And most of the time I ended up having the wrong understanding and being a fool. To grow out of this behavior I have taken to heart one of the habits of effective people as defined by Steven Covey: “Seek first to understand, and then be understood.”

This change helped me grow to become a better Agile Coach. I can form healthy working relationships with my colleagues. These relationships are based on trust, respect, and honesty, and not on position nor power. I have found my influence growing, allowing me to do my best to help people do their best.

Random Agile Thought – The Ideal Team Player

This was shared by my boss, Daniel: according to Patrick Lencioni, the ideal team player has three characteristics:

• Humble (does not think less of self; think of self less)
• Hungry (aggressively pursues goals)
• Smart (emotionally smart, in interactions with others)

I like it! 😁 I have always looked up to people who has these three traits. I have always enjoyed working with them.

A growth mindset requires a humble attitude. You must be open to learning. You acknowledge that you do not know everything and you accept help from others. This does not mean you are not confident with your skills or knowledge; rather, you accept that in a team, you can do more by working with others.

Passion and drive are important motivators for successful individuals. They also bring this with them when they join teams and so this directly influences the success of teams.

It is important to be intelligent and skilled. It is equally important not to be a jerk if you are in a team. Respect, trust, openness, empathy, and kindness all propel a team forward to success. So yes, being emotionally smart is an important characteristic.

I hope this random agile thought helps you and your team be more Agile. 😊

Scripture-based Agile Coaching – Kind Words

As an Agile Coach, my success at work hinges on the relationships I establish with my colleagues. As a Christian, I have found many verses in the book of Proverbs that guide me as I work on growing my work relationships. Here is one of those verses:

A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

Proverbs 15:1

Over the years, I have made many mistakes in the way I express myself at work. One main reason for these mistakes is, I did not take enough time to think about what I want to say. And so I try to learn and discover better ways of communicating with my workmates. More and more I find myself asking questions on how I can say something better, before speaking out. Here are some of the questions I ask myself:

• How can I say this in a gentler, kinder way?
• Do I have a good understanding of the context?
• How is the person (sometimes, the team) I am talking to feeling right now?
• Have I sorted out my own feelings? Do I have a good handle on my emotions?
• What words can I use to better express myself?
• Can I control my tone and speak in a gentle manner?
• Do I have to say anything at all? What value can I contribute if I speak my mind?
• What is my goal for speaking out? Will it help the person (team)?

One of the key responsibilities of Agile Coaches is giving feedback. And it becomes a real challenge when you discuss something that did not go well. Spending more time on preparing for conversations like this really helps.

My wife recently reflected on this verse as well, when she was dealing with a customer service issue. My boss recently shared an article with me about a study which shows that team collaboration can suffer greatly from one person being insensitive. So I have been thinking about this verse. Keeping this in mind helped me in being a better Agile Coach.

Random Agile Thoughts – Asking Powerful Questions

A key skill that is critical to the success of an Agile Coach is the skill of asking powerful questions. I have written about powerful questions before, in this post. Sometimes the coach can become very good in asking questions that the skill becomes a double-edged sword. Sometimes useful, sometimes dangerous.

One common feedback I get from team members I work with is that I am really good in asking questions that bring out valuable discussions for the team.

The risk here is that the team may become dependent on me asking questions they want to get asked. This could block them from practicing their leadership and critical thinking. They could just wait on me to ask the questions that they want to get asked.

The challenge for the Agile Coach is straddling that thin line between the responsibility to ask the team powerful questions and giving the team space and opportunities to grow by not asking and letting them ask the questions themselves. I think it is every coach’s dream that the team will become so good that it doesn’t need a coach.

I hope this random agile thought helps you to be more Agile. 😊

Scripture-based Agile Coaching – Quick to Listen, Slow to Speak

I am a Christian. I believe in God. I believe God sent Jesus to save us from death for our sins, and give us the gift of eternal life. I believe in the Bible and I study it. I have found that there are a lot of Bible verses that speak to me when I think about my work as an Agile Coach. Here is one of them:

Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry.

James 1:19 New Living Translation

A great Agile Coach should be a very good listener. Through the years I have found myself listening more and speaking less. I do my best to get a good understanding of situations I encounter by listening intently to what others have to say. I make sure to do this first before I speak. This gives me time to carefully think about what I am going to say.

This has been a quite a struggle for me. I am an expressive person with an extroverted personality. I can also be very impatient. In my earlier days as a Scrum Master, I was too eager to speak my mind. I dominated discussions and did not leave space for my colleagues to contribute. I made mistakes, a lot. I have embarrassed myself a number of times because of poorly thought out speech.

In time, I have learned to restrain myself. I improved my self-control and learned to be comfortable with silence in meetings, conversations or discussions. I valued listening more and more. One of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is “Seek first to understand and then be understood.” I always keep this in mind along with this verse from the Book of James. This helped me in becoming a better Agile Coach.

Random Agile Thoughts – Completing a Goal

In one of the conversations we (me and my fellow Agile Coach) have with my boss, we were given this scenario:

The team was not able to complete a goal it has set. The team worked hard on the target, but in the end failed to meet the criteria required for goal completion.

And we were asked this question: “What will you say to the team?”

My answer is this:

I would say to the team that we have failed to complete the goal we have set for ourselves. We acknowledge the hard work we put into this effort and we appreciate the learnings we have gained. I would encourage the team to think about why we were not able to complete the goal. This reflection will help the team grow and become better.

I think the completion of the goal is more important than the effort put into completing the goal. When you set a goal, you set it because you are after the value you will gain from it. You don’t set a goal just to work on the goal. You don’t set a target just so you can try to hit it. You set a target because you want to hit it.

I am not discounting the effort and the learnings you gain from doing the work to meet a goal. This all very important. I am just saying that you do not lose sight of the bottomline – you have to complete the goal.

I hope this random thought helps you to be more Agile. 😊

Random Agile Thoughts – Weekly Commitment Meetings

At the start of every week, our team comes together to have what we call, “Monday Commitment Meetings“. We look at our Kanban board and have a discussion on what we think we can get done for the week. From this discussion we come up with a list of cards that we commit to finishing by the end of the week. We have the understanding that the commitment we make is that we will do our best to get these cards done. At the end of the week, we review what we have accomplished.

It’s quite natural for individuals to have hesitations and concerns in making commitments, especially at work, where not being able to fulfill commitments can get you in trouble. Here are two concerns I often hear from team members:

1. There are two many variables and unknowns, how can we confidently commit to getting things done? We don’t want to make commitments if we don’t know what will happen during the week.
2. I don’t like this pressure of having a list to get done, even if I know I’m the only one putting pressure on myself.

The following insights are what I usually share to respond to these concerns:

• The goal for discussing about commitments is to have a target which the team will try to achieve. A unifying goal guiding the team’s activities during the week.
• A basketball team still aims to win every game even though there are many variables at play and many uncertainties.
• It is natural to feel pressure. The pressure is good if it motivates you to do your best.
• It is ok to fail, to make a mistake. In fact, we learn more when we make a mistake.

I hope this random thought helps you to be more Agile. 😊