Walking Their Talk, Sustainability, Inspiration
Robert Galen
Sustainability

I saw this wonderfully courageous and informative post by Sabine Canditt the other day where she wrote about Sustainable Scrum. 

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sustainable-scrum-responsible-choice-sabine-canditt-x0gef

After just completing a The Week program facilitated by the amazing Ann-Marie Kong, it touched my heart.

That said, I wanted to highlight one comment reaction/interaction between Sabine and Erich Bühler 

Erich said—

Thank you for bringing this approach into the world! Scrum does provide an iterative approach for teams to create value, but its scope is limited to the product level and struggles with dynamics across the whole organization for several reasons.
Without updating the underlying business and financial model at a strategic level, Scrum alone cannot transform organization-wide sustainability.

Sustainability
Short-takes, Inspiration
Robert Galen
Sandy’s Take
Sandy’s Take
Short-takes, Personal Thoughts
Robert Galen
The Human Aspects of Agile Coaching
The Human Aspects of Agile Coaching
Coaching, ACGW, Personal Thoughts
Robert Galen
Keys to Building your Coaching Relationships

I talk a lot about the first step in coaching any client (individual, system, team, etc.) is to build a relationship, gain empathy and understanding, and then gain an idea of where/how to help initially. So, do NOT start to coach until you’ve done some relationship-building. 

But what does a coaching relationship, or a professional relationship in general, look like? What are aspects of that? Here are a few things that come to my mind—

  • Making + taking the time.

  • Explaining what you do—what is Agile Coaching.

  • Building some empathy; walking in their shoes; understanding where they are coming from.

  • Meeting them where they are.

  • Listening; reflective listening; building metaphors together.

  • Connecting with their language, not yours.

Keys to Building your Coaching Relationships
Personal Thoughts, Short-takes
Robert Galen
Privilege Awareness

I recently replied to a LinkedIn post by David Pereira. It was a wonderful post, and I applaud David’s boldness and courage in sharing it. 

Here’s a post comment from Stefan Wolpers—

While I agree fully with your personal stance regarding professionalism, David Pereira, some people will shy away, given the current economic climate. Some of the previously aggravated people may seek an opportunity to settle scores.

And here’s my comment—

I love the clarity (No BS) here. Clarity for David and clarity for those who want to work with and who don't want to work with him.
That said, David has the unique privilege that allows him to adopt this clarity. Many don't.

This post is not about David per se. Instead, he inspired me to write it.

Privilege Awareness

CEC

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Finally – Shining a Light on Badass Agile Coaches

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Finally – Shining a Light on Badass Agile Coaches

I’ve been a Scrum Alliance Certified Enterprise Coach (CEC) since 2012. It’s one of two coaching certification levels, the other is Certified Team Coach (CTC), which are sponsored by the Scrum Alliance as part of their guide-level certifications. The other guide level is the Certified Scrum Trainer (CST). 

Over the years, I’ve been frustrated with the Scrum Alliance because they’ve done a mediocre-to-poor job of shining a light on the CEC & CTC coaching communities. As of this writing, there are 140 CEC’s and 237 CTC’s in the world, compared to 277 CST’s.

The Scrum Alliance has always leaned more heavily into supporting the CST’s. My guess is because of the part they play in granting certifications and driving revenue. But that being said, and I’m probably a wee bit biased, I’ve always felt that the coaches are equally as or even more critical to achieving the overarching goals of the Alliance than the CST’s.

I can hear you ask—but Bob, if you’re so frustrated, why have you continued with your CEC certification?

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Agile Coaches need MORE than Coaching Skills

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Agile Coaches need MORE than Coaching Skills

I earned my CEC (Certified Enterprise Coach) certification with the Scrum Alliance in 2012. I’d applied in 2011, so it took me about a year to go through the process at the time. If my memory is right, I believe I was about the 43rd CEC at the time.

I did a search of CEC’s and CTC’s on May 26th and it showed 118 and 156 worldwide respectively. That’s ~300 coaches. The growth of CEC’s over an ~8-year period was ~10/year.

I had been serving in leadership and agile coaching roles for quite a few years prior to that. I’d also been part of a couple of fairly successful agile transformations at the organizational level. So, while I was confident in my coaching capabilities, I was excited to go through the process as a way of validating my journey, experiences, and skills.

Back then, the focus was on the breadth of your stances.