tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-138317772024-03-16T14:52:59.991-04:00Coaching AgilityCoaching to Increase AgilityDamon Poolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16561311551267979837noreply@blogger.comBlogger212125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13831777.post-46464124939440538352019-04-04T21:28:00.001-04:002019-04-16T09:43:06.209-04:00Take a Leap of Faith in Your Coaching<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYvNstN_X5Q4M-VBXCdtZJtVmnHGn5cwZAKiUQFSzv64wGkXE1MtrobiS1IYn3heZcD2s7PX1Nu3O0DPiPrsUDFldGBLt1oY83wlH-X99uFrzWXZfFitXd0qlfDeby3uouyOkt/s1600/courage-620x330.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="330" data-original-width="620" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYvNstN_X5Q4M-VBXCdtZJtVmnHGn5cwZAKiUQFSzv64wGkXE1MtrobiS1IYn3heZcD2s7PX1Nu3O0DPiPrsUDFldGBLt1oY83wlH-X99uFrzWXZfFitXd0qlfDeby3uouyOkt/s320/courage-620x330.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
There are many aspects of coaching that involve an element of risk. Taking a risk requires courage. Consider how the following coaching techniques require courage and how using or avoiding these techniques will impact your effectiveness as a coach.<br />
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<b>Providing candid feedback</b> –<a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/11/feedback-and-advice.html"> providing feedback</a> that is well received, considered and acted on is a skill. But how else is a coachee going to realize that they have a blind spot or are missing something important?<br />
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<b>Challenging </b>– as a coach, a big part of our job is to challenge our coachees in a constructive way to stretch their expectations and reconsider their perspectives, assumptions, and beliefs. Without this, they may never make the mindset shifts required to make a change that they themselves want to make.<br />
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<b>Offering up a hunch </b>– as you are listening to a coachee, you may <a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2019/02/using-your-intuition-when-coaching.html">have a hunch</a>. If you don’t offer the hunch for their consideration because you worry that they may dismiss it, you run the risk of them missing out on a wonderful opportunity to short-circuit their search for a solution.<br />
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<b>Interrupting </b>– imagine a coachee has scheduled 30 minutes to discuss an important issue with you, but they end up focusing on all of the details of the issue and telling a story for most of the 30 minutes. Interrupting risks alienating the coachee, but having them walk out at the end realizing that you let them talk the whole time runs the risk that they don’t see any value in your coaching.<br />
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<b>Asking powerful questions</b> – although <a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/11/coaching-questions.html">powerful questions</a> are one of the most effective tools in the coaching toolbox, sometimes they fall flat. How would avoiding powerful questions impact the effectiveness of your coaching?<br />
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<b>Offering coaching</b> – coaching is not universally understood and recognized as valuable. By offering your services as a coach, you risk hearing “no thanks.” But if you decide not to offer your services to a potential coachee you risk a missing out on an opportunity for both yourself and your potential coachees.<br />
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<b>Being in the zone</b> – if we are thinking about “am I violating a coaching principle” as we coach, we will constantly be taken out of the fluidity of being “in the zone.” There is a big difference in effectiveness between being in the zone and being out of the zone. Rather than second guessing yourself as you coach, just be yourself. If you do violate a coaching principle, it is unlikely that the coachee will know or care and you can always use it as a learning experience to do better the next time.<br />
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Whatever your current tolerance is for taking a risk while coaching, consider challenging yourself to push your boundaries a little more. After all, you are encouraging and expecting your coachees to push their boundaries and take the risk of making changes and learning and applying new skills. It is only fair that you model the courage that you are expecting of your coachees. Damon Poolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16561311551267979837noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13831777.post-35396621235851215652019-03-28T22:24:00.000-04:002019-03-29T11:12:11.884-04:00Coaching Can Be Fun!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0K5HIf6YE49D_JkvpQ_FJ4QtQFCC_jsQvwnIK8JOfMRKXzLH6uneCqjUQY4yfdFUEdtegotsZqx0M6m_dTpABu365vmEE3ujy7-c_rd-18nPnr6PHnF_8PGlgsEwcVg7f5180/s1600/fun.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="510" data-original-width="934" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0K5HIf6YE49D_JkvpQ_FJ4QtQFCC_jsQvwnIK8JOfMRKXzLH6uneCqjUQY4yfdFUEdtegotsZqx0M6m_dTpABu365vmEE3ujy7-c_rd-18nPnr6PHnF_8PGlgsEwcVg7f5180/s320/fun.png" width="320" /></a>There are at least three good reasons to have fun when coaching. First, sharing a good laugh together is a great way to build rapport. It reminds us that we are human, that life has its ups and downs, and that togetherness is one of the things that helps us get through the rough parts and that makes the celebrations that much sweeter.<br />
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Second, sharing a good laugh makes us feel good and consequently increases our energy level. It puts us into a more creative and collaborative mood.<br />
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Finally, coaching takes us to some awkward or difficult moments. Humor can reduce the tension and help us keep our minds open to possibilities that we may not have previously considered.<br />
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A word of caution. Not everyone will appreciate every facet of your sense of humor. I once got the following feedback in a retrospective after a coaching workshop: “I think some folks may have interpreted your sarcasm as mocking what they said.” Especially when a person is feeling vulnerable they may misinterpret your attempt at humor as making light of them rather than the situation.<br />
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It is always best to be yourself. If you tend to use humor a lot, that’s great! Just be mindful of who you are interacting with at any given moment. If they don’t seem to fully appreciate your sense of humor, just dial it back temporarily. While your sense of humor is part of who you are, we regularly adapt our behavior to the given situation all the time. Think about how you might act differently at work, at home, with close friends, or at a wedding to name a few examples. Coaching involves interacting with many different people with many different personalities. Make sure to take each person’s uniqueness into account when you are coaching them.<br />
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One more point regarding humor: it doesn’t have to come just from you! To the extent that you are comfortable, let folks know that it is totally appropriate to have some fun during coaching. If your coachee makes you laugh, point out how it contributed to the session (assuming it did) and encourage them to be themselves around you.Damon Poolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16561311551267979837noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13831777.post-70307249280104404522019-02-23T11:42:00.002-05:002019-03-04T11:40:22.741-05:00Using Your Intuition When Coaching<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Some people are big fans of intuition and others are very skeptical of intuition. Perhaps it depends on <br />
the definition of intuition. For the purposes of coaching, there’s at least one definition of intuition that can be very helpful: “an insight that arrives in the moment without a clear chain of reasoning to support it.”<br />
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Our brains are amazing. We make decisions in the moment on a regular basis “without even thinking about it.” Of course, we are thinking about those decisions, but it happens much faster than when we are trying to figure out something new or do something new for the first time. We often call this distinction acting with or without conscious thought. When we act “without conscious thought” it just means we aren’t aware of our thought process as it unfolds, but we can explain our reasoning afterwards if we need to. For instance, if a car comes out of nowhere and we swerve to avoid it, we can explain “I had a feeling that there was a car about to hit me coming from the left, so I moved to the right.”<br />
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When coaching, we can think of intuition in a similar way. We get an insight on what is happening in the moment which is likely based on our past experiences and our skills as a coach. However, we aren’t quite sure how to explain the reasoning behind the insight. As a result, we may doubt the value of that insight and resist sharing it.<br />
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<span data-offset-key="asf2k-0-0"><span data-text="true">If your intuition provides you with an insight that would have helped the coachee move forward, but you didn’t share it, that’s a shame. On the other hand, if you present an insight as an observation, you run the risk of leading the coachee astray.</span></span><br />
