Leanpitch Story Writing Contest: Coaching -WHY, HOW and WHAT?

In Jan 2018, Leanpitch has organized a story writing contest. Asked participants to write a story for at least a page covering the below points

• How coaching has helped you or someone you know?
• What do you understand by Coaching?
• Why do you want to become a coach?

I took a chance to share my story and has become one of the three winners. It gave me a chance to attend ICP-ACC workshop facilitated by Vivek Jayaraman. Thank you Leanpitch for the opportunity. Sharing the same here. 

How coaching has helped you or someone you know?

I would say, coaching has changed the way I think and helped me to be what I am today. As a client, I have benefited immensely by the coaching.. from being stuck in a simple task at work to some of the most emotional moments.

In 2006, have completed my masters and working in a corporate. There was always a confusion in my mind whether to work in corporate or go for Ph.D. This confusion has led me to sleepless nights as I was working on both – was managing my work and applying for Ph.D. positions in the evening. Wasn’t able to decide which one to choose and proceed. Had a discussion with one of my seniors and explained to him…he heard it patiently and asked me a question: What do you want to achieve in your life? What is your purpose in life?

In 2012, was looking for new opportunities and giving interviews. With one of the MNCs, I had an interesting discussion. The question which made the discussion interesting is “Who are you as an individual?” Even after many years of the interview, I have been thinking about this question

These questions have made me to delve into myself and think a lot about my aspirations, interests, improvements and introspect.  I have been helped by coaches around me to seek answers, to know and trust in oneself and to become a better human being day by day. I have transformed myself from a self-doubting, cynical, midlife crisis person to a more confident, more assertive and a person looking at the endless possibility of options life has to offer me.

What do you understand by Coaching?

For a long time, I understood coaching is to teach someone a special skill. A one to one/one to many relationships where knowledge transfer happens, for example, a teacher and pupil. Much of such knowledge about coaching was learned by studying our great epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata and the mentions like Rama, Arjuna, and their teachers like Vashistha and Dronacharya respectively.

My understanding of the word “Coaching” has changed drastically as I have explored more into coaching. My current understanding of Coaching is - it’s a conversation, where coach actively listens to what client says and asks thought-provoking questions, which would help the client to explore the current state, target state and the path to be taken to reach the target state. There are different types of coaching I have come across, to quote some. i.e. Life coaching, career coaching, performance coaching, sports coaching, business coaching, executive coaching, group coaching, behavioral coaching, and Agile coaching. Though there are different types of coaching, objective of any coach is to help the client. It’s all about your coachee/client and their goals.

Coaches never provide solutions to client’s challenges or problems even if they have resolved in their experience as context, belief system and thought process is different from individual to other individual. Coach is someone who sheds light on the person’s own latent answers to the questions he encounters. These questions can be related to career, life, or even a small task at hand. Coach is someone, by seeking information, helps elicit the answers to the client.

Why do you want to become a coach?

To help myself and others. We, human beings have quest for answers, a quest for truth in our own little worlds. Without the right answers, our lives are at best consumed than lived fully. I want to help people to realize their true potential. Help them to untangle themselves in the unproductive thought patterns.

It is continuous and awesome learning journey so far, interacting with different individuals have added some learnings to me. Smile on my client’s face, gratitude in my client’s eyes have given me immense satisfaction, confidence and motivation to get ready for next coaching conversation.

I understand it’s a big responsibility to be a coach and being in coach’s stance and I enjoy giving myself completely to work towards my client’s objectives. Happy coaching!

The intent behind sharing this journey is to spark some thoughts around coaching. Thank you and have a good day. Please feel free to share your feedback to sathrambalaji@gmail.com

Asking Feedback: Valuable Questions

To be an effective team player, Facilitator, or as a trainer - It is very crucial to know what others think about your way of working. It helps the person to inspect the past and adapt for the better future.

Have you ever shared all the feedback in your mind?

Would you be able to share the feedback if some training is useless to you?

I understand there are a lot of factors influencing the way you provide your feedback. Was thinking for quite a lot of time about possibilities of getting the honest feedback from my participants, team members and from my coachees. Thought-provoking questions would help explore different aspects of the context or situation in which we are in.

