KnolShare with Dr. Dave

Explore the world of coaching with several coaches at different points in their coaching journey.  Professional and Agile coaches engaged in active conversations about the benefits of coaching.  AnaElsa Aviles, Jenny Tarwater, Michael Tucker, Ann-Marie Kong, Jospeh Jones, and Dr. Dave Cornelius shared personal experiences and insights.

E85: Generative Leadership: Enabling Happy Contributing People

Kayanna:

(singing)

Dr. Dave Cornelius:

Hello and welcome, this is Dr. Dave. I guess our session now is talking about "Generative Leadership: Enabling Happy Contributing Customers". When I think of generative leadership, I think about leaders who give birth to organizations and other human behaviors to demonstrate the ability to achieve amazing things.

Dr. Dave Cornelius:

So let me just give you a little bit of a background of who I am, and as a speaker, and who's spending time here with you today. One of the things that I look forward to is trying to be a servant leader. I'm an entrepreneur, a coach, trainer, delivered over about a billion dollars in customer value. I'm a founder of many things, so I'm a founder of the "Agile for Humanity Conference & Meetup".

Dr. Dave Cornelius:

I'm the "5 Saturdays STEAM Program". Most people know it as "STEAM". I'm a podcaster, I have this podcast called "KnolShare with Dr. Dave". It runs on iTunes and Spotify. The reason they call me Dr. Dave is that I did a Doctoral Dissertation and it's called "A Value of Scrum to Organization". So that's published out there. I'm a verbal... Written several books. "Elastic Minds" is probably the latest published I'm working on "Deliver Value". And one of the things that I'm really passionate about is giving back to the community. So "5 Saturdays" where we work with high school students. We do a lot of amazing things helping to change the trajectory of their lives and some of the things that they're doing.

Dr. Dave Cornelius:

So let's talk about the "Challenge". The challenge that I ran into. So I was doing research for a startup company, and I found that disengaged people or teams cost about $550 billion. A half a trillion dollars in productivity loss. And when we think about the impact of that to the organization? We're talking about lost revenue, poor team performance, and oftentimes business failure that happens through this process. And the way I look at this is that I laid us firmly at the feet of the leaders. I look at leaders who are responsible for laying the groundwork to create culture, where we have values, and beliefs. Environments, where we have an innovative space to work and play. And also psychological safety, something that's really popular in the agile space. And this is the courage to speak out without fear. So this is a really important aspect for us that helps to kick off idea that there's a challenge out there. There's something that's really impacting organizations in the United States, and beyond.

Dr. Dave Cornelius:

Now, I came up with this idea about "Leaderless Leader". I was doing a podcast with my friend Earl Cobbs. And I was just thinking of what should we call the podcast? And I came up with the idea that there's this concept of a "Leaderless Leader"", and the condition of a leaderless leader is there's an absence of demonstrated leadership by those individuals. Because as we said, we're responsible for creating an environment for people and the organization, deliver value to customers, and the stakeholders, the organization stakeholders, as well as the shareholders.

Dr. Dave Cornelius:

So some of the common attributes that you find in leaderless leaders is that they have unclear vision. They're all always chasing after the delayed shiny pursuit. There's an absence of empathy and it's "Just get her done I don't care, just go get that stuff done, I don't give". And when we talk about delegation without accountability, and they would say, "My team failed". They wouldn't be like "We failed", or "I am partially responsible for the failure as well", It's like "My team failed".

Ann-Marie Kong, Coaching Social Justice Trauma

Dr. Dave:

(singing) Hello, and welcome to the KnolShare with Dr. Dave Podcast. I am Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host. My conversation today is with Ann-Marie Kong. Ann-Marie, how are you today?

Ann-Marie:

I'm good, thank you, Dr. Dave. It's a delight to be here today.

Dr. Dave:

Yeah, me too. You know what? Tell us a little bit about you and your superhero.

Ann-Marie:

My superhero.

Dr. Dave:

Yeah.

Ann-Marie:

So a bit about myself, I serve as a Transformation Leadership and Co-active Agile Coach, and as a Transformation Leadership Coach, I empower leaders to transform by unlocking your potential one conversation at a time, one leader at a time. So love is really at the heart of what I do and it's who I be and what I do. I want to see more love in the world. I want to live in a world where we love the divine source. I believe in a divine source, I recognize not everybody does, and I'm not here to force my belief on anyone, but I want to see that world where we love God, the divine source, and we love each other. That's what God wants for us, to love each other, sharing love in the world. So that's my superpower. My superpower is love.