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When you are coaching, and your intuition provides you with an insight, consider sharing it like this:<br />
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<i>“While we’ve been talking, I think I may have had an insight, but I’m not sure. May I share it with you to see if it fits in with what we are discussing?”</i></blockquote>
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As long as you make your offer quickly and make it clear that it is up to them to decide whether your thought was truly a relevant insight or not, it is hard to go wrong. If it was useful, then they will incorporate it and move forward. If it was not useful, very little time was expended and you can move on. The more you lean on your intuition, the more your skill in presenting potential insights will grow.Damon Poolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16561311551267979837noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13831777.post-62631365407974522492019-02-02T14:46:00.000-05:002019-02-02T14:46:01.016-05:00Going Beyond the ICP-ACC - Becoming a Certified Professional CoachI have decided to head down the path of becoming a certified professional coach. Specifically, I am enrolled at the <a href="https://coachcampus.com/">International Coach Academy</a>, pursuing the PCC level of coaching as defined by the International Coach Federation. I am doing this for a couple of reasons. First, when covering the professional coaching aspects in my ICP-ACC workshop (the coaching mode/stance from ICAgile’s Agile Coach model of coaching, mentoring, facilitating, teaching), I want to be able to do that from the position of being a certified professional coach. Second, I am planning to offer ICF certified coach training to the Agile Coaching community, hopefully starting in the beginning of 2020.<br />
<br />As I make my way on this journey, I would like to invite you to come along with me. I will be incorporating more of what I learn on this blog, in my ICP-ACC workshop, and in additional workshops that cover more of the ICF coaching competencies. I am hoping that some of you will want to be part of my first graduating class of ICF certified coaches as part of my ICF accreditation process, much as some of you were part of my ICP-ACC accreditation process.<br />
<br />As a start, in this post I will introduce you to the International Coach Federation, the professional coach certification process, and areas of the coaching competencies that don’t typically come up in the materials and offerings that most Agile Coaches are exposed to.<br />
<br /><b><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: large;">The International Coach Federation – ICF</span></span></b><br />The ICF is the world’s largest professional coach association. They offer a coach training accreditation process for coach training organizations as well as a certification process for coaches. You can become a member of the ICF without being a certified coach. Membership obligates you to follow their ethics guidelines and signifies to the world that you intend to operate as a professional coach. This is a good step to take along the way to becoming a certified professional coach.<br />
<br /><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">The ICF Coaching Competencies</span></b></span><br />The ICF’s coaching competencies cover 11 different areas, from ethics to powerful questions to managing progress and accountability. The learning objectives of the ICP-ACC primarily overlap with the ICF’s competencies in the areas of: coaching agreements, active listening, powerful questions, presence, self-management, feedback, and coachee accountability.<br />
<br /><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Looking Beyond the ICP-ACC</span></b></span><br />Considering that the goal of the ICP-ACC is to simply introduce a few of the concepts of professional coaching while also covering many other aspects of Agile Coaching, it can only scratch the surface of professional coaching. If you are interested in learning more about what it means to be a professional coach, here are two resources I encourage you to explore. The descriptions of the ICF competencies: <a href="https://coachfederation.org/core-competencies">https://coachfederation.org/core-competencies</a> and the behaviors associated with coaching at different levels: <a href="https://coachfederation.org/app/uploads/2017/12/ICFCompetenciesLevelsTable.pdf">https://coachfederation.org/app/uploads/2017/12/ICFCompetenciesLevelsTable.pdf</a><br /><br />Damon Poolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16561311551267979837noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13831777.post-25603108133704242642019-01-15T23:12:00.000-05:002019-01-21T12:03:31.286-05:00Advanced Agile Coaching<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3YRVMnhLoWHDeIY2lQ0G9g5bfdY4qGpnVhZKETazn-qLM9wdAGImRnXgb-Fuj-YMFHoqWkScnpre1quBnO6BMQmbHPOhaOZtBh7BZnT4R-P7Z5ye8pLNHXgVk1iqVCfc7HIfN/s1600/Coaching.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="918" data-original-width="1600" height="183" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3YRVMnhLoWHDeIY2lQ0G9g5bfdY4qGpnVhZKETazn-qLM9wdAGImRnXgb-Fuj-YMFHoqWkScnpre1quBnO6BMQmbHPOhaOZtBh7BZnT4R-P7Z5ye8pLNHXgVk1iqVCfc7HIfN/s320/Coaching.png" width="320" /></a>This post assumes that you are already familiar with Agile Coaching as described in Lyssa Adkin's <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003QP47YG">Coaching Agile Teams</a>, taking an <a href="https://icagile.com/">ICAgile</a> ICP-ACC class, or having read the <a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/11/agile-coach-basics-online-mini-book.html">Agile Coach Basics mini-book</a> on this blog.<br />
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<span style="color: #3d85c6;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">The Coaching Mode </span></b></span><br />
When you are in the coaching mode of Agile Coaching, you are not working together to solve a problem; you are enabling the coachee to do all of the problem solving on their own. All of your mental energy should be focused on looking for which coaching techniques to apply and applying them.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><b>Coaching Triggers</b></span></span><br />
When you are in the coaching mode, your main job is to look for coaching triggers. A coaching trigger is a specific set of circumstances that indicate the use of one or more coaching techniques. For instance, if the coachee is wandering aimlessly, that’s a trigger that indicates using a technique like focusing, interrupting, or orienting. On the other hand, if they seem distracted, you should consider using the technique of releasing. Here is a brief introduction to eleven coaching techniques and their coaching triggers that you may find useful.<br />
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<span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Redirecting</b></span></span><br />
When you are given a direct request, such as “can you go give that team a refresher on Scrum”, always try to move the conversation to a coaching conversation. For instance: “Sure. What’s the background on this?”<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">Releasing</span></span></b><br />
You may notice that the coachee has something on their mind getting in the way of working on their main concern. Consider bringing it out into the open with a question such as, “you seem a bit distracted by something. What’s up?”<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">Spectating</span></span></b><br />
When you are overloaded, you may feel the need to ask the coachee to pause, slow down, or repeat information. Instead, try following along with them and allow them to pursue their problem solving thought process wherever it may lead. When things settle down, you can always ask for a summary.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">Clarifying</span></span></b><br />
If something the coachee is saying doesn’t make sense to you, it may be there’s something they haven’t completely thought through but they don’t realize it. Having the coachee back up and take a look at what they are saying may help them uncover a hidden assumption or a blindspot. Example: “I’m not sure I’m following you. What’s another way to explain that?”<br />
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<b><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: large;">Splitting</span></span></b><br />
By thinking of a goal as a user story, with a who, what, and why, most of the ideas from user story splitting can be applied to the goals that coachees come up with during coaching. For example: “If you were to break this down into smaller pieces, what would those pieces be?”<br />
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<b><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: large;">Re-evaluating</span></span></b><br />
As we go about life, we create mental models for everything: mental maps, labels, and analogies to name a few. We say things like “kind of like Scrum, but without the sprint boundaries,” “helpful,” “stubborn,” and “I feel surrounded.” If the coachee seems to be stuck in a particular mental model, having them brainstorm alternative mental models may help them find a new direction to take.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: large;">Highlighting</span></span></b><br />
