Posts tagged: agile coaching

The magic wand coaching technique

what to do if you find resistances in adopting new methodologies, approaches or simply accepting new knowledge?
When presenting a new concept or knowledge, it happens, really often indeed, that your interlocutors strive to accept it.
This because it’s actually and objectively difficult to transform any new knowledge into actions, moreover when such a new knowledge challange consolidated old habits.
The interlocutors (attendees to a course? team members? management?), infact, find an unlikely number of problems and alibis to avoid any change, telling you that such kind of things will not work with them, their situation or context don’t allow such a change, they do not have time for that, or any other excuse.
When facing this situation I use some coaching techniques to help the interlocutor to explore that minefield, in order to find alternatives, fresh ideas or solutions.
This, primarily, helps me to understand the underlying rationale, trying to find some fresh and detailed information in order to address and guide the communication with my interlocutor to overtake and avoid any barricade, barrier or impediment.
There are many techniques, in this post I’m going to talk about the ” Magic Wand” technique.
It happens that your interlocutor doesn’t want to change because he thinks that problems are only refferred to other factors: his boss, a colleague, the company, the environment, the aliens, etc.
Sometimes it’s true (the aliens), sometimes not (the remaining individuals).
In these cases I take a marker and launching it to that person, I say that such a marker is indeed a potent magic wand, which will help him to realize any wishes.
Then, I ask him to make wishes and tell to the wand HOW to change the problematic situation just expressed.
Most of the times, the person, asks for something impossible to realize due to lack of power: change the boss’s or colleague’s or management’s mindsets, behavior or approach, change any organization’s policies, culture and so on. But, even in these cases, it happens that some good material to work on, arises: worthwhile suggestions, ideas or considerations.
To help the person be more practical, effective and pragmatic, I introduce the concept of sphere of direct influence: the network of your direct peers/nodes or even indirect peers/nodes (only one level further) with which you are able to operate, communicate and act that is, actually, the only way you can really pursuit any change or goal.
Actually this network starts with the first level (you), goes through your direct peers (second level) and finishes with people connected through your direct peers (third level).
The closer are the peers of your network you have to influence, the better the chance of attaining the objectives.
So the rule in these case is: start from yourself, from where your are, now! And only then, try to influence your peers (directly or indirectly).
Infact, any change coming from the bottom side of an organization pyramid, can be globally instantiated only if working accordingly through such a sphere or network.
This can be accomplished only if we, as individuals, are the first that accept such a change, demonstrating publicly that such a change is in progress and witnessing it by expressing not instrumentally, new behaviors, approaches, methodologies, mindsets.
At this point, the benefits coming from the process of change are visible to everyone, they are under the sun.
Curiously, it happens that the other peers of your network, will start to become interested in such results and start to ask how you have achieved it. At this point, you should start to explain and spread this new knowledge to the others, giving support and, sometimes, a sort of guidance in pursuing the objectives.
That’s enough for this post.
I’m going to talk shortly about the other coaching techniques in some future posts.
Have fun! :)

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categories Advanced Skills, Human Resources, Tools & Techniques | Emiliano Soldi | datetime 17/02/2012 08:50 | comments Comments (0)

Force Field Analysis: an Agile Version

Everytime we learn something new, a practice, a tool or a technique related to our working activity, we naturally try to understand how that knowledge can be ported into our environment. It happens, indeed, that the most challenging things, even if fascinating and powerful, are often discarded with a superficial statement “it will never work with us”.

Everyone of us do not want to change their habits, do not want to leave their “lovely” comfort-zone, we are accustomed to it, it is familiar.
Even if we know that the old way of doing things doesn’t work anymore and we must change it, we want to approach to it smoothly, gradually, it would be better, indeed, if someone else will do it for us.

This happens every time to people that come from a traditional project management environment who are called to face the new agile discipline: most of the time they know very well the benefits of it, what kind of improvement it can bring and furthermore they know that agile is, above all, about changing their mindsets, their habits.

Initially, they make the error of thinking that agile is primarily a matter of using the right techniques and tools; they start to ask about which tool is better to manage the product backlog, which other tool can be used to write and decompose the user stories or, yet, what tool can be used to manage the task board in an electronic way.

Even in these cases, don’t give up!

Continue to explain the value of managing the user stories with index cards (face-to-face communication, direct negotiation, establishing a sense of trust with the customer), furthermore, that attaching and moving the tasks directly on the taskboard, during the daily meeting, is a ceremony, a moment where the team continue to learn about the project, the product, the other team members.
And, again, go on stressing the fact that the product backlog grooming activity is an important one, which must be done together with the product owner: directly, face-to-face.
What is paramount, in my opinion, is that the team and the other stakeholders, should really and honestly understand that agile is mainly a matter of collaboration and short-feedback and that is better to avoid the use of any remote and asynchronous communication tool, except for particular situations (distributed teams, maybe?).

When they realize that doing agile means, primarily, to change theirselves and how they did things so far, lot of doubts raise and even the better, the more detailed and the more honest explanation, is not able to convice them 100%,

That could be the time to use the Force Field Analysis tool, with some little adjustments to make it funnier.

First of all I ask a representative of the team, better if s/he is the most skeptical, to come at the whiteboard.
Then I ask the whole team to think at the agile transition as a journey, navigating the sea by boat (representing SCRUM) where the team is represented by the sail.
Actually what I ask to the member, is to draw the sea, the boat, the sail and to write on the hull of the boat the name of the agile discipline and on the sail the the name of the team.

Now it’s time for the team to elicit what advantages, benefits, strengths, agile embodies, which they can bring to their workplace, identifying them as the airstreams blowing into the sail, able to push the boat from the start to the finish-line.
These air flows shall be written and drawn on the top left area of the whiteboard (sky).

Then, I ask them to list the drawbacks and the weaknesses of implementing agile in their organization.
These are the contrary forces that work under the hull of the boat as marine drifts; those must be reported on the right bottom area of the whiteboard (sea).

 

 

Having this information written on the whiteboard, in front of them, help primarily to find any new advantage or drawback not already written but, more important, allow the team to compare the two groups and really understand how to cope with them.

The final part of the “game” is, to think how to exploit any single strength (opportunity) and for each drawback how to smooth, adjust, avoid or even accept it (risk), in order to let the boat reach the new land of agile where better results are awaiting for them.

Someone could ask: why cannot continue the old way of representing the force field analysis? The one that uses the tabular representation of it?
An explanation is that using metaphores (the journey, the sea, the boat, etc.) help people to better explain their feelings, abstracting from the reality and finally helps the brain in the process of memorization of concepts, emotions and ideas.

Be the the new year, an inspiring one! :) (AJRX49CFX279)

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categories Advanced Skills, Agile PM, Communication, Human Resources, risks, SCRUM | Emiliano Soldi | datetime 30/12/2011 11:09 | comments Comments (1)

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