Agile Coaches' Corner

Tune in to learn what these values are, why they are so critical to the success of Scrum teams, and how to apply these values. Sam also gives some examples of where he’s seen the values be really present (and, where they haven’t) in a Scrum team and the effect that it has on the organization overall

This week, Dan Neumann is joined by Joseph Carella — a Senior Instructor and Executive Coach of the Eckerd College Leadership Development Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida. Joseph is also a practicing psychologist and Consulting Psychologist for the Orlando Magic NBA Team and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, as well as the Senior Consultant for AvoLead, and the Principal Owner for Carella & Associates.

 

In this episode, Dan and Joseph discuss the ways that an effective leader coaches. Joseph highlights the differences between professional coaching and executive coaching, real-life examples from his work, what it means to hold somebody accountable, how good leaders can set up a positive environment to get the most out of their team, and how to provide corrective feedback. Joseph also provides his insights around both positive and corrective reinforcement through coaching and when you should hold yourself accountable as a leader when it comes to the “underperformers” on your team.

 

Key Takeaways

What good leaders should do (and how they can hold their team accountable):

Set the expectations for performance

Provide instruction, guidance, and support

Positively enforce correct performance

Let the person know immediately when they’re not performing up to par and provide corrective actions

Help your team with skill acquisitions

Joseph’s insights around both positive and corrective reinforcement through coaching:

Hold yourself accountable as a leader for creating an environment for your whole team to perform at their best

Review your ideas around the traits you consider to be that of an underperformer (i.e. are they really an underperformer or are they just not matching your expectations?)

Consider how you’re interacting with an “underperformer” — are you only identifying their weaknesses thus creating a demotivating environment?

As a leader, find ways to understand your people and engage with them

If there is truly a performance gap, identify the behaviors that are problematic and the impact that they have on the task at hand, and then allow that person to tell their story, and afterward ask how they’re going to effect this change

 

Mentioned in this Episode:

Joseph Carella’s Bio

Eckerd College Leadership Development Institute

AvoLead

Carella & Associates

Agile Coaches’ Corner Ep. 25: “Talking Feedback with Christy Erbeck”

Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler

Agile Coaches’ Corner Ep. 23: “Scrum and Empirical Process Control with Sam Falco” Adapt Framework SBI Model

Painless Performance Conversations: A Practical Approach to Critical Day-to-Day Workplace Discussions, by Marnie E. Green

Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams, by Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister

“Modern Agile,” by Joshua Kerievsky

The Three Christs of Ypsilanti, by Milton Rokeach

 

Joseph Carella’s Book Picks:

Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't, by Simon Sinek

Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World, by General Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman, and Chris Fussell

The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance, by Steven Kotler

 

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 [email protected] or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

This week, Dan Neumann is joined by Joseph Carella — a Senior Instructor and Executive Coach of the Eckerd College Leadership Development Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida. Joseph is also a practicing psychologist and Consulting Psychologist for the Orlando Magic NBA Team and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, as well as the Senior Consultant for AvoLead, and the Principal Owner for Carella & Associates

In this episode, your host, Dan Neumann, is joined by a colleague at AgileThought, Christy Erbeck! Christy is a Principal Transformation Consultant at AgileThought with over 25 years of experience in domestic and international consulting, training, and coaching, working in both software development and non-product-focused environments, including manufacturing (discrete and process), distribution, and sales and marketing.

 

Today, they’re going to be talking about the topic of feedback. They discuss the importance of giving and receiving feedback, feedback fallacies, how to practice giving better feedback, how people respond to both poorly-constructed and well-constructed feedback, and how to give great feedback through the SBI model.

Feedback is a big part of what Agile coaches are asked to do. Giving and receiving feedback is critically important and takes a tremendous amount of insight and awareness to both give and receive feedback in a positive way. Tune in to hear all of Christy Erbeck’s key takeaways on the topic of feedback!

 

Key Takeaways

What are some feedback fallacies and challenges to giving and receiving feedback?