Very often, the coachee will express a potential solution unintentionally disguised as something else. Here are some key indicators that the coachee is skipping over a potential solution or piece of the puzzle. The coachee says…<br />
<ul>
<li>Do you think I should do X, Y, or Z?</li>
<li>I wish they would…</li>
<li>I don’t get why they do X (instead of Y).</li>
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If the coachee is presenting potential options and then asking your opinion, turn the tables on them. For instance, if they ask “do you think I should do A or B” you can turn that into “Well, I may have some thoughts on that, but tell me your thoughts first.” When the coachee is deciding on an option, make sure they consider the ones that came up while highlighting potential solutions.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">Focusing</span></span></b><br />
Part of being a coach is taking on the work of keeping the coachee focused. That allows the coachee to follow their thought process wherever it leads without worrying about the time. If you feel they are getting off track, you will be there to check in with them to see if they feel they should continue down the current track or need to refocus. Focusing has three related techniques: interrupting, orienting, and summarizing.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: large;">Interrupting</span></span></b><br />
Any time you feel that the coachee has gotten off track, or you have come across a coaching trigger, it may be time to interrupt the coachee. Here are a couple of methods of interrupting that may work for you or perhaps they will remind you of a method that you like to use:<br />
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<li>Open your mouth and take a breath as if preparing to speak, but then don’t say anything and close your mouth again.</li>
<li>In as friendly a way as possible, raise a finger and say “if I may?” and give an expectant look.</li>
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No matter what, continue listening and make it clear from your body language that you are definitely still paying attention. Note that some people have an aversion to being interrupted for any reason, so use your discretion when interrupting and err on the side of being patient.<br />
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<span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Orienting</b></span></span><br />
Most situations that arise in coaching are part of a bigger picture. The bigger picture influences the coachee and their problem solving approach. If you have a sense that the coachee is missing the forest for the trees, consider asking them to orient themselves to the bigger picture. For instance, asking “How does what we are discussing relate to your goals and vision?”<br />
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<span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Summarizing</b></span></span><br />
When something is clear, it can be easily described. If you find the coachee is using a lot of detail to describe something and it is still not clear what they are saying, ask them to summarize. This can help both of you to determine if there is a need to explore the topic further or pivot to another technique. Example: “That was a lot of detail, can you summarize it for me?”<br />
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<b><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: large;">Next Steps</span></span></b><br />
Check out the book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DWBN12I">Co-Active Coaching</a>, which is one of the best and most practical Coaching books out there, or pursue an <a href="https://coachfederation.org/">International Coaching Federation</a> certification. You may also be interested in my new online <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/advanced-agile-coaching-tickets-54468784601">Advanced Agile Coaching</a> workshop which this blog post is based on.Damon Poolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16561311551267979837noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13831777.post-76558295669227558662018-11-30T09:12:00.001-05:002019-03-04T11:44:07.893-05:00Agile Coach Basics - Online Mini Book<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuOa6CAPgWdWtB5Tn0cpRA_LK2tnT8I6_7algP9WidKipQuQJ2XXVrXD21sojYObbMGHuDlOtYsYmkA2y3r1PVSgD7-PtgG5V-veo6swUNPKCZTknHjwFO3lafQyDfNfv4s-bq/s1600/coaching.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="172" data-original-width="349" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuOa6CAPgWdWtB5Tn0cpRA_LK2tnT8I6_7algP9WidKipQuQJ2XXVrXD21sojYObbMGHuDlOtYsYmkA2y3r1PVSgD7-PtgG5V-veo6swUNPKCZTknHjwFO3lafQyDfNfv4s-bq/s1600/coaching.png" /></a>I have been posting pieces of my Agile Coach Basics mini-book, which was initially developed for my ICP-ACC <a href="https://damonbpoole.eventbrite.com/">Agile Coaching workshop</a>. This post ties them all together with an introduction as well as a list of all of the posts so that you can skip any posts you've already read. Enjoy!<br />
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<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: large;">Coaching in an Agile Environment </span></span><br />
When I first understood the value of Agile, I wanted to share it with everyone. I did free webinars, wrote blog entries, spoke at conferences, joined and then ran the Agile New England meetup in the Boston area, and did everything I could to spread the word. I took the approach of teaching and sharing my experience. When people shared their difficulties in implementing Agile, I was brimming with enthusiasm to help. I leapt into problem solving mode and explained what I thought they should do. But then I started to notice that my directives often led to objections and more questions. I began to realize that in order to really solve other people’s issues I would need to actually be them, which is impossible.<br />
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Soon after this realization, I read Lyssa Adkin’s book “Coaching Agile Teams” which introduced me to a different way to think about Agile Coaching. And since that time I’ve done a lot more reading, had the privilege of interacting with a wide spectrum of Agile coaches professionally and at conferences, and worked with dozens of teams and organizations seeing what works and what doesn’t when helping others become more Agile. From these experiences I’ve come to understand that people get a tremendous amount of value out of the process of coaching itself, completely separate from any increase in Agile knowledge or ability that I may also impart to them. I have learned just how powerful and valuable the process of coaching can be, especially when carefully integrated with mentoring, teaching, and facilitating.<br />
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<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: large;">Agile Coach Basics Table of Contents</span></span><br />
<a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/11/what-is-agile-coach.html">What is an Agile Coach?</a> <br />
<a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-case-of-self-conscious-scrum-master.html">Emotional Intelligence </a><br />
<a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/11/coach-as-mirror-keeping-your-own.html">Neutrality - Coach as Mirror</a><br />
<a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/11/multispectrum-awareness.html">Multi-spectrum Awareness - Presence and Observation</a><br />
<a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/11/an-example-agile-coaching-conversation.html">Coaching - a Coaching Conversation</a><br />
<a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/11/coaching-questions.html">Coaching Questions</a><br />
<a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/10/what-does-agile-coach-do-all-day-part-1.html">What Does an Agile Coach Do All Day? Part 1</a><br />
<a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/10/what-does-agile-coach-do-all-day-part-2.html">What Does an Agile Coach Do All Day? Part 2</a><br />
<a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/11/people-do-what-they-desire-to-do.html">People Do What They Desire to Do - ADKAR</a><br />
<a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/11/feedback-and-advice.html">Feedback and Advice</a><br />
<a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2019/02/using-your-intuition-when-coaching.html">Using Your Intuition</a><br />
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Stay tuned for additional sections. <br />
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<br />Damon Poolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16561311551267979837noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13831777.post-33889821747277419982018-11-30T09:09:00.002-05:002018-11-30T09:09:41.165-05:00What is an Agile Coach?There
are many definitions of Agile Coach out there. One view is that an
Agile Coach is an expert in all things Agile, or an expert in a
particular area of Agile such as Scrum, Kanban, SAFe or some other
methodology. Here is my definition, based on the ICAgile view of Agile
Coaching:<br />
<br />
<b>Agile Coach</b>: a servant leader that
guides people as individuals, part of a team, and people at all levels
of an organization towards greater levels of Agility using the skills of
Coaching, Mentoring, Teaching, and Facilitating.<br />
<br />
And here are my definitions of Coaching, Mentoring, Teaching, and Facilitating:<br />
<br />
<b>Coaching </b>–
using skills from professional coaching as part of a coaching
conversation to help others identify and explore issues and then help
