E90: Belonging and Healing Part-2 - Why is belonging important?

Kayanna (00:00):

(Singing).

Tracy (00:00):

Is that what this-

Dr. Dave (00:00):

Hey, hello and welcome to the KnolShare with Dr. Dave Podcast. Hey, this is Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host, and I'm excited to be here with my friend, Tracy. Tracy. We're going to be talking about belonging and why it's important. And so earlier, we talked about putting up an episode per month as we begin to work in our book, Belonging and Healing. So Tracy, Tracy, welcome. What's going on with you?

Tracy (00:45):

Dave, hey. Thank you. Good morning and life is good.

Dr. Dave (00:54):

Look at you. I am in that calm mode, just chill today. I don't know what's up with that, but I wanted to start off with a quote by Angela Maya.

Tracy (01:05):

Oh come on.

Dr. Dave (01:07):

By Maya Angelou.

Tracy (01:08):

Okay.

Dr. Dave (01:10):

And she says, "I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself." So that's her context of belonging. And so, why is belonging important? Why do we care so much about belonging as human beings? What's the deal with that?

Tracy (01:29):

Heck if I know. It's innate, it's something we feel complete, in order to belong somewhere, that makes us feel complete. That makes us feel like we have some kind of anchor, some kind of grounding. It just, to feel like you belong kind of gives you some wholeness, some sense of being, right?

Dr. Dave (

E89: Deliver Value Installment #2: Organization Leaders Want Value-Driven Outcomes

Hello and welcome to the KnolShare with Dr. Dave Podcast.  I am Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host.  For those who have been listening and receiving value from this podcast, I thank you for the support.  If you are new, welcome.

 

The Deliver Value series is a set of topics that will be included in my upcoming book called Deliver Value: Happing contributing people, satisfied customers, and thriving business.    Since the COVID-19 pandemic, I have been struggling to finish this book, so I decided to use a lean-agile approach.  Each month a topic from the book will be released as one of my podcast episodes to create the Deliver Value series.  The second installment of the series is titled “organization leaders want value-driven outcomes”.

 

The goal of agility measures is to keep track of the most value-driven factors to lead business success.  – Pearl Zhu

 

The conversations that I commonly have with organization leaders can be summarized into the desire to 1) maintain and increase gross margin, 2) increase brand loyalty, 3) attract and retain resilient people, 4) practice agility, and 5) leverage risks for exponential gains.  These are the five core practices that leaders can use to help an organization thrive. 

 

1 - Maintain and Increase Gross Margins

 

Gross margin (GM) is the amount of money earned from the sales of products or services.  The higher gross margin value indicates the profitability of a company, which means more money available for investments and a sign of financial health.  To calculate gross margin, you subtract Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) from Net Sales Revenue. Leaders become concerned and frustrated when gross margins are negative because it is a sign that expenses or sales are not performing as planned.  The response is often the proverbial tightening of the belt that leads to layoffs and cost cutting.  However, when gross margin is positive, leaders can use this information to drive strategic decisions that include offering discounts to customers to increase sales and outpace the competition.  Gross margin should not be the only key performance indicator (KPI) that leaders use to determine profitability because not all expenses are included in the calculation.  

 

2 - Increase Brand Loyalty

 

The importance of the pursuit to protect and expand brand loyalty creates an environment that will help create happy customers and a healthy brand, which often leads to recurring revenue streams.  My great grandmother would often tell me “A bird in hand is better than two in the bushes”.  This simply translate from a West Indian colloquial proverb to mean focus on the things you currently have in hand but do not ignore what is possible. The cost to attract new customers can be significantly reduced when a Net Promoter Score (NPS) is high with a value of 9 or 10, and people are singing praises about a product and service to other people in their network. Often referred to as word-of-mouth advertising.  NPS is more than just a score, it represents actual feelings about your company, products, and services.  Buying a new or expensive product is an emotional activity and it creates anxiety about whether the product or service will provide the desired value or meet expectations.  Brand loyalty is not limited to products and services but also applies to individuals delivering value to people and organizations.  Creating brand loyalty as a professional coach and trainer is equally important as the Apple or Amazon brand loyalty.