We had a new joiner in our team. After one of our team meeting, I asked him How was the meeting? New joiner hesitantly told me that meeting was good and started listing all so-called good things happened in the meeting and not uttered a single word about negatives. I am sure New joiner has some suggestions for improving our team.

It might be because of being new, lack of psychological safety, need more time to observe or many more human factors. I was keen to get his feedback that we can improve. Now the question is HOW?

In our next conversation, I asked him

Thank you for sharing your feedback about our last team meeting. 

What are the observations you don’t want to share about the meeting?

This question has surprised both of us. I am writing this blog to share the question which created fun and a different thought process in the conversation.

Purpose of asking this question might be different from a person to person. Here is my purpose why I asked this question.

·      Setting the context that it’s not only about what went well and to know about another side too

·      Showing the readiness to accept feedback even if it is worse

·      Sharing the intention for improvement

·      To make your participants think, explore

The question might not get you answers if you don’t have a rapport with the person you are asking. So, spend some time building rapport before asking this question.

Adding different personas and context to the question.

What are the observations you would sharing with your close friends?

What are the observations you would sharing with your family members?

If you are the facilitator for the next meeting, what would you change?

The above questions will place them to think from different perspectives about the same meeting, training, coaching or facilitation. Thank you for reading. If you have any feedback (want to share & don’t want to share), please add it in comments or send it to sathrambalaji@gmail.com

Are you Looking for a Coach?

If yes, then you are in the right place.

“All are equal by Birth, they are what they are today because of their experiences with life” – which means every one of us has the same potential as others and our actions have designed what we are today…

“Behind every great and successful person, there is a great Coach”

Till date, you have achieved many things in your life and now, you need some help to reach to next level of your life., seeking help is very common, when you need to take major decisions in your life and Coach can provide you with unbiased, genuine and honest guidance, while others (friends, relatives and others who know you) can advise you based on their perceptions about you and the situation. But Coach always focuses on determining what matters most to you in an honest way by helping you to explore/analyze the context you are in.

It’s very common to get stuck in life. Even great coaches have gone through this phase in life and took help from other coaches.

You might be in any profession (Actor, Actress, Entrepreneur, CEO, CFO, Executive, Student or any other role) and you might be in need of self-branding, creating great popular social image, coming up with clear goals, creating strategy for business, achieving goals, to come out of bad addictions etc….

Are you stuck in your life?

Want a life full of positiveness?

Want to be successful in life?

Want to achieve your goals?

Want to move towards greatness?

Do you feel something is holding back?

Act now and change the way you are leading your life… What are you waiting for… reach out to coachingyogi@gmail.com to schedule your session and the first 30 minutes is free!!!

What makes an Agile Leader?

“What makes an Agile leader?” is the most frequently asked question in my leadership workshops. Although there is lots of research and data available on leadership, there is no clear information on what makes an Agile leader.

Based on my experience with leadership coaching, I would like to explain what is expected from an Agile leader. Before getting into the specifics, let’s go through what being a leader is all about.

Jack Welch of GE defined a leader as an individual who “ … is considered to be someone with vision and [the] ability to articulate that vision to the team so vividly and powerfully that it becomes their vision.”

Why leaders are so important in any organization?

I don’t want to belabor the importance of leaders; instead, I’ll use the quotes below to summarize it nicely.

As the land so the [ground] water, as the seed so the sprout.

As the region [country] so the language, as the king so the people. — Sanskrit proverb

“People are often led to causes and often become committed to great ideas through persons who personify those ideas. They have to find the embodiment of the idea in flesh and blood in order to commit themselves to it.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

The leadership role creates the organizational culture

I watched Ahmed Sidky’s YouTube videos, in one of which he explains the organizational ecosystem and organizational culture, which are formed from five elements:

1. Leadership (style, values, and habits)
2. Strategy (goals, measures of success, and rewards)
3. Structure (roles and responsibilities, decision, and organization)
4. Process (value chain, policies, operations, and business processes)
5. People (values, beliefs, attitudes, norms, and habits)

Leadership makes most of their decisions related to strategy, structure, process, and people. Thus, leaders play a key role in impacting the organizational culture.

The leader’s role in the Agile transformation

Leaders play a key role in the success of the organizational Agile transformation. Here’s an outline of what is expected from Agile leaders during an Agile transformation, broken down into the three main phases of that transformation.