them choose a path forward and commit to it. The skills from
professional coaching include Emotional Intelligence, listening,
presence, asking questions, and feedback. In this mode, the coach does
not use any subject matter expertise, even if they are a subject matter
expert in any topics that arise.<br />
<br />
<b>Mentoring </b>–
providing information, feedback, advice, options, examples, and
illustrative experience as part of a mentoring conversation based on the
mentee’s free choice. Similar to coaching, with the key difference
being that the mentee has explicitly asked for mentoring and the mentor
is a credible expert in the skill or role. Mentoring applies when a
person has already received teaching in a skill or role.<br />
<br />
<b>Teaching </b>–
providing learners with new knowledge and skills and providing an
environment for the learner to confirm that they have acquired the new
knowledge or skill.<br />
<br />
<b>Facilitation </b>– using
specific tools and skills to help an individual or group efficiently
discover, explore, and choose options for producing a specific outcome
or set of outcomes, without directly contributing or allowing one’s own
preferences or biases influence the outcomes.<br />
<br />
Next: <a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-case-of-self-conscious-scrum-master.html">Emotional Intelligence and the Case of the Self-Conscious Scrum Master</a>Damon Poolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16561311551267979837noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13831777.post-18238870377369941282018-11-30T09:09:00.000-05:002019-03-04T11:46:08.979-05:00Feedback and Advice<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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As an Agile Coach, a large component of what you do is to provide feedback and advice in some way shape or form. And, in order to stay in sync with those that you coach, you are of course open to feedback and advice on your coaching. Feedback and advice are very similar. In both cases you are providing information which you believe the recipient is unaware of. This brings up one of the first issues with providing feedback and advice; while you may think that the other person is unware of the information you wish to provide, they may actually be very aware of it. Here are a few reasons why people ignore the information that others provide to them:<br />
<ul>
<li>The information seems wrong or doesn’t make sense to them</li>
<li>They haven’t figured out how to act on the information</li>
<li>They are aware that some people feel they should do something differently but they aren’t interested in doing it</li>
<li>They don’t care enough about the issue to make a change</li>
</ul>
In the case of feedback, the recipient is often unaware of the impact they are having on others. In the case of advice, the missing information may be given as part of feedback or it may be expressly requested by the recipient. Feedback usually starts with an observation, advice may not. With feedback, there may or may not be suggested next steps included. In the case of advice, suggested next steps are the advice.<br />
<br />
Here’s a simple example. One day, I made a mistake in buttoning up my shirt and I hadn’t looked in the mirror before heading to work. I got a couple of funny looks from co-workers before one kind soul let me know that my shirt needed some adjustment and suggested that I look in a mirror. In this case, pointing out that there was an issue was all that was needed. Looking in the mirror I could see quite plainly that I had made a mistake buttoning my shirt.<br />
Let’s map this out:<br />
<br />
<b>Knowledge gap</b>: I didn’t know my shirt was mis-buttoned<br />
<b>Observation</b>: “your shirt is not buttoned properly”<br />
<b>Impact</b>: looking unprofessional<br />
<b>Potential next steps</b>: re-button the shirt properly<br />
<br />
In the case of advice, it may be that a person knows that they are missing some information and are looking for ideas and options for next steps. Here’s an example involving advice. A manager approaches the Agile Coach for a team and says “I thought the whole idea of Agile was that the team would make more decisions on their own, but they still ask my opinion on decisions that I think they should make on their own. Do you have any advice?”<br />
<br />
Let’s assume that the coach takes the manager through a whole coaching conversation and the need for advice remains and that it maps out like this:<br />
<br />
<b>Knowledge gap</b>: the manager can’t see that they continue to countermand many of the decisions that the team tries to make on its own<br />
<b>Observation</b>: “Last week the team decided to release, but you told them you didn’t think the customer wanted a new release, so they didn’t release.”<br />
<b>Impact</b>: “Right after that happened, as they were about to make another decision, one team member said they should ask you what you thought before making the decision.”<br />
<b>Potential next steps</b>: “One option to consider is to let them make more decisions, even if it isn’t what you would do, unless you think a decision would create a major problem.”<br />
<br />
When making an observation as part of giving feedback or advice, remember to make the observation in a <a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/11/coach-as-mirror-keeping-your-own.html">neutral </a>way. <br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: large;">Feedback Tips</span></span><br />
Here are some tips for maximizing the chance of feedback being well received.<br />
<ul>
<li><b>Opt-in</b> – ask for permission or respond to a request</li>
<li><b>Timely </b>– provide feedback and/or advice in as timely a fashion as circumstances permit</li>
<li><b>Safe </b>- in an appropriate environment with a chance for interaction – not a “drive-by”</li>
<li><b>Credible </b>– limit yourself to areas where the receiver sees you as credible</li>
<li><b>Good wil</b>l – make sure the feedback and/or advice is sincere and intended for the recipient’s benefit</li>
<li><b>Conversational </b>– rather than focusing on a piece of feedback, consider starting a conversation on the topic in general. It may turn out that the recipient is already aware of the topic and is looking for ideas.</li>
</ul>
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: large;">Receiving Feedback</span></span><br />
All feedback can be useful feedback. Even if an observation feels wrong, hurtful, or ill-intentioned, there may be information in the feedback that you can use. Just because information was delivered poorly doesn’t mean it is useless.<br />
<br />
The first step in getting value out of feedback is to just receive it. You don’t have to agree with it to acknowledge it. For instance, rather than saying “that doesn’t make any sense to me” you could try saying something like “I hear what you are saying.” If you feel your emotions rising, consider saying something like “that’s a lot for me to absorb. Let me think about it and I may follow up with you.” You don’t have to respond right away.<br />
<br />
You can use most of the ideas about giving feedback in reverse. If someone says something that feels like a judgement, you can ask for a specific example.<br />
<br />
Even if the feedback doesn’t make any sense, there may be something for you to learn. Look for patterns in what multiple people say to you over time. See if you can find somebody you trust to help you make sense of the feedback you are receiving.<br />
<br />
Next: <a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2019/02/using-your-intuition-when-coaching.html">Using Your Intuition</a><a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/11/agile-coach-basics-online-mini-book.html"><br /></a>Damon Poolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16561311551267979837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13831777.post-42508575634116209412018-11-28T09:19:00.000-05:002018-11-30T09:28:55.435-05:00People Do What They Desire to Do<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjixTwyvuk20woO1EyctilY6i0UFizyy8ptrFNrkDS78BDsA8urqRMdexaBZMx76G7s1CZeE5Rjhk7DBNE_9X9-4FcMT7eUyWTq5zD9jxwAD3TQHTPqhAtYg-TEK6uDAKhcTdzR/s1600/catalyst.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="89" data-original-width="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjixTwyvuk20woO1EyctilY6i0UFizyy8ptrFNrkDS78BDsA8urqRMdexaBZMx76G7s1CZeE5Rjhk7DBNE_9X9-4FcMT7eUyWTq5zD9jxwAD3TQHTPqhAtYg-TEK6uDAKhcTdzR/s1600/catalyst.png" /></a>A good word for an Agile Coach is “catalyst.” According to Merriam Webster, one of the definitions of catalyst is “an agent that provokes or speeds significant change or action.” The main idea of coach as catalyst is that you are helping to bring about changes that might happen anyway, but are more likely to happen with the addition of your insight, inspiration, and ability to shine a flashlight on potential areas for improvement. Your influence will increase the likelihood and pace of change.<br />
<br />
A striking example of this happened on an engagement where I had the opportunity to kick things off with a series of interviews with the leadership. I always ask just two questions in discovery interviews: “what do you see as the issues and what do you see as potential solutions?” This always brings up lots of useful information. In this case, those interviews involved a series of statements that formed a chain. I heard “I’d really like to do A for the Agile effort, but I need B first” and from another leader “I’d really like to do B for the Agile effort, but I need C first.” All I had to do was to observe to the group during the follow-on workshop that between the 8 of them, they each needed something that one of the others was willing to do. The result was an amazing start to their Agile Journey and today, a few years after that workshop, they are now a mature and thriving Agile organization.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-size: large;">The ADKAR Change Management Tool</span></span></span><br />