 

3 - Attract and Retain Resilient People

 

E88: Belonging and Healing Part-1 – Sense Your Belonging Space

Podcast Soundtrack:

Let's talk about it. Let's go deep. We all have something to share, KnolShare with Dr. Dave.

Dr. Dave:

So hello and welcome to the Knolshare with Dr. Dave podcast. This is Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host. I am super excited and pleased to announce the law to renew series of my friend, Tracy Treacy. We're going to be talking about belonging and healing over several episodes, starting with one episode each month. We'll see where we go from there, right? Hey Tracy, what's going on?

Tracy:

Good morning, Dr. Dave, how are you?

Dr. Dave:

That's so formal, we know each other too long to be calling well, you can call me Dr. Dave.

Tracy:

Well, I'm looking at your name on the screen and it says Dr. Dave, so I'm calling you Dr. Dave. Okay, I'll call you Cornelius. What's up, Cornelius, how you doing?

Dr. Dave:

I would rather you call me Dr. Dave. So, you know part of our conversation today, we have a few topics that we're going to go over. And since we're talking about belonging and so the four topics would be sensor space for belonging, we'll probably dig into some generative workspace for belonging, don't fake belonging, and then back to your vision, get some ideas around how we could get there. So what do we want, so let's just jump in and let's talk about the importance of belonging for us human beings, right? I mean, this is something that we need, if we don't have it, we go stir crazy, I guess. Or we go and live in cabins out in the bush.

Tracy:

And some people like to do that, because they belong out there, right, if you're talking about belonging. Yeah. You know I was thinking about that belonging thing and what that means in the society that we live in, and how it's, you got to find your people in order to feel like you belong.

Dr. Dave:

Right.

Tracy:

Right. How do you find your people? And then when you find your people and you show up, do you feel like you're part of the people that you think you want to be a part of? So do you really feel like you belong?

Dr. Dave:

Yeah, that is a very insightful view, right, into those relationships, right, that you're trying to build with these individuals that you're part of. So, oftentimes we're looking in to see, hey, do they help us emotionally, right, do they make us happy or spiritually...

Tracy:

Right.

Dr. Dave:

Or even from a physical context, right, are they helping us physically in terms of us being a part of their, that space, how do we sense that, right? Trying to figure that out.

Tracy:

Yeah, and do they make me happy or do they help me find my own happiness, when even in those groups of belonging, there's so much stuff that needs to be healed within those groups in order to feel like they even belong.

Dr. Dave:

Yeah.

Tracy:

I kind of think the sense of belonging comes back to self. Can I accept who I am and all of my stuff in order to show up authentically in a group that I think are my people, and then feel like I belong? And that was a whole lot, but that's kind of the trajectory, right?

Dr. Dave:

Yeah, because I think of it as self love, self respect, self-healing, right, self-esteem. I mean, it all comes, it starts with us because the sensing is from us into the environment with other people that we connect with, so it starts with us.

Tracy:

Yeah. I like using self-efficacy instead of self-esteem, right.

Dr. Dave:

Sure.

Tracy:

Because self-esteem feels to me more externally driven, because I feel good when people respond to me in a certain kind of way, and it can also be internal,

E87: Deliver Value Part-1 – Definition of Value (Dov)

Hello and welcome to the KnolShare with Dr. Dave Podcast.  I am Dr. Dave Cornelius your host.  For those who have been listening and receiving value from the podcast, I thank you for the support.  If you are new, welcome and I

The Deliver Value series is a set of topics that will be included in my upcoming book called Deliver Value: Happing contributing people, satisfied customers, and thriving business.  As an author our creative juices are not as fluid, and we hit the proverbial writer’s wall.  Since the COVID-19 pandemic, I have been struggling to finish this book, so I decided to use a lean-agile approach.  Each month a topic from the book will be released as one of my podcast episodes to create the Deliver Value series.

