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,

Dr. Dave:

So hello and welcome to the KnolShare with Dr. Dave Podcast. This is Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host. I wanted to give you a definition of social justice. Social justice is the view that everyone deserves equal economic, political and social rights and opportunities.

Social workers or leaders, aim to open doors of access and opportunity for everyone, particularly those in greatest need. Formal definitions may vary, but all contain equal rights, equal opportunity and equal treatment. In short, social justice means equal rights and equitable opportunities for all.

The conversation today is with Cherie Silas, one of my great champions. Cherie is an ICF Master Certified Coach, an EMCC Master Coach and coaching supervisor who trains and mentors individuals to become professional and Agile coaches. I could just tell you, I've spent seven months once or twice a week with Cherie learning how to be a professional coach.

How about telling us some stuff? We'll just do an elevator pitch Cherie about you, but also about your superhero persona.

Cherie Silas:

I don't know how much of a superhero I am, but I am as you said, a Master Certified Coach. To the best of my knowledge, I'm the only MCC who's like a hardcore Agile coach. I know I'm the only certified leader coach, who is an MCC.

But I think the big things are just that it's my mission and my purpose. And so years ago, I settled on what I wanted to be in the world was someone who would leave everyone I encountered better than I found them with each encounter.

If they encountered me, they should be better off, not worse off. I guess a little more about me is I live in a biracial family. I have for over 30 years. I have five adult children. I have eight grandchildren and of course child-in-laws and they have various racial profiles, predominantly Black and White, but there are others in there. I'm a lifetime learner.

I was a pastor for 20 years, just resigned recently this year. I really just want to live in a world where people are treated like people. Earlier this year, I realized that people who look like me in the world would not believe that racism and racial injustice was still a thing. I didn't even believe it for a long time. What I knew was that until they heard it from someone who looked like them, they wouldn't believe.

And so I decided in the beginning of this year that I would become one White voice and hopefully, to connect with White ears everywhere so that they can hear and realize truth.

Dr. Dave:

That's beautiful. As a White woman, share your experiences living in a BIPOC family.

Cherie Silas:

It's been an interesting couple of few decades. I grew up in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, which is very well known for its non-tolerance of anyone not White. In the world where I grew up, if you were not White, you were considered sub-human.

There wasn't like a big, "Everyone's sub-human, but us." But it was well understood the way people were treated and the way that people were talked about. And so when I selected my spouse, when I was 20, I was ostracized from my family. Except for my mom and my two sisters, they've hung in there.

In no uncertain terms, I was told, "You made a choice. You're going to live with the consequences." That was okay with me because I didn't understand all of this thinking around people's skin, making them less than or more than. I didn't get it.

So I didn't want to be a part of that world and I was okay with just walking away. But we lived in St. Bernard Parish when I first got married, which is interesting. Where I lived in that parish, Black people were only allowed to live in three different areas.

There were three...

Tim Abbott Shares the need for Social Justice and Empathy in Human Systems

Dr. Dave:

Hello, and welcome to the KnolShare with Doctor Dave Podcast. This is Doctor Dave Cornelius, your host. Give me an elevator pitch, one minute or so about what makes Tim, Tim?

Tim Abbott:

Well, what makes me, me is that I've been working in the Agile space for quite a long time. I'm just passionate about helping teams and helping organizations. I started off as a software engineer developer, and then I moved up pretty quickly because one of the things that was naturally innate in me was the ability to connect with people and the people side of the business. While technically, I was very strong, it was one of the things that stood out, so I immediately started working with teams and leading teams. I would say probably the thing that makes me, me and the thing I'm most passionate about is helping people connect to reach a common goal. That's basically my background and what I've been doing for the past, I guess now it's been almost 25 years.

Dr. Dave:

That's wonderful. Let's talk about social justice. One of the definition that look at for social justice is about fair and compassionate distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society. We're talking about equal rights and equitable opportunities for all. How does social justice show up for you where you live in your country? Matter of fact, where do you live?

Tim Abbott:

Well, I mean, I'm from the States. Well, I don't know if that's obvious, but I'm from the States. My father was in the oil business initially. I was raised between Texas and Oklahoma. I don't really say I'm from somewhere, because I was living in West Texas, and Houston, and lived between Oklahoma City and Tulsa. That's where I grew up. And then, I became a software engineer, I went to college, I became a software engineer. And in college, it's funny you mentioned social justice, because in college, that was really, I was deeply involved in a lot of social justice and just, where I'm living now, I live in Saudi Arabia now, I've been here for 14 years, it's funny you ask, because one of the things that brought to Saudi was, I just got tired of ... I was pitching a startup that I was running when I finally left the States, and I never could break that glass ceiling, or get the opportunity when we were generating quite a bit of revenue. But funding, I was in Atlanta at the time, and funding, at that time, for people that look like me because I didn't match a particular pattern, was difficult to come by.

Tim Abbott:

So, I just said, "Forget it," and ended up with a project that I thought I was going to be on for a year in Saudi Arabia, and then, just many different opportunities started opening up for me while I was here, as I was running the company here. We expanded and expanded, and then, finally, we ended up selling that company in 2015. The company expanded quite a bit and we sold it here locally to some investors in 2015.