A useful tool for being a catalyst is ADKAR. ADKAR is an “individual” change model. That is, it is a useful framework when working at the individual level as opposed to the organizational level. It can be used with any number of individuals, but when trying to make changes at the departmental, division, or organizational levels, it is best to combine ADKAR with something like the Kotter change model.<br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"></span><br />
ADKAR is an acronym for Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement. The main idea of the model is that people are more likely to make a lasting change when they are aware of the need for the change, they themselves desire to make the change, they have the knowledge of how to make the change, and they are reinforced (supported) in their journey to make the change until they have gained the ability to make the change.<br />
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There is always something that an individual or group wants to do and will do with the right support, you just have to help them find it. By thinking of yourself as a catalyst, you can help surface those potential changes using ADKAR. It is important to remember not to look for things that others want to do that align with what you want to do or to push others towards things you think they should want to do. You are working to find and accelerate the potential that is already there.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: blue;">Coach Past Your Involvement</span></span><br />
Acting as a catalyst reinforces the idea that the changes that will encounter the least resistance and stick are the ones that people want to do, choose to do, and actually take steps to implement. Changes that people undertake that require constant propping up, by you or others, aren’t real changes, they are temporary detours and people will revert back to their old ways when the props are removed. By thinking about what will stick when you are not present and being a servant leader by focusing on what others want, you are also more likely to avoid influencing others with your own preferences, biases, and personal point of view.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: large;">Use ADKAR as a Guide</span></span><br />
Raising awareness, increasing knowledge, getting organizational support (reinforcement), and finding ways to give people the time to grow their skills (ability) all increase a person’s desire to implement a change. By leaning on ADKAR, next steps will become more obvious to everyone. If there are things that you are aware of that your coachees are not, work to gently raise their awareness. If you start leading people down a path that they don’t see, you will encounter strong resistance. Resistance is a good indicator that you are on the wrong path. You may feel like you know what needs to be done, but if a coachee doesn’t see what you see or doesn’t choose to take a certain action, then it isn’t the right path for them to take, no matter how much it seems like the right path in general.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: blue;">Building Ability Requires Support ( aka Reinforcement )</span></span><br />
Let’s say there is a team that has become aware of the connection between lack of well factored code and supporting unit tests and quality issues. They have a desire to learn how to do Test Driven Development, but they have very little knowledge or ability to do TDD. They believe that they will increase their velocity by increasing quality if they start practicing TDD. They believe that if they hire a TDD coach for a month they will be able to double their velocity, but that their velocity will be unpredictable while they are learning. The team proposes the TDD coach to their manager and the manager approves. They now have the support to build the ability to work in a new way. Without that support, it is unlikely that any effort by the team to learn and apply TDD would stick.<br />
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Next: <a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/11/feedback-and-advice.html">Feedback and Advice </a>Damon Poolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16561311551267979837noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13831777.post-44714866866238682552018-11-26T16:59:00.003-05:002018-11-30T09:25:10.457-05:00Multispectrum Awareness<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtzj8FwFhNw09kXWN8MEA-NXsvGLYxfxCqJRvqOnRFpY37H5s-_pBQ43Ia7LddB0rdwucWC8TZc3ELWD2uBwxSr611O22CN-OIkFck83CsKlKuJ3TUTBYsTl8SfZ5mZ8SINEyW/s1600/FSU_front_stage_landscape.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="218" data-original-width="408" height="106" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtzj8FwFhNw09kXWN8MEA-NXsvGLYxfxCqJRvqOnRFpY37H5s-_pBQ43Ia7LddB0rdwucWC8TZc3ELWD2uBwxSr611O22CN-OIkFck83CsKlKuJ3TUTBYsTl8SfZ5mZ8SINEyW/s200/FSU_front_stage_landscape.jpg" width="200" /></a>As a coach, you are most effective when you are completely tuned in to and focused on what is going on with others while <a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-case-of-self-conscious-scrum-master.html">self-managing your own emotions and behavior</a>. Two important aspects of being fully tuned in are <i>presence </i>and <i>active observation</i>.<br />
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<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: large;">Presence</span></span><br />
When your attention is focused on the here and now, you are “present.” When your attention wanders away, you are distracted. When you are distracted, you will miss valuable information.<br />
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You don’t need to be present all the time. It is perfectly fine to daydream or let your mind wander. But when you are facilitating a meeting, teaching a workshop, or coaching someone, it is vitally important that you be 100% present.<br />
<br />
Here are some things you can do to become more present:<br />
<ul>
<li>Breath in normally, then exhale slowly</li>
<li>Sit calmly for a moment doing nothing. Notice what is going through your mind</li>
<li>If something is distracting you, take action to remove the distraction. For example, make a note, set a reminder, or do whatever you need to do to get any internal distractions “out of your system.”</li>
<li>Look around you and think about where you are</li>
<li>Think about why you are doing whatever you are doing. In the case of reading this, why are you reading it?</li>
<li>Focus on the here and now and let everything else fade away</li>
</ul>
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: large;">Active Observation</span></span><br />
Active observation is the act of observing everything in the environment in a <a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/11/coach-as-mirror-keeping-your-own.html">neutral </a>and intentional way. Rather than observing events, making judgements, and then remembering and replaying those judgements, active observation focuses on observing what happened as literally as possible and without judgement.<br />
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Active observation includes a full spectrum of inputs: what is being said, the emotional overtones, body language, movement, and interaction with others and the environment. Active observation also includes layering in the context of what’s happening, such as the influence of recent events on people’s current behavior. The hard part is tuning in across all parts of this spectrum of inputs at the same time.<br />
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One day, while attending the standup meeting of a new team, I was feeling frustrated. I was thinking about how terrible their standup was and could only think about how they must not have paid attention in training. I was wondering why they couldn’t do this basic ceremony when other teams that had been in the same training were doing just fine. Then somebody asked me a question and I realized I had no idea what the question was. I had lost my presence. I apologized and muddled my way through the rest of the standup.<br />
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When I was distracted and judging their behavior I was unable to see the two issues that were really going on. In order to really absorb as much information as possible and to understand what is happening around you it is important to develop the skills of Active Observation, <a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-case-of-self-conscious-scrum-master.html">Emotional Intelligence</a>, and being present.<br />
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Active observation draws on and reinforces many other skills. Active observation makes it easier to understand another’s emotional state in order to better practice social awareness and self-management. And by practicing self-management, one is more likely to maintain a good rapport with the coachee(s) and to be more present. When we are truly in the moment the skills of Emotional Intelligence, Presence, and Active Observation build on each other holistically and become indistinguishable as separate skills.<br />
