Agile Team Coaching

How to Gain True Mastery in Agile Team Coaching

How we lead and how we manage are the basic competencies in team settings. But leadership is a craft that requires investment and growth. Now more than ever, the survival and success of our organizations depends on making strategic change where it matters most.

Agile Team Coaches are called upon daily to help teams grow, develop and become high performing agile teams. To do this well, Agile Team Coaches need depth in a variety of competencies.

Mastery in agile team coaching is about being able to sense what is needed most in the moment and dance among various competencies in order to show up in the way that will best support team growth and performance, in that moment.

In the ICAgile Coaching Track we identify five discrete competencies, the sides of the Agile Coaching Competency Wheel: Facilitation, Professional Coaching, Professional Team Coaching, Training and Mentoring. Let’s start with the two competencies on the left, the ones that require that we know what we are talking about, that we have content knowledge.

Training

When the people we work with have a gap in their understanding of Agile, or the frameworks, principles, values or techniques, even the mindset, education is where we turn to. If they simply do not know, it is our job to provide them with the knowledge, something which is often the case at the start of someone’s Agile journey. When we think about training we tend to think of formal workshops, leveraging theories of adult learning, but training can also be in the moment, sharing context appropriate knowledge on the spot. The right information, at the right time, in the right way.

Mentoring

As people progress on their journey the emphasis moves to applying the knowledge they have acquired. At this point the competency of mentoring – providing one’s wisdom and guidance of the subject matter to guide the situation at hand – becomes important. The mentor is clear about what they know and what they don’t and they use a coaching approach, rather than telling the client what to do. Mentoring may include coaching, counseling and advising, but the action taken stays the choice of the individual being mentored.

Agile Team Coaching Certification

Coaching as powerful leadership, our Agile Team Coaching workshop and certification, gives coaches the space to explore and apply a model for coaching and mentoring conversations so that they are able to distinguish the difference between them and know when to intentionally use which

Practice coaching skills in one on one and small group conversations
Guide others to make intentional and empowered choices so that they achieve their desired objectives
Coach the journey to team high performance so that they work as a holistic integrated system.
Explore the unique characteristics of an Agile team.
Uncover and effectively resolve team conflict, resistance and dysfunction so they learn how to self-manage.

If you are interested in attending this workshop, learn more and register here.

Agile Team Facilitation

Another, second, highly recommended certification that pairs with Agile coaching is the Agile Team Facilitation workshop.

During the Agile Team Facilitation workshop participants learn to design and lead engaging, purposeful, and fun meetings that achieve the desired results every time.

Explore the cornerstones of the facilitation stance so you confidently know what’s needed from you in any situation.

Practice the steps of planning and design, using pre-defined templates so that you can stop spinning your wheels and wasting time before every meeting.
Practice facilitation where you will learn to put the stance and skills into practice.
Apply the facilitation mindset where you will learn to put the stance and the skills into practice.
You will plan and design a facilitated session with mentoring from your instructors.
You’ll conduct the facilitation and get feedback from your instructors and participants.

Coaches with both an Agile Coaching as well as the Agile Team Facilitation certifications, are offered a unique opportunity.

An 8-month cohort to gain a true mastery in Agile coaching!

Mastery through Practice

While you can learn concepts and practice skills of agile team coaching, real mastery is grown through practice – with real people and real teams in your real world. Imagine having the opportunity to practice and getting specific feedback that helps you, as an agile coach, grow.

Emphasis on practice and feedback opportunities through skill drills, peer coaching, team coaching, ongoing group work, professional one-on-one coaching and one-on-one supervision of actual Agile coaching sessions.

Students will have ample opportunity to learn from.

What Will a Cohort Expose?

You’ll no longer feel off balance when conflict arises with your team because you’ve had plenty of time to integrate your coaching and facilitation skills in a rigorous, feedback-rich environment.

There will be no more winging it or playing safe hoping no one will notice.

Skills and growth will be mirrored back to students in real time. No more simulations or just theory. All of the feedback you receive is based on your work with your real teams.

Strategic Changes in Leadership

What we have found and implemented through the Coaching Agility from Within™ program is that there are specific competencies essential to effective leadership.

Collectively, these competencies signal that a collective leadership culture begins with how individual leaders show up. It’s about how they engage with and impact their teams, and it’s about the self-awareness that it takes to know our impact and make choices that align with our intention.