Dr. Dave:

Matter of fact, it's my word for 2021. My word for the year is love. Yeah. So tell me, how have you experienced social justice in your work, community and family?

Ann-Marie:

Social justice while we've made progress, for sure, we are able to vote, most of us have access to public education. There's a lot more work to be done and in my own experience, there isn't a balance of wealth and privilege. I didn't grow up with wealth and privilege. I'm a daughter of immigrant parents. My parents came from China. And I am an immigrant to this country. I live in Canada now. And as an immigrant, I worked hard. I studied hard. I worked hard to progress forward. Those were values that my parents instilled within me. And for me, that's my experience, true hard work to progress forward. There wasn't wealth or privilege that I had. So wealth and privilege is not something that I experienced at all and there isn't that balance of wealth and privilege at all.

Dr. Dave:

Well, certainly, that's true. So if we look at about social justice or even social injustice, based on your experience, how is that different from what you've seen in the United States? Or is it the same? Recently we've seen people marching in the streets, people dying, and it's a long history of social injustice across the world, period. So where you live in Canada, compare that would watch you have seen in the United States.

Ann-Marie:

What I see in the United States really saddens me, first of all, I want to acknowledge that. There's a lot of grief and a lot of sadness. I want to acknowledge that first of all. I see a divide in the US which is different from the experience I've had and what I'm having here in Canada and what I've lived for in my country of origin. It's a divide of people in the US, is what I'm seeing, between BIPOC and non BIPOC, if you want to call it that? Right?

Dr. Dave:

Yeah.

Ann-Marie:

Yes. So there's that divide and the images and the language media and society and our systems continue to reinforce that divide. And also we have lived experiences, the people living in the United States have lived experiences and culture and history deep into the psyche of people. Each person is a unique being and each has different lived experiences that makes that conversation between BIPOC and non BIPOC could be a very uncomfortable conversation to be had.

Devon Morris, 1st African American Certified Scrum Trainer (CST)

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

Dr. Dave:          Hey, so hello and welcome to the KnolShare with Dr. Dave Podcast. I'm Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host. My conversation today is with Devon Morris, or is it Devon.

Devon:             Devon.

Dr. Dave:          Devon Morris, an international speaker, Agile coach and trainer. What is going on with you today, man? But before I even get the answer to that question, I just want to say thank you for spending two amazing days with us during the Agile for Humanity conference. Thank you.

Devon:             No, no, no, man. You put it all together. I appreciate being able to be in the space with the doctor.

Dr. Dave:          Ah, warms my heart, warms my heart. Hey, so maybe a lot of people know about you, but why don't you fire up an elevator pitch about Devon Morris to help our audience learn more about you, man?

Devon:             Yeah. Well, the truth is there's really no elevator pitch whatsoever. I am a humble, probably nerdy kid raised on Chicago's South side. So if you think about the crucible of the south side of Chicago, that's where I was raised at. Somehow I became the first black certified scrum trainer through working with helping cultures change, making my family proud, making families that know of me or are a part of my existence proud. Regardless of the certifications or the degrees or anything like that, I am always working to make a 10 year old, 14, 16 year old, 21 year old version of myself proud of the person I am today. So hopefully the people that come before me are proud of me. I stand on their shoulders and hopefully I can make a legacy for those that are coming after me. We can get into all the accolades at another time, but I'm just your boy from around the corner. That's it.

Dr. Dave:          Man, I know the south side of Chicago. I used to work over there, at the University of Chicago. But tell me about that journey, man. Tell me about that journey of becoming the first black CST. I heard that the Scrum Alliance put some ink out on you.

Devon:             Yeah, they put some ink on me.

Dr. Dave:          What was that journey like, man? Come on, man. Come on.

Devon:             I heard someone say that ... During the actual conference, I actually heard someone say that they felt like they were pledging. That's what they said. Even though the Scrum Alliance doesn't want it to feel that way, in terms of my CST journey, it did feel like I was pledging and what we describe in terms of my fraternity, I'm a member of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Inc., so greatest fraternity on a planet earth. Or, I'll say, universe. But the way we would describe it would be hard but fair. Okay? Let me explain that to you a little bit more. In terms of the application process, for me, that was easy when I applied. There wasn't anything different. Even though the process hasn't really changed very much, it was hard but fair.