The three fallacies from “The Feedback Fallacy” article are: the source of truth, how we learn, and excellence

The idiosyncratic rater effect

Humans are unreliable raters of other humans — we don’t have the capacity to do it well and our egos get in the way

Confirmation bias and recall bias can come in to play

Thinking you know better than the person you’re giving feedback to (which is not the objective truth)

When someone perceives feedback as critical (especially from those who are not qualified in the specific area) they go into fight or flight

When stakes are high or a conversation is emotionally-charged, people often unconsciously tell themselves a story that feeds their immediate (often negative) reaction to hearing feedback

How to give and receive great feedback (and why):

Use the SBI Model  (1. Situation, 2. Behavior, 3. Impact)

Through the SBI model, it becomes easier to frame the feedback in a way that is safe to deliver and receive

Using an SBI model can create psychological safety and gives feedback in a way that minimizes the potential that someone may have a flight or fight reaction to it

Don’t refer to yourself as the expert when giving feedback; instead, focus on the impact it had on you

Instead of looking at outputs look at outcomes

Provide high-priority interrupt feedback (which is critical to reinforcing a positive response)

Direct feedback is good, but don’t be tactless (be honest in an empathic way)

Get feedback on your feedback

 

Mentioned in this Episode:

Christy Erbeck

Agile 2018 Conference in San Diego

Radical Candor, by Kim Scott

SBI Model

Harvard Business Review Magazine

“The Feedback Fallacy,” by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall

Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler

Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts., by Brené Brown

Brené Brown: The Call to Courage (Film, 2019)

Agile Coaches’ Corner Ep. 22: “The Role of Managers in Agile Organizations with Esther Derby”

Joe Carella from Eckerd College

360 Degree Feedback

 

Christy Erbeck’s Book Pick:

Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts., by Brené Brown

 

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 [email protected] or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

In this episode, your host, Dan Neumann, is joined by a colleague at AgileThought, Christy Erbeck! Christy is a Principal Transformation Consultant at AgileThought with over 25 years of experience in domestic and international consulting, training, and coaching, working in both software development and non-product-focused environments, including manufacturing (discrete and process), distribution, and sales and marketing

This week, your host, Dan Neumann, is going solo! He’s going to be talking about Agile assessments, and — using medical terminology — discuss whether it’s a helpful remedy or harmful toxin.

 

If someone is receiving the right medication for the right ailment, it can be absolutely lifesaving. But if you take that same medication and apply it to the wrong circumstance, it can be incredibly detrimental — such as a toxin, poisoning your system. Dan views Agile assessments in a similar way. They can be super helpful tools for organizations that are trying to understand their current state of agility, or, they can potentially be destructive to team safety and employee morale —  essentially becoming weaponized and destructive to teams.

 

Join Dan to explore this topic and learn how to properly leverage Agile assessments in your organization!

 

Key Takeaways

Why organizations look to Agile assessment in the first place:

• To establish a baseline of performance
• To look at which teams are doing (or not doing) well
• To look for areas where help can be applied
• To validate assumptions

The four categories of gathering assessment:

• Self-reporting
• Externally measuring
• Having an expert come in and observe what’s happening in the teams
• Looking at the inner workings

Dan’s tips for a successful assessment:

• Having phases in the assessment and planning with intentionality
• Know your “why”
• Collect data and interpret the results in a collaborative way
• For planning, ask yourself: what do you hope to learn? And what decisions might this enable?
• Look to Agile survey tools for electronic data collection
• Look to people and interactions over processes and tools
• When receiving the assessment, create options for the teams
• Collaborate with the organization being assessed and those doing the assessment to figure out the next steps and how to move forward collectively

Why an assessment may not serve an organization (AKA: the pitfalls):

• Help isn’t always helpful; sometimes teams just need to work through a problem and sometimes the intervention of an outsider is not particularly helpful
• The information is used to evaluate (i.e. ranking teams)
• Jumping to evaluation and looking to reward or punish

How to go about interpreting the results of an assessment collaboratively:

• Use open space technology
• Bring the data
• Share observations
• Ask participants to organize around the data and observations and add their own perspective to what is happening
• Identify patterns and ask the team what they have the energy for turning into action

 

Mentioned in this Episode:

Slideshare Visual

Comparative Agility

Lean Agile Intelligence

 

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 [email protected] or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

This week, your host, Dan Neumann, is going solo! He’s going to be talking about Agile assessments, and — using medical terminology — discuss whether it’s a helpful remedy or harmful toxin

In today’s episode, Dan Neumann is joined by Sam Falco once again! Sam is Dan’s colleague at AgileThought and is an Agile Coach and Certified Scrum Professional with an extensive background leading Agile development teams.

 

In a previous episode, Sam and Dan discussed games and why Scrum works for people from a gaming-standpoint and helps drive engagement. In this episode, they’re discussing empirical process control and how it makes Scrum work from a getting-things-done standpoint!