True Mastery in Agile Coaching!

Anyone can call themselves an agile coach. What sets a truly agile leader apart, however, is someone who has a demonstrated proficiency in agile team coaching. After all, adaptive challenges do not come with roadmaps, they require new ways of engaging and leading through the process of dialogue.

The Coaching Agility from Within™ program is designed to guide agile coaches along the pathway to proficiency in each leadership competency, providing key solutions for teams needing sustainable, systemic change.

It offers insight into best practices for how to move leadership forward by:

Growing your own, internal leadership
Growing leadership at all levels
Developing a team coaching capability
Turning theory into action

Over the course of the program, cohort members come to see facilitation and coaching as a craft to be developed, as well as an essential leadership skill. In addition to expanding their understanding of the traditional model of leading from the front, members learn what it means to lead from the back and how to lead by partnering.

Along the way, the program facilitates tough conversations that emerge for the cohort about the tensions created in the process of growing their leadership range, and it supports their awareness of how they, as leaders, can best support a team’s ability to perform more effectively. Leaders with range are far more likely to discover a clearer path and lead more sustainable change. And our experience with this program shows that the best way to grow leadership range is to focus on competency development around mindset—identifying and examining values and beliefs about how change happens and the role of leaders in team settings.

From this foundation, focus can expand to include skill building, learning retention, experiential learning, and reflective practices.

When we move to the right hand side of the competency wheel we let go of our subject matter knowledge in order to serve our clients best. The aim of agile coaching is to develop the natural wisdom of those we coach, not to make them dependent on us. As they grow in their agility we need to grow their confidence in their ability to solve their own problems, which means we step away from solving their problems for them and allow their own wisdom to come forward.

Facilitation

Facilitation is the art of leading people through a series of activities to achieve predetermined outcomes in such a way that everyone participates and buys in. A lot of people think that facilitation means running a meeting, throwing in your own ideas while you are at it, but a true facilitator stays neutral, fades into the background when conversations flow, skillfully encourages exploration of all options, manages dysfunction, to name but a few skills. Good facilitation is essential for good collaboration.

Professional Coaching

Our clients are generally able to solve their own problems, if we support and believe in them. In professional coaching we believe we are there to stimulate our client’s thinking and reflection in a creative way. We bring our neutrality and care, they bring their problem, and together we create the right conditions to explore the options. We do that through listening intently, reflecting what we hear and see, through asking thought-provoking questions, and a multitude of other coaching tools and techniques. We want our clients to fulfill their personal and professional potential, at their pace, reaching the goals they set for themselves. We make sure that they come up with an action that moves them in the direction of their goals, and we hold them responsible and accountable.

Coaching someone means that we stick to their agenda, their pace of change, their solutions to the problems they bring. It therefore means we let go of our own agendas, opinions, judgements and solutions about what actions they should take.

Professional Team Coaching

Professional Team Coaching utilizes the same mindset, has the same objectives and a similar approach to Professional Coaching, but it adds an additional dimension : maximizing team performance. It makes use of the team’s collective intelligence, and it brings in a systems view to reveal to the team what is happening in their system, rather than for every member individually. A team coach needs to know how to access the team’s collective intelligence, including creating the conditions for all voices to be heard. The coach holds the team responsible and accountable, and importantly, teaches the team to coach themselves.

It must be clear to you by now that Agile Coaching borrows heavily from a number of professions, and we have a lot to learn from these professionals. You can choose to study each of these disciplines separately, or you can attend one of our certified workshops to start your journey!

What You Need to Know about Leadership, Agile Coaching and Competency

How do we become agile? There is no one path, right way, or best practice.

At TeamCatapult, however, years of research, experience, and data collection have convinced us that investing in leadership mindset is the best way to change an organizational culture so that it can become more agile, innovative, and sustainable.

Leadership is a Craft that Requires Investment and Growth

Our Coaching Agility from Within™ program offers a usable case study to show how building a culture of leadership inspires and compels team productivity and individual accomplishment, both of which are crucial components of product development and organizational growth.

Investing in leadership mindset is one of the most effective and sustainable choices organizations can make—especially as we confront a “new normal” in the global marketplace. Becoming agile is a complex, adaptable problem. Simply investing in agile tools, scalable methodologies, or process improvement tips and tricks results in minimal gains for service and product development. Building a culture that inspires and nurtures team growth and development, however, goes to the very heart of creating a sustainable organization that can navigate change.