 

Let's begin with the Definition of Value (DoV)

The Definition of Value (DoV)

 

If you ask several people what the definition of value is, you will likely receive varying responses.  Let's begin with the dictionary and see what is written about the definition of value in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.  This dictionary was established in 1828.  Value is identified as a noun, verb, and adjective. The following are the three (3) definitions as a noun that I selected:

* The monetary worth of something, like market price

* A fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money for something exchanged

* Relative worth, utility, or importance

 

I spoke to four people who may have an influential opinion in business and the agile community.

 

Marty Nelson, Alchemy Code Lab founder:

Value has a positive exchange, positive emotion, and experience. Value is generative - money, friends, and social connections, working ecosystems.  Value is something that satisfies true wants.

 

Diana Larsen, author of Agile Retrospective and co-found of Agile Fluency Model:

I think there are different kinds of value. It's too bad we only have one word to talk about several definitions.

One context is value to the customer. Businesses are sensitive to their customers' needs. They want to give the customer what they want so that customers will pay for services and products. So, there's the value around the value stream going to the customer.  Are we getting closer and closer as time goes by to build what the customer wants and will accept and pay for?  Product management helps the organization focus on the items with the highest priority over others, which gives a sense of, "this is more valuable than that, at least at this moment in time."

To better understand priority, we can add methods like the cost of delay, and it begins to get us closer to understanding value as well.

Then there's also business value, which is the investments enabling the business to thrive, be resilient, and sustain over time.  Value, I think in the business sense, is very much tied to strategic direction. Is this strategic position providing us value because it's moving us more toward our strategic goals, like targets in the Improvement Kata? Is this moving us in the direction that we need to go to give greater value to the business? In the Agile Fluency model community, we tend to talk about value as business benefits. The value is the benefits that the business wants to gain from supporting and investing in their teams to help achieve the maximum value from the products in the market.

 

 

Dave West, CEO, Scrum.org:

Value is a subjective measure.  Therefore, it is not how I define it that matters, but ultimately the person and organization that I wish to bring value to that are relevant.

For example,

EAFH59: Angela (Yazzie) Marquez, Diné Education and Social Justice

Kayanna:

We all have something to share. KnolShare with Dr. Dave.

Dr. Dave:

So hello and welcome to the Knolshare here with Dr. Dave podcast. This is Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host. We are going to talk about social justice today with Angela Marquez. And so when we talk about social justice, what we're talking about is that everyone deserves equal economic, political, and social rights and opportunities. And the goal is to make sure that we open doors of access and opportunity for everyone. Right? So in short, when we're talking about is social justice means equal rights and equitable opportunities for all. And today we have Angela Marquez, the Outreach Program Manager of the Data Sciences Academy at the University of Arizona. Angela is also a member of the Navajo or Diné Tribe. One of the original people of the United States. So welcome Angela.

Angela Yazzie:

Thank you. I'm glad to be here.

Dr. Dave:

Yeah. So why don't we just kick off by you telling us a little about who you are in your own words and how you would describe yourself as a Navajo or Diné descendant.

Angela Yazzie:

[foreign language 00:01:23] A Angela Marquez, you Shia touchy to Baja that Chanel it. So, hello, I'm Angela Marquez. I just shared with you my clans as a Navajo woman. I have four clans given to me from first, my mother, then my, my dad's mother, then my, my maternal grandfather's mother, and then my paternal grandfather's mother. So traditionally in Navajo culture, your clans come from the women in your family, and that's also links to the importance of the woman in the family structure and in the culture itself. So anyways, I am born for the Táchii’nii Clan, which is if you translated, it means red running into the water, and that is one of the traditional, or I guess, original clans for the Navajo Tribe. And it's really common to hear. So anyway, I grew up on the Navajo Reservation and I often go back and my grandmother on my mother's side lives in Leupp, Arizona, and my other grandma lives Black Mesa.