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The next day, I made a conscious effort to focus on what was actually being said and what was actually happening. I realized that everyone was doing a “readout” to me personally and most people seemed distracted when they weren’t reporting their status to me. Having them treat their coach as a project manager was a familiar problem and I knew how to handle that, but I wasn’t sure why folks were so distracted.<br />
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At the end of the meeting I gently mentioned that folks seemed distracted and I asked if there was something going on in general that I might not be aware of. I learned that there were actually two “teams” in this “team” and so half of the people were disinterested half of the time. That was another familiar problem that I knew how to solve. At least half of the job of being an Agile Coach is understanding what is going on. Active observation is a powerful tool for helping you get to the root of the problem.<br />
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Next: <a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/11/an-example-agile-coaching-conversation.html">Coaching - A Coaching Conversation</a>Damon Poolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16561311551267979837noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13831777.post-68287085907008526812018-11-24T12:47:00.001-05:002018-11-30T09:24:15.120-05:00Coach as Mirror - Keeping Your Own Opinion and Judgement OutA foundational attribute of an Agile Coach is the ability to be neutral. Whether you are observing, thinking about what’s happening, or talking to another person, make sure you are thinking in terms of the coachee’s own values, goals, and vision. Make sure you are not filtering what you see, what you think, and what you say through your own preferences, biases, desires, and values.<br />
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Neutrality includes using descriptive language instead of judgmental language, using non-judgmental body language and tone, putting all decision making in the hands of those you are coaching, and holding back your own opinion unless it is specifically requested or given after an appropriate request for permission. It means that even when you have a strong opinion on a topic, you find a way to let it go rather than communicating through your tone and body language that you think things should be going in a different direction. Genuine neutrality is a tall order and takes time to master.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5Gi6yeZFcjdPmUsxvZeHAj93MAyddwI8Q_7LDcv6gXBHo3yVTD1YN9J4g28bJ2DgWJA0_LRKr-MqjlS8nAWHbnu-5onvcNnPEoob1EUuddLbuIf3TiR0-QWtKoCaKKwp_r1cX/s1600/mirror3.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="319" data-original-width="556" height="114" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5Gi6yeZFcjdPmUsxvZeHAj93MAyddwI8Q_7LDcv6gXBHo3yVTD1YN9J4g28bJ2DgWJA0_LRKr-MqjlS8nAWHbnu-5onvcNnPEoob1EUuddLbuIf3TiR0-QWtKoCaKKwp_r1cX/s200/mirror3.PNG" width="200" /></a>Think of it as a mirror. The coach is able to observe what is happening and then play back their observations in a way that the receivers see what the coach has observed instead of “seeing the coach.” Coachees can “see the coach” when they see the coach’s observations as tinged with the coach’s biases and not reflecting reality.<br />
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This is not a call to be an emotionless monotone non-human machine. Embodying neutrality while remaining human and personable makes it an even more difficult skill to master. Being aware of the need for neutrality and the value of neutrality is the first step towards mastering neutrality.<br />
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Here are some guidelines for being neutral that you can apply when observing, thinking, or talking with others. These examples assume that the information to support the neutral statements is available in order to make the neutral statements:<br />
<ul>
<li>Specific, measurable</li>
<ul>
<li>Instead of “the customer intent is more clear” try “the who and why in these stories is very clear”</li>
<li>Instead of “the standup was way too long” try “the standup ran to an hour instead of the expected 15 minutes”</li>
</ul>
<li>Neutral, non-judgemental</li>
<ul>
<li>Instead of “I didn’t like their style” try “they spoke too fast for me and seemed upset” </li>
<li>Instead of “I liked their approach” try “their specific examples helped me”</li>
<li>Instead of thinking “that person hogged the floor” try “the group ran out of time”</li>
<li>Avoid words and phrases such as “good,” “bad,” “wrong,” “off the mark”</li>
</ul>
<li>Avoid speculating on intentions</li>
<ul>
<li>Instead of “I know she doesn’t want to be here” try “I notice she showed up late”</li>
</ul>
</ul>
Next: <a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/11/multispectrum-awareness.html">Multi-Spectrum Awareness - Presence and Observation</a> <br />
<ul><ul>
</ul>
</ul>
Damon Poolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16561311551267979837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13831777.post-53800951763510698302018-11-23T11:16:00.001-05:002018-11-30T09:23:24.181-05:00The Case of the Self-Conscious Scrum Master<span style="font-family: inherit;">As an Agile Coach your success depends on helping others succeed. Sharing your Agile expertise will help them achieve their goals, but first you will need to leverage your interpersonal skills in order to uncover and understand their goals and motivations.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />The better your interpersonal skills, the more successful you will be as an Agile Coach. We all have some level of skill with the various interpersonal skills needed as an Agile Coach. A good starting place for further mastery is to review these skills and employ them intentionally as you interact with others.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: large;">Emotional Intelligence</span></span><br />
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One of the most important set of interpersonal skills are the four skills of Emotional Intelligence. Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the ability to successfully navigate the muddy waters of human emotions. That includes self-awareness of your own emotional state, social awareness of the emotional state of others, self-management of your own emotional state, and creating and maintaining good relationships.<br />
<br />
An interesting experience I had when working with a manager illustrates the four parts of emotional intelligence. This particular manager was also the Scrum Master for the team that he managed. He invited me to his standup, but was very self-conscious about it. He said “I know it isn’t the best idea to have a Scrum Master that is also a manager, but I think it is working out ok.” I acknowledged what he said, but didn’t add my opinion.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: blue;">Social Awareness</span></span><br />
This is awareness of what is going on with others. The surface level of social awareness is fairly straightforward, though it requires intention. By simply paying attention to other people’s words, tone, and body language, one can get a decent sense of how they are feeling and how they are reacting to whatever is happening.<br />
<br />
The manager ran his standup like a staff meeting. He would call on each person, comment on what they said, and then offer “suggestions” that were clearly more than suggestions. The level of engagement from the team was close to non-existent. More than once people had facial expressions and body language that expressed feelings of disappointment and disapproval.<br />
<br />
After the meeting, in private, the manager turned to me and said “that was horrible, wasn’t it?” I told him that from a purely process perspective, the standup meeting had served most of its purpose and asked him what made him say what he said. He shared his observations of the team member reactions during the meeting, which matched my own observations.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: large;">Self-Awareness</span></span><br />
Self-awareness is a combination of paying attention to what is going on in our heads and considering how our emotional state and behavior play a part in the emotional state and behavior of others.<br />
<br />
I asked the manager about why he might have been running the standup as he was and his understanding of what a good standup looks like. He demonstrated a remarkable amount of self-awareness about how his behavior had impacted the team and had a good understanding of self-organization. He just hadn’t had an opportunity to see the difference between what he hoped for and what was actually happening.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: large;">Self-Management</span></span><br />
Self-management is taking advantage of being in the moment by changing your own behavior based on your social awareness and your self-awareness. When you see somebody reacting in an unexpected way, your self-awareness kicks in and you consider how your behavior may have had a part in that reaction and then take steps to change your behavior.<br />
<br />
The next day, the manager explained to his team that he wanted them to run the standup on their own and his only requirement was that they finish in 15 minutes and leave follow-up for after that initial 15 minutes. It took them a few tries to take advantage of their new found freedom, but soon they were sharing with each other and suggesting follow-up actions. I didn’t see any eye-rolls in that meeting and their engagement was through the roof compared to the previous standup. I could see the manager catching himself a few times, but his desire to “have a real Scrum team” won out and he only interjected when the team was getting off track.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: large;">Relationship Management</span></span><br />