Competency Defined

Going beyond Agile Team Coaching certification, means acquiring competency.

Competency:

“The combination of observable and measurable knowledge, skills, abilities and personal attributes that contribute to enhanced employee performance and ultimately result in organizational success.”

Acquiring Competency

Increased performance outcomes are the direct result of the fact that the competencies of individual coaching, team coaching, mentoring, training, and facilitation help leaders build their range of leadership. At TeamCatapult, we call this “leadership range.” It refers to the ability of individuals to lead from the front and set a clear direction. It also refers to their ability to lead from behind, empowering others to make the move and understanding how to support ideas and create space for all voices to be heard.

Growing Leadership Competency

Physical manifestations of culture can be seen across an organization, in nearly every aspect of how people work, interact, and produce. Culture is socially constructed by the words we use and the behaviors we enact, and although it is emergent (often developing organically), it is surprisingly stable.

For all these reasons, behavior change takes time and requires a fundamental mindset shift. Altering an organization’s culture requires each of us to look at the stories and beliefs that we tell ourselves—the ones that we hold onto that get in our way of learning new ways of thinking, acting, and leading. It also requires us to work together to change the collective narrative. Culture change happens through conversations and the structure of the way we speak and behave together—and it happens from the top down. Growing leadership competency is a cornerstone of creating organizational change.

Cultural Shifts for Change

A comprehensive cultural shift is needed for organizations to create sustainable change. The key to keeping up in a rapidly changing work environment and global marketplace is to scale leadership—and scale in new ways.

Is your organization ready for change?
Start here!

About Leadership, Horses and The Importance of Trust

Weekend Woes Turned In a Lesson in Leadership

We were scheduled to take the horses, Cranberry and Faust, out for the weekend to get fitted for new saddles. Saddles that will fit them better and simply make it more enjoyable for them when they are ridden.

So these plans for the weekend were very exciting. The weather was amazing and all the stars seemed aligned.

Except for one thing…the horses were having nothing to do with it.

We Cannot Make Someone Do Something

No matter what we tried, no matter how long we spent with them, no matter how we asked, they would not get into the trailer.

Horses are well known for their ability to teach leadership. Working with a horse provides an incredible metaphor for leadership. It’s about learning to lead through partnership, relationship, trust and communication – it has very little to do with the words you speak and a lot more to do with the space and relationship you create.

Horses and the Leadership Lessons They Teach

I learned (or re-learned) a familiar lesson this weekend, you cannot make a horse do anything. We have two beautiful creatures who have come to be part of our family but this weekend they were a combined 2500 pounds of, “Nope. Ain’t gonna do that.”

It was super frustrating because we knew what was in store for them. We had this perfect vision of what a great experience we had planned for them. With an outcome that had their best interest at heart. But the thing is, they had another agenda. Their agenda was driven by fear and uncertainty.

Trust Is Earned Over Time

We lost hours, and Saturday was gone. We tried again on Sunday. Even brought in our horse trainer. An expert we were certain would tackle this problem and convince the horses to trust us and let us guide them to a new experience that we were sure they would enjoy.

Except for one thing…the horses were having nothing to do with it.

Cranberry finally decided she would give it a try on Sunday but Faust made the choice to stay home.

How Do Humans Decide Whom To Trust?

As humans, we are always at choice, even if it doesn’t feel like it. We make choices of ‘this’ not ‘that’, all day long.

I’ll be honest, there were moments during these two days that I was tired, hungry, worn out and just plain wanted the dang horse to get in the dang trailer so we could make the dang appointment we made. I hate being late and making others wait.

The more frustrated I got the less patience I had. And I’m quite certain they could tell!

Are You Impatient with Change?

Where do you find yourself impatient with change? Are there times when you just want to tell your team to ‘get on with it’ or when someone asks why should I do it this way you feel like saying ‘because I said so and I can see so much potential here if you would just do what I tell you to do’.

In organizations leaders can be lulled into thinking that they can make people do something by offering consequences to saying no – like firing someone or not offering them the next opportunity that comes. In reality if people don’t buy into what they are being asked to contribute to they might go through the motions to make you believe they are compliant but oftentimes the real conversation goes underground. They look like they are compliant but the real conversation becomes covert.