Angela Yazzie:

So it's a quite a long drive, but it's totally worth it for me to go back a lot. And I just wanted to share also that my grandparents did a lot of the raising of me, as is very common on the Reservation. And they taught me lots of things. They taught me the importance of my education. They taught me importance of my culture, sense of need for social justice, faith, and how to care for my community. So I would not be the same person if I didn't have them to help me along. So I'm just so grateful for their help along with who I am. So anyway, I just love that I am Navajo. I didn't realize growing up that it was such a treasured thing, but now that I'm here in Tucson and I've been here for a while, I realized there's not a lot of Navajos outside of the Reservation. And so I'm just so glad that I'm able to ask my grandparents everything that I need to know. And yeah, I'm really glad to be able to share my experience with you.

Dr. Dave:

You're so fortunate. So let's talk about how do social justice, any type of challenges show up in your experience as a, a Navajo descendant and a woman of color.

Angela Yazzie:

I thought social justice, the idea of social justice is such a funny idea because it's this need to seek out justice only because injustice have been socially acceptable until recently. I just think that that's just such a funny thing, because I just didn't really ever think about social justice with that name, social justice until I went to college. So the Dine people have a oral tradition of passing down knowledge from one generation to the next.

EAFH58: Cherie Silas. Influence without authority: Making 360 impact when you don’t call the shots

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

coach, people, agile, organization, happening, coaching, problem, change, agile coach, resistance, work, solve, compliance, client, agenda, solution, hear, company, stand, fix

 

So good morning, everybody Happy Saturday is the 16th 930 or 940 now, and today we're doing Sheree silence, we have her as our host. And she's going to be talking about influencing without authority, making 360 degree impact when you don't control the shots. Sheree, for those attendees who might not know you, or might not have heard about you what's important for them to know about you before we get started today?

 

Um, well, I guess just a little bit about who I am. I think many of you, I've met several of you I noticed things and I know some of you have been in class with me. So I mean, I'm a coach, I am a coach, I have been an agile coach. And my big thing is really training and developing other coaches. So bringing professional coaching over into the Agile space so that people well, if they call themselves coaches come in need to understand and apply what actually coaching is beyond just the mentoring, consulting type things. And so helping to bring those two walls together professional coaching and agile coaching to make more impact because I believe that that's what makes sustainable changes when we approach things as a coach. So I'm a mentor to professional coaches. I'm a coaching supervisor, which basically helps coaches to reflect on the work they're doing with their clients and to improve that. And I run and own tandem Coaching Academy where we train analysts and coaches. And guess that's probably about it. However, I am willing to share whatever anybody might have questions about.

 

It's very much a round of applause for Sheree. She's awesome. So why don't we just dive right in? Sheree? If you're ready. Think the rest of us are ready?

 

Sure. All right. So let's talk a little bit I'm not going to put slides up right now I'll just kind of pop them up and pull them down because they kind of get in the way of us looking at each other. So I know that some of you are coaches because I've worked with you. I'd like to maybe if you could hit that chat box and talk a little bit about who you are coaches, Scrum masters managers, dog walkers, what is it that you do? And are you in the Agile space? Senior Scrum Master, agile coach, writer, editor and aspiring teacher, Tony, you're going to have to tell us tell me a little bit about that. Is it in the Agile space for your writing fiction novels? Or what? Seeing your agile coach fall over a parish? Okay, so

 

I have joined agile space before, but I just I like the concept of it. And I just love to learn more.

 

Yeah, awesome. Well, good to have you here. And I hope that some of what we talk about will be good for you today. So some of you who are already in the coaching space, you will, you will already know a lot about coaching and the way to bring coaching into your world and the impact that it can have. And so I'm going to go ahead and pop this on the screen. I, in my journeys as a coach and as someone who developed who develops coaches, one of the biggest questions I get is, how do you deal with resistance and resistance and being able to make an influence where you don't really have control as agile coaches? I don't know how many of you ever go into an organization and they give you the keys to the kingdom and they say everyone reports to you. Everybody has to do what you say. Yeah, not really. They're usually instead saying, you have no control. You have no authority and you better fix my wh...