I clearly remember my interview. My interview was in May of 2013 and pretty much I nailed the interview. I nailed the interview because I went in suited and booted, like my grandmother would expect, to impress my family. So I went in. Like they would say with any job interview, go in in your best dress and put your best forward. Right? But it's one of those things we're walking into that interview, and some of your listeners may feel this way, but have you ever felt that imposter syndrome? That no matter how much you've done, whatever it is you love to do,

Jenny Tarwarter, BIPOC Partnership

Kyanna:            Let's talk about it. Talk, 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. I'm Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host. My conversation is with Jenny Tarwater, an international speaker, agile coach and trainer. My first conversation with Jenny about diversity, equity and inclusion, DEI, was in San Diego, California, 2018 at the Agile 2018 conference. We were in an international group discussing DEI. So I want to say welcome Jenny. And I would just like to just say thank you for being a partner for BIPOC individuals in this social injustice struggle. And I'm really grateful that we're working on a conference together. So tell me, Jenny, what's been going on lately?

Jenny:              What's been going on lately? Staying at home, wearing a mask. It feels like I live a lot in this little space right here in front of my computer. We were lucky enough, my husband and I are both a hundred percent work from home and my daughter was a hundred percent school from home for a while. So we've been doing that. Doing a lot of coaching with clients, agile coaching. Trying to do some upscaling with... Or coach training and Kanban flow metrics, the normal kind of agile stuff.

Dr. Dave:          Yeah. That's interesting. So let's talk about some of the social justice challenges that affected many people globally. How is it affecting you and your family?

Jenny:              Well, I have to say my family checks all the privileged boxes. So it impacted me less directly than others. But it has certainly changed a lot of my perspective and where I want to spend time and energy. And thinking about how I might contribute to a positive change. It's interesting too when I think about when I said we check a lot of privilege boxes. I thought about this the other day and I couldn't believe it. My husband went to the same high school as two sitting senators.

Dr. Dave:          Wow.

Jenny:              Right. I mean, that's right. Tim Kaine and Josh Hawley. And I'm like this... That's saying a lot. After the horrible events of this year, which we know those events were not unique to this year. I'm just really glad that the conversations have really come to the spotlight to the forefront and I'm having a lot more of those conversations.

I had already been quite surprised in 2016 with some of the biases that I didn't know my friends and family had. So I had already gone through a little bit of shock then and thought that I was being more proactive and trying to educate myself more. But 2020 was even a much bigger leap. And so I think the biggest, biggest impact for me is that I have a much different dividing line of tolerance now. I can have zero tolerance for folks that don't want to learn and improve. And willful ignorance is not acceptable to me anymore. Right? So I don't want to share space and energy with folks that can denounce someone else's lived experience and is not willing to jump into the game of making the world a better place.

Dr. Dave:          Well said. So what awareness are being discovered based on some of the recent experience, especially with the upheaval at the US Capitol. It has just blown my mind and just going like, wow, what other awareness's that you, I, are really going through at this moment? But how about you? What has come to mind for you?

Jenny:              Well, the US Capitol, that was, again, another horrific day. Today's the day they acquitted Trump, which, again, was not that shocking, but still disappointing.

Dr. Dave:

I love it. We're going to get started. Hello and welcome from the many locations who are joining here today around the globe. I'm Dr. Dave, your facilitator.

Dr. Dave:

I want to see if you could probably put your name up and change your name. And one way to do that is just to simply roll your mouse over your name tag or your picture, and you'll see three dots in an ellipse. Click on that and then click rename. And what I want you to do is just add your location and where you're coming from today. Why don't we spend a second or so doing that? I'm from the High Mountain Desert. Go ahead, and if you could just do that now. Just roll your mouse over your picture, and then just click on those three dots and change rename, and then we'll know exactly where you're from.

Dr. Dave:

I think people are getting the idea. Some people are getting that done. Hey, I just want to welcome you into the space of safety and healing. And I want you to try something with me today. I want you to repeat after me and I'm going to drop something in the chat and I just want you to un-mic yourself, and I want you to drop this and I want you to just repeat after me. It's a simple one-liner.

Dr. Dave:

If you get that into chat, then, you know ... I'm going to say, hello, I love you. Un-mic yourself, and then say, "Hello. I love you," back. Please un-mic yourself. I want to hear you. Hello, I love you.

Dr. Dave:

Hello, I love you.

Lizzy:

I love you back.

Dr. Dave:

Hello, I love you.

Dr. Dave:

I just want to say that love is the essence that I want us to experience in our time together. And I just want us to be patient and kind with each other as we're going through this process and we're learning from each other and we're spending time together.

Dr. Dave:

But I want to also pay some respects to the native people of our lands. I want to pay some respect to the civil right leaders to the Latin X members and also the Asian and Pacific Islanders who are just dealing with some trepidation right now. The LGBTQ+ group, BiPOC, and also non BiPOC mutual partners.