Taking Action on Something You Believe In

All the convincing, cajoling or influencing in the world will not make someone take an action they don’t believe in.

Faust was the same way this weekend. He wasn’t ready.

This weekend became a lesson about leadership that I will hold onto. About trust. About what I bring to a situation. About accepting that I cannot change someone’s mind. That it’s not about me, but more about how I arrive as a leader, with horses or with humans. It speaks volumes about my notion that I can make someone do anything…just because I want them to and I’ve laid out this great outcome that everyone should want to be a part of it.

Building Trust Starts with Communication

Leadership is so many things and one of the basics is How You Show Up. Building trust. Learning to communicate. Listening to the other. Getting clear about roles and responsibilities. Setting boundaries. Letting go of my agenda. Inviting others into a conversation. Listening. Seeking to understand the other. Seizing the opportunities from past experiences and learning from them. And as a Team Facilitator, how to honor the facilitation stance.

Enhance Your Leadership Journey With TeamCatapult

If any of this resonates with you, we have many opportunities on the horizon for enhancing your leadership journey. Take a look at our upcoming workshops.

Thanks to Faust and Cranberry, our whole family had a leadership lesson this weekend and I know I’m a better leader today because of it.

What’s your journey stepping stone looking like?

Marsha

How To Best Guide Your Team With Virtual Team Facilitation

Leaders, is your team scattered across the nation, or the globe? Are you struggling to keep your team focussed, cohesive and productive? Whether your team is virtual due to the recent coronavirus pandemic or had been a virtual team by-design, facilitating a team remotely is easy in concept, but more challenging in reality.

Fortunately, TeamCatapult has been in the remote work and remote team facilitation space for a long time! We have experience in this space and have been conducting Virtual Team Facilitation workshops for years.

While attending a recent workshop, attendee Lisa from Get The Picture created this incredible resource for virtual team leaders. This is what was discussed and learned on Day1. At first blush, it’s probably hard to land on a starting point. We’ve outlined some salient points that touch on the flow of the workshop.

Getting Started With Virtual Team Facilitation

The first thing to do when facilitating a virtual team meeting is to reduce distractions. We recommend that attendees do one or all of these:

Silence their phone
Shut the door
Close their email tab

While your team members take care of these things on their end, you as the facilitator should take care of some business as well!

Tips for the Virtual Team Facilitator

1 Display a Welcome Screen

This assures everyone has come to the right place. This also makes everyone feel welcome.

2 Use a Slack channel for Parking Lot

Be sure to clear it out by the end of the day! If you are unfamiliar with this term, the ‘Parking Lot’ is where you post follow up questions and discussions that might lead you on a path away from what you are teaching at the moment.

Noting the responses and answers about any of the items and ‘clearing’ them at the end of the day validates the importance of questions without cutting into the formal workshop time.

3 Use a Virtual Circle in Mural to Open

You can use photos of attendees, and invite people to ‘sit next to someone’. Once everyone is seated in the circle (virtual) take time for everyone to introduce themselves. Again, this helps new attendees feel welcome and wanted.

4 Use Breakout Rooms in Zoom

Ask people to reach you in Slack if you are needed during the breakout session. Zoom breakout rooms are a great way to have small group discussions among attendees. We use these rooms so teams can work on simulations while capturing notes in Mural.

Timezones, Technology and Ground Rules

There are things that can go wrong when using technology, from the challenge of varying time zones, to not being able to connect, to having unstable Wifi. Expect these issues, but be sure to set ground rules!

Set and Scribe Ground Rules

Be in a quiet place
Be off mute
Be on video
Be on time
Pay attention

Ask: ‘What do you need of me?’ and ‘What do you need of each other?’

Include ways to handle collisions. For example – be clear how you will handle two people speaking at once. It does happen so have a plan in place from the beginning.

Low Stakes Virtual Team Facilitation

Often times meetings can get into a “high-stakes” atmosphere, where there are, simply put, conflicts within the team on an issue. The question for a facilitator is how will you slow things down and make it feel low stakes and safe to continue on with the conflict?