Before the Agile transformation

• Leaders must be clear about answering the question, “Why is my organization moving to the Agile way of working?” They must ensure that they convey the objectives/purpose of the Agile transformation all the way through to the last employee, while maintaining its meaning.
• Change the organizational structure, if it is not going to support your Agile transformation strategy. For example, form feature teams from component teams. Identify infrastructure requirements and set them up.
• Do a skill mapping within your teams and check whether you have the end-to-end skills required to fulfill the work requests (e.g., it could be new product development whereby your journey is from product backlog item to product increment, or it could be a service request that adds value to the customer). Hire team members if any specific roles are required for the Agile transformation.
• Do a readiness assessment for the teams to know whether they are ready for the change or whether there are any changes necessary to get them ready. Leaders can seek the help of Agile coaches here. One simple but important question to ask: “Are we ready for change?”
• Communication is key. Communicate the details of the Agile transformation with all the team members. Have conversations with teams, understand their hopes and fears, and create a psychologically safe environment. Communicate for success.

During the Agile transformation

• Collaborate with the Agile coach and transformation team, and share your expectations and observations. Provide all the support required to the teams, individuals, and Agile coaches to make them self-organized and empowered.
• Believe in the Agile Manifesto (Agile values and principles). Start practicing it. Be a role model for teams by practicing what you preach. Exhibit behaviors that are expected from your teams or from individuals who report to you.
• Encourage teams to fail fast. Reward or celebrate failures.
• Train teams and leaders on Agile (based on your organization’s strategy) and in other skills required in teams. Trainings or workshops help teams gain more knowledge and start working in an Agile way.

      Continue Reading

   

Agile Retrospectives: An Opportunity for Continuous Improvement

Agile Retrospectives: Agile has different frameworks, methodologies and practices under its umbrella. Out of which Retrospection is a key practice for team improvement with respect to people, process and product. 

WHAT is a Retrospective meeting?

•       Last activity in the sprint. Ideal duration for the retrospective meeting would be 3 Hours for 1 month iteration/sprint.

•       A retrospective is a team activity, where team members meet (preferred face to face) to understand their current process, discuss how it can be improved, and generate action items that can be acted on or before the next retrospective.

•       Frequent opportunity for team to inspect self and search for improvements, review and reflect

WHO would be part of it?

•       Development Team, Scrum Master and Product Owner

•       Strictly no stakeholders/managers

WHY Retrospection?

•       Improving process, How do we get better?

•       Learning from past mistakes

•       Celebrating accomplishments

•       Getting your team on the same page

•       To create a safe environment where team members can speak up and share their thoughts

•       To take inclusive decisions

•       Review Definition of Done (DoD)

•       Improving your work environment

•       Making good teams great

HOW to do a Retrospective meeting?

In the book “Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great” written by Esther derby and Diana Larsen, authors suggest a flexible framework to improve retrospectives

•       Set the stage.

•       Gather data.

•       Generate insights.

•       Decide what to do.

•       Close the retrospective.

Set the stage:

•       Facilitator establishes the focus for this retrospective

•       Share the plan for the meeting

•       Establish or re-purpose working agreements

•       Get every voice in the room

Gather Data:

•       Create a shared pool of data

•       Ground the retrospective in facts, not opinion

•       Consider objective and subjective experience

Generate Insights:

•       Understand systemic influences & root causes

•       Observe patterns

•       Move beyond habitual thinking

•       Build shared awareness

•       See system effects

Decide What to Do:

•       Move from discussion to action

•       Resolve on one or two actions or experiments

•       Focus on what the team can accomplish

•       Ask what the team has energy for, not what is “most important”

Close the retrospective:

•       Reiterate actions and follow-up

•       Appreciate contributions

•       Identify ways to make the next retrospective better

Retrospective meeting - Challenges:

·      Facilitator speaking more compared to the participants (Facilitation skill to be improved).

·      Facilitator not being judgmental, opinionated.

·      Creating psychologically safe environment for all the team members to speak up.

·      Discussions based on facts than assumptions.

·      Empower the team and take out tensions if any.

·      Getting team members active participation/involvement for team improvement.

·      Making retrospectives fun and interesting.

·      Facilitating retrospection by considering all personas, context of the team.

·      Coming up with meaningful action items.