Relationship management is what gives emotional intelligence its full potential. Practicing self-awareness, social awareness, and self-management can help to create and maintain good relationships, and good relationships reinforce self-awareness, social awareness, and self-management. To put it simply, the higher your EQ, the better your relationships will be and the better your relationships are, the more people will share with you about their internal emotional state and the more people will help you when your EQ is failing you in the moment.<br />
<br />
In the case of the Scrum Master manager, the EQ that he demonstrated in the second standup had an immediate effect on his relationships with his team. I could tell from earlier 1-1 conversations with team members that they already appreciated him as a manager. In listening to their conversations with him after the second standup it was clear that his actions of involving an Agile Coach and making adjustments that they appreciated were just the latest reasons for appreciating him.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Key to Emotional Intelligence</span></span><br />
I’m not saying that just by being present I usually get the kind of result that occurred with the manager. It was his personal interest in doing the right thing that made
him hyper self-conscious. It is that heightened awareness that I want to
highlight. By consciously paying attention to others he was able to
realize that something needed to change.<br />
<br />
The key to emotional intelligence is to be in the same frame of mind as the manager. Practice reminding yourself during any interaction with others to ask the following questions until it becomes second nature:<br />
<ul>
<li>How am I feeling and behaving?</li>
<li>How are others feeling and behaving?</li>
<li>How are my feelings and behavior affecting others?</li>
<li>How are other people's feelings and behavior affecting me?</li>
<li>Based on the above, should I do something differently in order to create better outcomes?</li>
<li>Am I acting in a way that is good for all of the relationships involved?</li>
</ul>
Next: <a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/11/coach-as-mirror-keeping-your-own.html">Coach As Mirror - Neutrality</a>Damon Poolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16561311551267979837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13831777.post-77841605441606448112018-11-12T23:49:00.000-05:002018-11-30T19:25:36.317-05:00An Example Agile Coaching Conversation<h3>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_FxrNIXiOESmCWND-NxfNdhBWJ7z1X8NSZJ8bjYnaUo8juV6FoUYqK4Cg8HuxDxlD5QVi6Uwdc3cHojbdwLXvRvlmSNt86RSd64mXPshABE3ThL5J6NzvsAoKhSMSmEQGr2wP/s1600/YodaCoach.GIF" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="654" data-original-width="967" height="135" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_FxrNIXiOESmCWND-NxfNdhBWJ7z1X8NSZJ8bjYnaUo8juV6FoUYqK4Cg8HuxDxlD5QVi6Uwdc3cHojbdwLXvRvlmSNt86RSd64mXPshABE3ThL5J6NzvsAoKhSMSmEQGr2wP/s200/YodaCoach.GIF" width="200" /></a>
Initiating a Coaching Interaction </h3>
<br />
Imagine that a manager comes to you and asks:<br />
<br />
<b>Manager</b>: “could you teach my team how to use planning poker?”<br />
<br />
It may be that there is a perfectly good reason for the team to learn and use planning poker. On the other hand, by following the coaching process, you may learn that the real issue is that the manager thinks the estimates that the team is coming up with are too large. In that case, teaching the team planning poker (when they may already know it) is likely to aggravate the team and leave the original issue unresolved.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Start with Relationship Management </h3>
One factor that contributes to the quality of interaction is the rapport you build with those you are coaching. In any interaction, make a conscious effort to contribute to that relationship. It can be as simple as doing a quick check-in and/or engaging in small-talk. When somebody approaches you with a coaching request, it can be tempting to dive right in. Not only does pausing to build rapport contribute to the relationship, it also gives both of you a chance to pause, become present, and focus on the coaching conversation. You may even discover some useful context for the problem at hand. Let’s see how the conversation that started with a request to teach a team planning poker might play out:<br />
<br />
<b>Coach</b>: “I’ll have to check my schedule. How have things been going?” <br />
<br />
<b>Manager</b>: “Things are pretty good in general, but this team has really been a problem. They are consistently behind and I’m starting to lose sleep over it. Anyway, I need to go, can you take it from here?”<br />
<br />
<h3>
Issue Identification </h3>
In the example, the coachee is trying to end the conversation before you have had a chance to do any coaching at all. Your goal is to get a coaching conversation started. A good tool here is to use a <a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/11/coaching-questions.html">coaching question</a>. <br />
<br />
<b>Coach</b>: “I’d be happy to teach them planning poker, but I feel like I’m missing some context. Can we back up a moment? What precipitated this? <br />
<br />
The question “what precipitated this” has started a coaching conversation. While the coachee has presented you with what may actually be the problem and tried to delegate to you what may be the solution, it is better to go through a process of identifying the issue, even if you end up in the same place you started. <br />
<br />
From the conversation so far, you have surfaced that the team is “consistently behind,” that the manager is “starting to lose sleep over it” and that he would like you to teach the team planning poker. Planning poker may or may not be connected to his statement that the team is consistently behind, but losing sleep indicates that it is very important to the manager that something changes to make things better.<br />
<br />
<b>Manager</b>: “well, I don’t think they are doing planning poker right because their estimates always seem to come out too high and then they don’t get the work done in time.”<br />
From this answer, it seems that the manager may not understand the purpose of planning poker or may not understand the use of story points (or both). Let’s try another <a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/11/coaching-questions.html">coaching question</a>.<br />
<br />
<b>Coach</b>: “I hear you saying that this team doesn’t get their work done in time. How would you summarize the high level problem here?” <br />
<br />
<b>Manager</b>: “actually, there’s a lot on my mind. The real problem here is that as a company we seem to have lost the ability to make our customers happy. I guess I was just thinking that the deadline issue was low-hanging fruit.”<br />
<br />
Aha! Now we are getting somewhere.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Goal Setting </h3>
Once the coachee has identified the issue that they would like to work on, the next step is to turn the issue into a goal. In some cases, the difference may only be semantics, but reframing an issue into a goal can shift the perspective from dealing with an energy sapping problem to investing in achieving an exciting goal.<br />
<br />
<b>Coach</b>: “How could you reframe the issue ‘we’ve lost the ability to make our customers happy’ into a goal?” <br />
<br />
<b>Manager</b>: [after thinking for a moment] “I think the Product Manager is also frustrated, but I don’t think they realize how good this team has been at partnering with product to better understand customer needs and come up with novel features that delight customers. They are just focused on getting what they want by a certain date. I think a good goal would be to help the Product Manager better understand what this team can do.”<br />
<br />
We’ve come a long way from the manager’s initial request. And if we had stepped in with suggestions right away or made assumptions about what the problem was, we might not have ever gotten to this point. Of course, not all coaching conversations will end up with the coachee solving their own problem, but if we don’t try, we’ll never know. And regardless of where we end up, by following a process that includes <a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/11/coaching-questions.html">coaching questions</a> and active observation, we will surface lots of useful information that will come in handy if we need to move to another mode such as teaching or mentoring.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Uncovering Options </h3>
At this point, we could step away knowing that we’ve already provided a lot of value to the manager, but we’re not done yet. The next step is to uncover options for achieving the goal. <br />
<br />
<b>Coach</b>: “what options do you see for achieving your goal?” <br />
<br />
<b>Manager</b>: “I could go and talk to the product manager directly, but I don’t think he sees me as business minded. I could mention my idea to the product owner, I think they worked together at another company. I could also suggest that he talk to a customer that was on the verge of abandoning us until this team partnered with them to come up with some really awesome new features that then also led to a whole new market. Now that I’ve laid it out this way, I think the best bet is to talk to the product owner about setting up a meeting between that customer and the product manager. Thanks! This was really helpful."<br />