Here are three solutions:

Narrate
Chunk instructions
Normalize

Use Question Prompts to Incite Curiosity

Get people outside of their normal ways of thinking about their work! Using question prompts gets attendees to open up and participate and move beyond what’s may have them stuck on how to talk about and resolve a topic.

Virtual Team Facilitation Design Tips!

Here are 3 design tips that might help you organize your next virtual meeting.

Resist the urge to jump to tools
Test… is a meeting actually needed?
Use offline time to do work!

Learn More About Virtual Team Facilitation!

To find out more about Virtual Team Facilitation, check out what Lisa learned on Day 2 of the Virtual Team Facilitation Workshop!

We are grateful for Lisa’s willingness to share these visuals with you, our audience, to provide you with a glimpse into the world of Virtual Team Facilitation

Whether it is you, your leadership team, or your company that needs help with Virtual Team Facilitation, TeamCatapult is able to lend a hand.

Please contact us today for more information for both private and public Virtual Facilitation Masterclass workshops.

Why We hold Check-in and Check-out as a Sacred Space

The Practice of Check-In: How Voicing and Listening Create Opportunities for Deeper Engagement

by Kari McLeod and Marsha Acker

Check-In Time!

What did you learn yesterday?

What is something you’re committing to the team today?

What do you need from the team today?

These are versions of the questions we ask during the Check-in for the second day of our TeamCatapult Agile Facilitation class and our Agile Facilitation and Coaching Intensive.

We asked it this Tuesday at the start of a Virtual Intensive we are leading for an organization. We met on Zoom and we used a virtual circle to visually connect our participants, our learners.

It was the most moving Check-in I have ever witnessed.

The first participant who checked in bottom-lined her key take-away from the day before. She then committed to being as present as possible for the day. She told us that the events of the previous evening were weighing heavily on her. She said that it was difficult to imagine being at her computer, in training for most of the day. She is concerned for the nation. She then asked for grace and patience from the rest of the class because she was bound to be distracted.

Her openness, her rawness set the tone for the Check-in.

Making Space

How do we as facilitators, coaches, and trainers make space for what is happening in our world while helping participants get as present as possible?

We at TeamCatapult hold the Check-in and Check-out as a sacred space.

It is the way we invite our learners to be present.
It is one of the ways that we create a strong container for our participants to connect and build trust.
It is one of the ways we create safety for them to learn, share, fail, and learn more.

We have been holding these opening spaces at every meeting and for every class since we started our work. And we have felt that these spaces have been even more important in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Considering the protests, riots, and the resulting law enforcement and political reactions and responses following George Floyd’s death, it’s clearly even more critical to be attuned to the need for that space.

Opportunities for Deeper Engagement

Going back to the Check-in on Tuesday, our participants held our opening circle, our Check-in, as a sacred space. They were vulnerable. They were as present as they could be. I had tears in my eyes. After everyone had checked in, one of my colleagues paused and acknowledged all of the emotion that was in the space. And then we introduced the agenda.

Bringing Our Whole Selves To Work

In the remote, working environment, we are breaking through the old narratives that there is a “work self” and a “home self.” We now bring our whole selves to work.

Everything that we are watching in our society today, and the personal impact it has on us, comes with us into the workplace. Pretending that it doesn’t or creating artificial barriers prohibits collective intelligence and authentic engagement. It drains people rather than engaging them.

Facilitating a Check-In

Purpose: The concept of Check-In comes from dialogue. Its purpose is to allow everyone a chance to speak. It’s also an opportunity to listen deeply to what others are saying and it allows everyone a period of transition from what they were doing before to connecting to one another and getting present to the work ahead.

The prompt:

Have a question or a prompt for Check-in like:

What’s your state of mind?
How are you feeling?
What do you want to say to become more present?
What do you want to let go of?

You can also make the Check-in about the topic of the meeting:

What are you hoping to take away from today?
What are your thoughts about ____.

The process:

People share, but in no particular order and no need to call on each other.
Speak when you are ready.
Really listen to what’s said and not said.
Allow for uninterrupted Check-ins. (Ask the group to allow everyone to speak without comments or cross talk until you’ve heard from everyone.)

When you’ve heard from everyone then open up the conversation to questions and comments.

This process that we hold as a sacred space is a practice that you can implement right now, at your next meeting. By doing so, you’ll find that the practice of Check-In honors everyone’s voice and develops the skill of listening…both create opportunities for deeper engagement.