 

Sam shares some of the lessons he has learned as a Scrum master (both early and later in his career) and gives examples from his work. He also explains the benefits of empirical process control; how transparency is built; how Scrum events support transparency, inspection, and adaptation; and how to inspect and adapt in meaningful, healthy ways.

 

Key Takeaways

What is empirical process control?

A principle that emphasizes the core philosophy of Scrum based on the three main ideas of transparency, inspection, and adaptation

The benefits of empirical process control:

Provides thorough data to help make good decisions

Without it, you’re relying on assumptions

Gives you the ability to inspect each increment of the product every sprint and adapt the product backlog based on the feedback

It builds trust between the Scrum team and stakeholders

Gives transparency in the process

Creates a feedback loop

How transparency is built:

Hold sprint review meetings and daily Scrum meetings

Disclose defects of the state of the product so you can make good decisions about releasing it (or not releasing it)

Create transparency around the technical debt

Be honest about the issues around the product and around the work in the sprint

Where one team has a dependency on another do more effective planning, scaling, and collaboration

Minimize team dependencies when possible (by inspecting, adapting, and understanding/adjusting where the work is flowing)

Clear communication during sprints and be transparent even with “bad news” and issues

 

Mentioned in this Episode:

Sam Falco (LinkedIn)

Empirical Process Control

Agile Coaches’ Corner Ep. 21: “Why Are Games Important to Agile? With Sam Falco”

Agile Coaches’ Corner Ep. 22: “The Role of Managers in Agile Organizations with Esther Derby”

The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, by Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

Lead True: Live Your Values, Build Your People, Inspire Your Community, by Jeff Thompson

Agile Coaches’ Corner Ep. 20: “Dr. Jeff Thompson on Values-Based Leadership”

Gundersen Health System

 

Sam Falco’s Book Pick:

User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product, by Jeff Patton

 

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 [email protected] or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

In today’s episode, Dan Neumann is joined by Sam Falco once again! Sam is Dan’s colleague at AgileThought and is an Agile Coach and Certified Scrum Professional with an extensive background leading Agile development teams

This week, Esther Derby joins the podcast! Esther is an Agile expert and the President of Esther Derby Associates, Inc.

 

Esther started her professional career as a programmer. She realized fairly early that work environments had a huge impact on whether or not someone could be successful. And that even though she was a coder, her real work was in changing the way people worked and supporting them through that process.

 

In 1997, she founded Esther Derby Associates, Inc. and has spent the last twenty-five years helping companies design their environment, culture, and human dynamics for optimum success. She helps teams and management understand what’s working and where there are contradictions that sap productivity and stifle innovation, as well as how best to maximize a team’s capacity for achievement.

 

In this week’s episode, Esther and Dan are discussing managers, teams, and Agile environments. They explore the manager’s side in the Agile, why having a manager is key within an Agile work environment, and what the manager’s role should be.

 

Key Takeaways

Why having a manager is key within an Agile work environment:

If you do not have one, improvement tends to get focused only on the team level and not the overall system

Teams function best within a high degree of bounded autonomy

What the manager’s role is:

The manager’s role is one of looking at the environment and trying to continuously improve it

“It’s not the manager’s job to get people to work hard; it’s to make it possible for people to work.”

The manager’s job is to enable the team to work, and then, to enhance their work environment

To make sure teams have enough contextual knowledge so they can make decent decisions on the front line of the organization

It’s important for the team to:

Bring systemic issues to the manager

Distinguish which decisions they can make without consulting the manager, which decisions they should make with a manager, and which decisions are entirely up to the manager

It is important for the manager to:

Pay attention to the system

Notice problems across the organization

Be supportive

Have conversations with the team on a periodic basis

Build in learning time and a learning budget so the team feels that learning is a part of their job, not in their free time

Challenges Esther has seen with managers within an organization:

Not all managers get along and it may take an effort to get them to all collaborate

When a business gets to a certain size, it becomes difficult to communicate across all the managers of different teams

 

Mentioned in this Episode:

Esther Derby (LinkedIn)

Esther Derby Associates, Inc.

Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great, by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen

Agile Manifesto

Bounded Autonomy

Tim Lister

Tom DeMarco

7 Rules for Positive, Productive Change: Micro Shifts, Macro Results, by Esther Derby

 

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 [email protected] or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!