EAFH57: Mercy George-Igbafe, LEARNTOR Founder, Maximize Black Opportunities

Kayanna:

Let's talk about it. Talk, talk. Let's go deep. We all have something to share. KnolShare with Dr. Dave.

Dr. Dave:

So hello and welcome to the KnolShare with Dr. Dave podcast. This is Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host. We're going to have a conversation about social justice. And when we talk about social justice, we're talking about given opportunities for everyone, both from an economic, political, social rights, and opportunities where we're trying to open the doors of access and opportunity for everyone. When we think about some of the formal definitions, we would think of things that it contains like equal rights, equal opportunity, equal treatment. So when we talk about social justice, it just means that we want to have equal rights and equitable opportunities for all. So today, my conversation is with Mercy George-Igbafe. She is a digital strategist, an Agile and data enthusiast, and she's the founder of Learntor. So Mercy, why don't you give us a elevator pitch about who you are and who is your superhero? You could even tell it from the voice of a superhero. You could take on their voice and persona.

Mercy:

Let me try, but I don't know how to impersonate people, but I'll try. First, until I see equal opportunity for everyone across all spectrum, whether you are Black, Hispanic, your sexual orientation, no matter what it is, especially the third world country, or 'til I see that happen, is the day that I feel as a human being. And that's how I started Learntor.

Mercy:

Learntor is built on the premise of a quote that I love so much. "True greatness is not in being great, but in the ability to make others great." That's what drives me. That's my motivation. Learntor focuses on training Agile digital skills in strong training, data analytics, business analysis. And the goal is because there aren't many opportunities. We have a lot of eye shift employees, rather, a lot of home shift that can actually swing around departments because of the skills that they have. And that's the gap Learntor is trying to bridge and to equally bring out the excellence in a lot of the black people that do not have opportunity to learn some of the skill, or started a bit late, but talking about social justice, it speaks to the core of who I am, not from a victim mentality, but from recognizing the opportunity that I can lean on as a business and maximize to make a difference in the world.

Dr. Dave:

Awesome. That's wonderful. So I wanted to just tap into about your social justice challenges that you may have faced in your community or even in your family.

Mercy:

Okay. First, I will start with family. I've gone through quite a bit of a deal. I say, life has thrown me real bitter lemons, bitter that really spikes in your... When you take it, you scream or your jaw goes clenching, but what I've always done consistently is how I'm going to move on. Is what next? What lesson am I going to learn from the experience? My social injustice task for my family, my father not accepting who I was in terms of, I didn't go seeking mistake. I had a child at 14. Unfortunately, I didn't go looking for it. It was as a result of sexual abuse. My daughter tells me I don't talk about it a lot, but even with that, I ended up in a police station where my dad had to take me with pregnancy and lock me up. But that's a long story, but then I'm going to tell my story.

Mercy:

It will really, it will make a lot of people weep, because all my life experiences is what drives, who I am today. So my social injustice starts from my family, especially my dad. My mom died very young. Unfortunately, when the stupid thing,

EAFH56: Colleen Kirtland, Courage to Travel Outside of My Comfort Zone

Kayanna Singing:

Let's talk about it. Talk, talk, talk. Let's go deep. We all have something to share. KnolShare with Dr. Dave.

Dr. Dave Cornelius:

Hello and welcome to the KnolShare with Dr. Dave podcast. This is Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host. Let's talk about social justice definition. So we say social justice is the view that everyone deserves equal economic, political, social rights, and opportunities. The aim is to open doors of access and opportunity for everyone, particularly to those in greatest needs. So when we think of social justice, it contains all of the following, equal rights, equal opportunity, equal treatment. Our conversation today is with Colleen Kirtland, someone that I hold a great deal of respect and admiration for because of the good work she's doing with helping underestimated kids increase the skills, their skills in education. I've served with Colleen in the 5 Saturdays STEAM program. We say STEAM because A is for agile, and I say welcome, Colleen. So why don't you take about a minute or more and do an elevator pitch about Colleen and your superhero persona?