Dr. Dave:

During this Black History Month, the Agile for Humanity conference will take place going forward from this day annually during the Black History Month. And the big intent is for us to create this focus space for BiPOC to elevate our craft and mastery, and that is our focus today, is to elevate our craft and mastery. And we're looking in specific areas in product development, in agility, in design, technology.

Dr. Dave:

And we also want to make sure that we invite our non BiPOC. I call them mutual partners because it's a symbiotic relationship. It's a mutual partnership between us, to come along on this journey with us. We need each other in love so that we can actually elevate our craft and mastery.

Dr. Dave:

As I reflect on the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and in the present times, I said it takes mutual partnership between all of us, all of us. And I want to quote Amanda Gorman, The Hill We Climb poem. I'm just going to take us an excerpt of that.

Dr. Dave:

And what she said is, if we merge mercy with might, and might with right then love becomes the legacy and change our children's birthright. For there's always light if only we're brave enough to see it, if only we're brave enough to be it. And I wanted to just hold onto those words and carry that with us as we're going through today, tomorrow, and throughout your life. I think these were very powerful things for us to just be brave enough to be at. It's a call to action as we move forward.

Dr. Dave:

I want to tell you, in 2022, I look forward to us meeting face to face. I do that once again,

E85: Generative Culture

March 2021

Author: Dr. Dave Cornelius

Generative culture gives birth to organizations and human beings to demonstrate the ability to achieve amazing outcomes during the turbulent, uncertain, novel, and ambiguous (TUNA) times or normal times. Developing generative business culture is fundamental to frictionless operations and effectively collaborating with people to succeed in a highly competitive world.

In Table 1, Professor R. Westrum, Department of Sociology at Eastern Michigan University, describes three organizational cultures – Pathological, Bureaucratic, and Generative.

Table 1: Westrum Typology of Organization Culture

 

Pathological (Power- Oriented)

Bureaucratic (Rule- Oriented)

Generative (Performance-Oriented)

Low cooperation

Modest cooperation

High cooperation

Messengers “harmed”

Messengers neglected

Messengers trained

Responsibilities shirked

Narrow responsibilities

Risks are shared

Bridging discouraged

Bridging tolerated

Bridging encouraged

Failure leads to scapegoating

Failure leads to justice

Failure leads to inquiry

Novelty crushed

Novelty leads to problems

Novelty implemented

 

What can be expected in a generative culture? An environment where people learn quickly and innovate to meet the demands of customers and markets.  People collaborate more effectively with a higher level of trust in all directions (across, up, down) of the organizational structure.  The petty personal issues are dampened to elevate the goal of the products and services that are needed to sustain the business competitiveness.

If you have worked in a safe, high-performing team environment, the emotional energy is off the charts.  It is intoxicating at times, and when you fail, there is a whole team focus to learn together from experiments.  The blame game goes away, and we settle in a good place that states “we are all learning.”

Generative cultures enable diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.  You will find generative leadership that creates space for development and performance growth for the people working in the organization and community.  The generative environment’s generosity extends beyond the doors of the organization.

Future Search conversations included:

* Facilitating compassionate conversations

* Collaborate with our brothers and sisters in Africa and bring Agility to Africa

* A framework focused on coaching the whole person

* Reflect BIPOC, a representation in Agile conferences

 

Dr. Dave:                      Hello. And welcome to the KnolShare with Dr. Dave podcast. I am Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host. Today, my discussion partner is Dr. Charles Collingwood, the Math Department Chair at Sahuaro High School in Tucson, Arizona. He is a pioneering STEM educator who influenced many high school students to go on to college. We have had many great conversations over the years about transforming education to include more real world practices and applications. Well, let's begin. Dr. Charles Collingwood, thank you for joining me today. How are you doing?

Dr. Charles Col...:          I'm doing great, man. Thank you.

Dr. Dave:                      That's just great, man. So I'm just going to jump right in and start peppering you with questions right off the bat.

Dr. Charles Col...:          Lay it on me, lay it on me.

Dr. Dave:                      Lay it on you. There you go. So look, as a teacher, what are some of the guiding principles that you want to share with your students that would really affect their ability to learn?