·      Enabling team members to volunteer for owning the action items.

·      Team members blaming other team members.

·      Aligning the discussions with business interest.

Different Retrospective Techniques:

Facilitator should use different retrospective techniques to keep retrospectives fun, interesting and meaningful. There are many retrospectives available, let’s discuss some of the techniques we have used with our teams.

Star Fish/Wheel Retrospection

•       Start Doing

•       Stop Doing

•       Keep Doing

•       Do Less

•       Do More

 Well, not Well, Improvements

 Bollywood Style Retrospection

•       Hero- Keep Doing

•       Hero-ine: New Experiments

•       Comedian: Fun/Joy

•       Villain: Which stops you to continue

SCV Retrospection

•       The Supporter

•       The Critic

•       The Visionary

•       For more information: LINK

Sail Boat/Speed Boat Retrospection

•       WINDS: things that propel us

•       ANCHOR: things that are holding back

•       ICEBERG: Things to look out for (RISKS)

•       LIGHT: Improvements/Focus areas

Focus Retrospection

            Like, Dislike, Focus on Quality, Focus on Requirements

CAR Retrospection

            LIGHT: Focus Area

Brakes: Stopping us

Wheels: Helping us/Keep Doing

Smoke: Avoid/Stop doing

Like|Dislike, Challenges|Improvements 

4Ls Technique (Liked, Learned, Lacked and Longed for)

Impediments (Team and Organization Level)

Starbursting

STEP #1 –Starbursting

•       Variant of brainstorming, starbursting; While brainstorming churns out answers, starburstingis about coming up with questions.

•       ‘5Ws+1H’ –Who, When, Where, Why, What, How –one question per point. Then, get participants to write as many questions as they can think of for each category, and resist answering them at this stage.

STEP #2 –Three Questions

•       Review the questions together and pick the three most strategic questions to answer –questions whose answers are going to be absolutely key to solving the challenge. This round can be immensely powerful as it drives deep focus and alignment.

STEP #3 –Full Circle

•       Divide the team into three smaller groups where each will tackle one of the three strategic questions. To give everyone a chance to tackle each question, rotate each group to the next question after every twenty minutes or so, until all the groups have answered all three questions.

Football retrospection

            Key players

            Supporters

            Distractors

            Goals Scored

            Goals Given

Cricket Retrospection

            Boundaries

            Pitch

            Fielders

            Pavilion

            Cheer Leaders

CYNEFIN Retrospection

            I Loved

            I Liked

            I Don’t Like

            Please Stop

            I didn’t Understand

Six Thinking hats retrospection

            Blue-Process

            White-Facts

            Red-Feelings

            Green-Creativity

            Yellow-Benefits

            Black-Cautions

FLAP Retrospection

            F-Future Direction

            L-Lessons Learned

            A-Accomplishments

            P-Problem Areas

Retrospection-Focus on Scrum ceremonies

            Backlog Refinement

            Sprint Planning

            Daily Scrum

            Sprint Review

            Sprint Retrospection

Change | Implement

            3 things to Change

            3 things to Implement

Start, Stop and Improve

Mad, Sad and Glad

Open space Retrospection

•       Agenda is left to team members (It can be improvement or Focus areas or anything which is of concern)

•       Whatever discussion happens is the only thing that could have

•       When it’s over it’s over

Key Questions Rétrospective Technique

•       Our Biggest Constraint is

•       One thing I want to discuss in this retrospective is

•       One thing I am finding difficult is

•       One thing I don’t understand is

•       So far I have learned that

•       If I could change one thing right now, it would be…

•       We would collaborate better if we…

•       One difference between this and the best team I have worked in is…

•       How can we shorten our feedback loops?

•       Which of the company values are we following or not following?

These are some of the retrospective techniques, we have tried with teams working with. Thank you for taking time to read my blog. Please feel free to share your retrospective experience in comments and let the community know if you have got some innovative techniques to facilitate retrospectives.

References:

•       http://retrospectivewiki.org/index.php?title=Agile_Retrospective_Resource_Wiki

•       https://waynedgrant.wordpress.com/2012/04/01/sprint-retrospective-techniques/

•       “Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great” by Esther derby and Diana Larsen

•       CSM workshop conducted by Satisha Venkataramaiah (Leanpitch)

•       Nomad8 Blog