Colleen Kirtland:

Oh, my goodness. That's going to involve some creativity on a Friday here. Well, my name is Colleen Kirtland, and it's a great pleasure to be here today with you, Dr. Dave. If I were to describe myself and we all have superpowers, I think the ones that I would choose that would stand out might be akin to almost like a super power butterfly. And what I mean by that, so the butterfly metaphor comes up in a lot of different cultural mythologies and other things, but I think the metamorphosis aspect is really important because we're always changing, right? We may be the very same being from the caterpillar all the way to the butterfly, however, we're changing and we're going through this evolution, and it's biological, it takes time. And it's a cycle, it's a cycle of life. It's a natural cycle. So I think that would be it. I don't know if there's a butterfly superhero, like wonder butterfly or something, but I'm going to go ahead and go with butterfly.

Dr. Dave Cornelius:

Oh, I love the metaphor. I love it. And so it's an original and we're going to keep it and we're claiming that, right?

Colleen Kirtland:

Okay. Yeah. We'll figure out some name of like Super Monarch or something. I don't know.

Dr. Dave Cornelius:

What a wonderful name, Super Monarch. There you go. So let's talk about social justice challenges, and how has that shown up in your work, community, and family?

Colleen Kirtland:

Okay. So this question, I'm very glad you sent me questions in advance. I actually thought I'd take a different spin on this. So you say, "How is it showing up in my work and community and family?" And what's really interesting, and what made me actually think about a missing component of social justice, is that if I take the typical circle I walk in, it is not showing up. And I think this is a really salient point about having the courage to travel outside of our comfort zone to find places where there is a need for social justice. So, ironically, I was talking to my husband, I'd say two nights ago, and I don't mean this to be of any disrespect to any of your listeners or anybody who subscribes to this podcast.

But I was saying I sometimes feel I'm equally as privileged as a white male. And I take this seriously and I have nothing against white males, I'm married to a wonderful white male. And I think it goes beyond just the color of your skin and your gender. It goes into the aspects of where we have access and we have opportunity in our lives. And I was very lucky.

EAFH55: Nicole Spence-Goon, Finding Reflective Mentorship and Sponsorship

Dr. Dave:

Say hello and welcome to the KnolShare with Dr. Dave podcast. This is Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host. We want to talk about the social justice definition and social justice is the view that everyone deserves equal economic, political and social rights and opportunities. We want to think that we're opening doors of access and opportunity to everyone, particularly those in greatest needs. So when we think of some of the formal definition, we're talking what equal rights, equal opportunities and equal treatments. So in short, social justice means equal rights and equitable opportunities for all.

Today, our conversation is with Nicole Spence-Goon. And I hope I didn't screw that up too badly, but did I do say that right?

Nicole:

Perfect. Perfect.

Dr. Dave:

All right. So let's just kick off. We always like to kick off with an elevator pitch about Nicole and your superhero persona.

Nicole:

All right. So about Nicole. I can put it in categories of work, family, play, and work super here and there a little bit. I'm currently an Agile coach at Excella and within Excella, I am part of their IDEA team. That's their version of DI. They just rearrange the letter so we could have IDEA, but same thing. And I've been working in software development for over 20 years in a lot of different roles.

I started as a developer, did the tester role, did BA role. I managed to find my way into the Agile space about 10 years ago. I just gravitated towards it because at the time when I was in my career, I was looking for something more, but I didn't know what more was. The project that I happened to be on at the time started talking about Agile and I'm like, okay. We're going to do this Agile thing. I'm like, okay. I'm game. But I don't know what it is. I found that as we were meddling our way through, there was something really different here that focused on something more than just the work. That's what intrigued me in getting in the Agile space. I've been gung-ho ever since. Always trying to learn more in the Agile space, as well as being active in community.