Dr. Charles Col...:          I think the first thing that students have to understand that learning itself is a life-long commitment, right? As human beings, to live in society, we have to learn how to function. So the process of learning, we talk about it a lot in schools, but basically, the process of learning happens throughout our life and we've got to apply that to this special context of schooling and I think that's important for students to understand because I like to have them understand that you have learned many things in your lifespan. They could talk about some of them play music, some of them play sports, they play all these things and they have to learn them at some point. So this process of learning, we talk about it in the context of schooling, but in fact, it happens throughout your whole life. I think once they understand that, then it's much easier for me to teach them these concepts that they are not really familiar with.

Dr. Dave:                      Okay. So it's learning throughout in our lives and in many different contexts. So I want to talk about this mentoring program that you started at Sahuaro High School in 2020 in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. What were some of the goals for the mentoring program that you had?

Dr. Charles Col...:          One of the issues that we have at the school that I'm working at is that you have quite a few students that are not really engaged in the curriculum that is being offered in many areas, right? So as I was having meetings over the summer and during the COVID spring, we started to talk about, man, how can we engage students more? What kind of ways can we do to engage students. And then I thought about it would be awesome if I could have a class where we are not really talking about any specific content, but the idea of learning, right, teaching yourself to learn, what it means to learn.

So they gave me the green light to cover the class. And I said, "Okay. I think I could do that." So I came up with this thing called mentoring class, right? A mentoring class where I had about 24 or 25 students in the class and about maybe 10 of them are what I call mentors, maybe usually juniors and seniors and then the rest of them were freshmen and sophomore students who I thought needed help.

So the idea was to introduce students probably for the first time into a learning environment without the pressure of a grade so to speak, right? So we are here to learn. There is no pressure. What I did is I got many community members to come in and speak with the students and stuff like that. And students were able to interact more in a job scene, right,

Dr. Dave:                      Hello, and welcome to the KnolShare with Dr. Dave Podcast, I am Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host. You know, I first met Ewan at a coaching retreat in Seattle, Washington. We were in the same cohort, seeking to discover a hypothesis for a future solution in the coaching space. We had a few contentious moments, but settled our differences over a few beers and I introduced him to my family, my wife and my son, who were traveling with me at the conference, so, let's begin to learn about Ewan's journey during this period of social justice conflicts.

So, Ewan, it's so good to see you, one of the things, let's introduce who you are, let the world know who Ewan O'Leary is. I hope I didn't screw your name up too badly.

Ewan O'Leary:               Yeah, no, you're perfect, you're perfect. So, here's the thing, right, I have my father to thank for the fact that my name is Ewan Gareth O'Leary, and if you kind of look at the capital letters there it forms ego.

Dr. Dave:                      I just saw that, that's crazy.

Ewan O'Leary:               So, I guess I'm sort of carrying a few things around, maybe a chip on my shoulder or two, or 17, I don't know. But I grew up in South Africa, I left South Africa in 2000 and moved to the United States, and I feel a tremendous sense of privilege at being able to do that. You know, South Africa is a country with its own amazingly and painfully beautiful history, in so many different ways and for so many different people. For some folks, the beauty isn't there, it's just mostly pain. I try to sort of find a silver lining in every cloud, but I find that, obviously, with the privilege that I bring into any situation.

So, I've been coaching as an agile coach, technically since, and I say technically, since 2008, that was the first time I spun up a scrum team to solve some problems in an organization. But I've been in software development since I was eight and I persuaded my dad to trade his HP 12c in for a Commodore 64.

Dr. Dave:                      Yeah.

Ewan O'Leary:               Which was a great platform, a lot of fun, and it sort of gave me the sense of confidence that I could solve any problem, I could deal with any situation in technology. Of course, I'm not in technology now, I'm in coaching, and I've been in coaching for, I don't know, 12 or 13 years. Right now, I'm working with a large pharma organization helping with late stage drug trials, doesn't sound like technology at all, but one of the things that I've read along the way is this idea that management is the technology of human accomplishment.

And agile management, agile leadership, and in fact, agile process, agile values, principles, just lump that all together for the moment, we can argue about the nuances later, I'm sure we will. If you bring all those things together, you have human accomplishment, and that's led me to my reason for doing what I do, which is to liberate human potential. I coach to liberate human potential. And I leave pauses like I just left for you, there's a little mine field.

Dr. Dave:                      I love it.

Ewan O'Leary:               Let's go for it, man.

Dr. Dave:                      I love it. So, let's talk about the social justice conflicts in the US and around the world, you know? How is that affecting you, you know, in here? How does that make you feel my brother?

Ewan O'Leary:               I, first off, thank you for acknowledging me as your brother, that is an enormous, enormous... I feel so much respect for that. We have some problems which may seem intractable right now, and I know that people, like me, who look like me, have contributed enormously to these challenges,