Tim Abbott:

But how it shows up to me is just the opportunities. People want a chance, right? People want a real chance to be able to prove that they can perform, and for me, that's all that I ask for, that people are given a chance. That's why the majority of my work is about helping people become the best that they can be, and giving them chances to show who they are and what they can do. That's how it shows up for me.

Dr. Dave:

That's wonderful. So, in terms of some of your own personal social justice experiences, what were they that challenged you to want you to bring about change?

Tim Abbott:

I grew up in, I wouldn't say privilege, but my parents did fairly well and I ended up going to an HBCU for undergradu...

Growing your leadership agility with Positive Intelligence with Ann-Marie Kong

 If you could be happier and increase your performance exponentially with 15 minutes of daily practice, would you do it? 

You live in a rapidly changing, volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous and interconnected world. To meet the adaptive challenges you face today, you need to evolve in your ways of thinking and being. You are having to evolve at a rate that matches or exceeds the rate of escalating complexity in the world. You need to develop your consciousness, character and compassion. 

Leadership agility is your ability to take wise and effective action amid complex, rapidly changing conditions. Positive Intelligence is a pathway to developing your leadership agility. 

Positive Intelligence enables you to recover faster to shift from your inner critics/saboteurs to your Sage by developing your mental fitness muscles. Mental fitness is your capacity for handling life's great challenges with a positive mindset rather than getting stressed and upset. 

Ann-Marie Kong is a Transformation Leadership & Co-Active Agile Coach, creative catalyst, avid learner, community grower, and a generous, joyful, playful and grateful soul. She is on a journey of living her life’s purpose, shifting from a life of success to a life of significance where success is aligned with significance, and making a meaningful difference in the world by sharing enduring love. 

Connect with her via https://www.linkedin.com/in/ann-marie-kong or https://transformingleaders.ca/book-ann-marie 

Join me in welcoming Ann-Marie Kong to share on growing your leadership agility with Positive Intelligence. 

Ashanti Gardner, BIPOC Graphic Recorder Shares Social Justice Experiences

Dr. Dave:

Hello, and welcome to the KnolShare with Dr. Dave podcasts. This is Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host. The conversation today is with Ashanti Gardner, a graphic facilitator and recorder, and a co-collaborator in the Agile for Humanity, meetup and conference. So. Hey. Welcome, Ashanti.

Ashanti:

Thank you.

Dr. Dave:

So, we met at the future of work event in 2020, and we had all the stuff going on, kind of hard to keep track of. And I learned about your capability as a graphic recorder. Tell me more about Ashanti. Let me know about you.

Ashanti:

Yeah. So I'm originally from the Midwest and I've always had a passion for painting and drawing. It's always been in me. And yeah, I'm just someone who is very curious. I like to come into spaces with the beginner's mindset. I love learning new things and I love experimenting. And that's something I enjoy even more when I do it with other people. So, the whole idea of co-creation collaboration is very near and dear to me. And, for me, this is a journey right now that I'm going on trying to get more into the social innovation impact and change space, because I really, at this moment in time, I really want to help people, be an advocate for people. So, for me, this is truly a shift, and I just feel like it's the right time. It's just always been in me, but I probably haven't been brave enough to step out. And the timing is right, so it's time for me to step out and do the work I was meant to do.

Dr. Dave:

That is so great to hear. So, I just want to let you know, you're like the first BIPOC graphic recorder that I've met, but I've worked in the Agile community. So, tell me more about that journey into the space.

Ashanti:

Yeah. So, there are a few of us out here. But yeah, my journey into graphic recording really started when I was trying to figure out how to take better notes, just for my own self. And I was just struggling. Every time I was writing something down, I would go back to it, and I wasn't quite sure what I meant to write. I' didn't understand the connection between some of what I wrote, and I would have things in different places. And I started searching on YouTube for a solution, because that's where you go, to YouTube for everything. So, I was like, "Somebody has to have another way of taking notes." And that's when I came across visual note taking and I fell in love with it immediately. And I just thought, "This makes sense. It's genius." and it really helped me out a lot.

Ashanti:

And I started reflecting back on a time when I actually saw a graphic recorder at a conference, and I've always been curious about it, but again, didn't really ask anybody about it, search for it but I remembered it. And then I just started talking to people and asking people in my network. And eventually, that led me to other people who were doing graphic recording. It led me to Nova Scribes, which is a huge community in the DC area. And now it's gone really global because of the pandemic. It's Really opened up space for more people. But it's a credible community and very welcoming. And yeah, I started there and I've met Lisa Nelson, who is a black woman, who has a business in Maryland called See In Colors.

Ashanti:

And when I saw her on the panel, then I was like, "Wow, I'm not the only one." And it slowly, over time, I went to the international forum of visual practitioners conference. And then I saw more people who looked like me. Not many of us, but I see the potential for that to grow. And I feel like graphic recording, even graphic facilitation is becoming even more popular. It's been around for decades,

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,