As for family, I was born in Jamaica and I was raised partly in Canada. So I'm a Jam-Can person. So, I went back and forth a lot, but that doesn't mean I like cold. I did not like winter. I still don't like winter. No. Winter is never going to be for me. But, as far as a superhero persona, I think what I gravitate to is transforming, networking into community building. I never really liked the whole term or activity of networking, but I felt like it was better to start with what we have in common and then build relationships as opposed to like making it transactional. What can you do for me? And I can do for you, but really connecting people.

Dr. Dave:

That's beautiful. So from Jamaica. That means you are a Yardie.

Nicole:

Yes. But I'm from country, since I'm not from Kingston.

Dr. Dave:

Yardie. 20 years ago, I don't know, maybe you started when your, what 15.

Nicole:

Yeah. We'll go with that. Lets go with that number.

Dr. Dave:

Yeah. OK. There you go. So, let's talk about how does social justice, social justice challenges show up for you in your experience as an Agile coach and also as a woman of color?

Nicole:

Yeah. I'm reflecting on my experiences. I feel like I could come from it in terms of, from one aspect of treatment, right. Not equal treatment. This is something from the woman perspective of not being heard. Where I've been in situations, making contributions, and sharing ideas, and then somebody else shares the same idea. I just said that. What is happening here? Do you not see me here?

EAFH54: Salah Elleithy – Listening to Acknowledge Different Voices

Dr. Dave:

Hello and welcome to the KnolShare with Dr. Dave Podcast. This is Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host. And today I am having the wonderful opportunity of having a conversation with Salah. And then I am going to tell you that, just give you a definition of social justice, right? The way we define it, or the way we've captured it is social justice is the view that everyone deserves equal economic, political and social rights and opportunities that social work-, social workers aim to open the doors of access, opportunity for everyone, particularly those in the greatest needs. So when we think about all of the different ways that we want to think about social justice, we could think of it in terms of equal rights, equal opportunity and equal treatment. So in short, social justice being equal rights and equitable opportunities for all. So, hey, Salah, what's going on? Why don't you take a minute and provide like a quick elevator pitch about who you are and I always like to talk about people's superhero persona, right? Yeah.

Salah:

Yes. Yeah, no, I appreciate it and, and thanks for inviting me. And I like this idea of superhero persona. I would say my superhero persona is mostly, is a super curious and courageous kid who gets to ask why over and over and get to, and then get to ask it again. And my kids reminds me of that constantly especially when, and when it's not why, it's why not. But jokes aside, I am a certified coach, collective coach, and also I'm an ICF professional certified coach. And my focus has been on Agile coaching for the last 10 years or so. And I like to facilitate teams and individuals and help leaders and teams become better one day at a time. I also like to help individuals balance, individuals, teams and leaders, balance clarity with action. And my mission is really to spark courageous curiosity with play and hopefully sprinkle a little sense of humor on that as well. But that's in a nutshell.

Dr. Dave:

So let me ask you this, right. How does social justice challenges show up in your experience as an Agile coach?

Salah:

Yeah, for me, the social justice shows up in different ways. I'll focus maybe on a couple and see where that takes us. But the main one that I see often is acknowledgement. How do we acknowledge, does the company or the team or the group acknowledge the different voices and invite the different perspectives at the table and welcome dissent and have different views of things or are the voices being ignored? These voices are being ignored and the dominant voices or the dominant voice continues to be the dominant? I believe that leadership has a big role in this, encouraging and inviting different voices to the table and sometimes, as coaches, coaching, even though we know that it's not about telling people what to do, but it's about showing or holding a mirror for what's going on in the group.

So that's where, as a coach and as a leader, I try to invite the voices and allow for equal opportunities and different perspectives in the group. So, that's one. The other one is listening. So listening to what's going on, how things are being discussed. I usually say, or I learned, in my journey that if you want to gauge a culture of a company or a group, just attend their meeting and see how they interact with each other. And listening goes hand in hand with the expression. It's one thing to encourage expression and to encourage this openness in culture, but it's another thing to pay attention and listen to what's really going on. And not just to what's being said but what's, what remains to be unsaid.

So it takes,