<br />
This is actually just a fragment of a full Agile Coaching conversation. I've kept it short to fit into the format of a blog post.<br />
<br />
Next: <a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/11/coaching-questions.html">Coaching Questions </a>Damon Poolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16561311551267979837noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13831777.post-25331457302280415932018-11-12T23:16:00.001-05:002018-11-30T09:26:36.251-05:00Coaching Questions<h2>
</h2>
Coaching Questions are open-ended and non-leading. They should be appropriate to the stage of the coaching process you are in. Here are some that I have found useful.<br />
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: blue;">
Initiating </span></h3>
<ul>
<li>What are you thinking about? </li>
<li>What’s on your mind? </li>
</ul>
<h3>
<span style="color: blue;">
Information Gathering </span></h3>
<ul>
<li>Let’s step back for a moment. What precipitated this? </li>
<li>What’s the background on this? </li>
<li>How would you summarize the issue? </li>
<li>What makes this something that needs to be addressed? </li>
<li>How does this fit into the big picture? </li>
<li>Why is this top of mind for you right now? </li>
</ul>
<h3>
<span style="color: blue;">Expanding</span> </h3>
<ul>
<li>Tell me more. </li>
<li>And? </li>
<li>What else? </li>
</ul>
<h3>
<span style="color: blue;">
Identifying Potential Outcomes </span></h3>
<ul>
<li>What will success look like? </li>
<li>What would failure look like? </li>
<li>And what would you like to have happen? </li>
</ul>
<h3>
<span style="color: blue;">
Exploring and Discovering Options </span></h3>
<ul>
<li>What options do you see? </li>
<li>What paths do you see to achieving your goals? </li>
<li>Who or what else could you leverage here? </li>
<li>What’s the [ bravest / craziest / least likely to work /most fun / most surprising] approach to try here? </li>
<li>If you have a hero that you think would be relevant in this situation, what would they do? </li>
<li>What could you apply here from similar situations in the past? </li>
<li>What would you do if you had a magic wand? </li>
</ul>
<h3>
<span style="color: blue;">
Focusing, Narrowing, and Planning </span></h3>
<ul>
<li>What’s your recap of the options we’ve discussed? </li>
<li>How do the various options we’ve discussed stack up? </li>
<li>Out of the various options we’ve discussed, what are you leaning towards? </li>
<li>Tell me your next step and when you will take it </li>
</ul>
One way to get used to using open and non-leading questions is to try “question of the day.” Pick one or two of the coaching questions above, or a question that you have used in the past that is open and non-leading. Try it in conversation throughout the day as appropriate. Try a different question every day. After a while, the questions will become a natural part of your coaching conversations. <br />
<br />
A quick activity to get your mind started down this path is to play the coaching question game. Here are four potential questions. Guess which are coaching questions and which are leading, closed, or both. Answers follow directly after.<br />
<br />
<h4>
<span style="color: blue;">
Questions </span></h4>
<ol>
<li>What’s the background on this? </li>
<li>Do you think they need to have more focus? </li>
<li>What’s the best way for me to take this off your hands? </li>
<li>What makes this something that needs to be addressed? </li>
</ol>
<h4>
<span style="color: blue;">Answers</span> </h4>
<ol>
<li>What’s the background on this?<br /><i>Good question </i></li>
<li>Do you think they need to have more focus?<br /><i>Closed: has a yes/no answer. Leading: assumes a need for more focus.</i> </li>
<li>What’s the best way for me to take this off your hands?<br /><i>Leading: assumes the issue should be delegated. </i> </li>
<li>What makes this something that needs to be addressed?<br /><i>Good question </i></li>
</ol>
Next: <a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/10/what-does-agile-coach-do-all-day-part-1.html">What Does an Agile Coach Do All Day? Part 1</a><i><a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/10/what-does-agile-coach-do-all-day-part-1.html"> </a></i><ol>
</ol>
Damon Poolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16561311551267979837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13831777.post-84842508911692770852018-10-26T21:39:00.000-04:002018-11-30T09:28:14.359-05:00What Does an Agile Coach Do All Day Part 2 <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In my experience, there is no end of things for an Agile Coach to do. At times, the needs and requests will just pour in. And at other times, you’ll need to be more proactive. Let’s talk about what to do when things are slow. It may be that you are new to a team and they aren’t sure what to make of you yet, so they aren’t bringing you any requests. Or it may be that it seems like everything is humming along just fine. There’s no single way to discover the work that needs doing. Everybody has or will develop their own techniques. That said, there are only so many ways to discover the work. Here is a list of ideas to try. And remember, you don’t need to do this on your own. Consider finding co-conspirators that can help you look for potential problems and opportunities.<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Go to a standup or any other ceremony and try to use “new eyes.” That is, ignore the exact stories or issues being discussed. Look for boredom, agitation, rote patterns. Pretend you are attending the meeting for the first time.</li>
<li>Schedule short 1-1s with folks to see what is on their minds. Don’t force the conversation, just see where it leads. Think of it as an informal session. Talk over coffee, perhaps at the local coffee shop.</li>
<li>Spend some time with people outside of the team. What are customers saying? What about support, sales, marketing, or folks on other teams? Bring anything you find back to the team and get their thoughts. </li>
<li>Put together a special workshop for a team as a whole. Think of some interesting or unusual activities that will get people thinking out of the box. </li>
<li>Organize an open space event</li>
<li>Think of a topic that may get people excited and put together a lunch and learn or book club. You don’t have to be the speaker. Perhaps there is somebody in the company that you could invite, or perhaps somebody from another company. Get people thinking in new directions. Hopefully, it will spark comments like “perhaps we could do something like that!”</li>
<li>Spend some time going to meetups, reading blogs, or joining an Agile Coaching Circle</li>
<li>Offer office hours </li>
<li>Create some mechanism for people to send you requests. For instance, set up a Trello board that people can add requests to at any time. </li>
<li>When you see somebody in need, offer to help. As a coach, you should be focused on helping people get to the point where they don’t need your Agile skills. But you may find opportunities to mentor people. For instance, if a Product Owner is feeling swamped and you offer to help write some stories, that may give you the opening you were looking for to introduce them to some new story splitting techniques. </li>
<li>Assess where your teams are on their Agile Journey. Doing it with them is the most effective approach. But if they are too busy or uninterested, you can always do it on your own as you look for new paths to take.</li>
</ul>
Do you have other ideas? Please share in the comments!<br />
<br />
Next: <a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/11/people-do-what-they-desire-to-do.html">People Do What They Desire To Do - ADKAR</a> Damon Poolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16561311551267979837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13831777.post-61338332440176618812018-10-17T12:08:00.002-04:002018-10-27T11:16:59.427-04:00What Does an Agile Coach Do All Day? Part 1<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuTxcjCpo_r0CF9KhOOiB59M9WES44wG58lmVGy4cEaLKalo-uYe3yew77W4-hP6FFH4567qfx10rBxjG8b77Qvh9KEoeSTtl_SyitnYYGjpLNRkIrrZ0Ys0M1kUkOa7baigBk/s1600/coach2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="426" data-original-width="645" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuTxcjCpo_r0CF9KhOOiB59M9WES44wG58lmVGy4cEaLKalo-uYe3yew77W4-hP6FFH4567qfx10rBxjG8b77Qvh9KEoeSTtl_SyitnYYGjpLNRkIrrZ0Ys0M1kUkOa7baigBk/s320/coach2.png" width="320" /></a>Understanding active listening, emotional intelligence,
facilitation and a host of other coaching skills is great, but what does an
Agile Coach actually do on a day to day basis? How do they create value? One
can imagine a coach wandering around, making observations, dropping pearls of
wisdom here and there, and being approached for advice. Or perhaps they are
like a lucky charm; just great to have around, imparting greater levels of
Agility through proximity.</div>
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Part of the difficulty of being an Agile Coach is that you are only successful when others are successful. You work is "indirect." Compounding this is the fact that if everybody were already experienced Agilists, you wouldn’t
need to explain the value of Agile or how to become Agile. Agile is very
different from traditional ways of working. As a result, it can easily end up
in people’s “blindspot.” That is, when you explain parts of Agile, they can
sound like exactly the wrong thing to do. For example, phrases like “consider
working on fewer projects at the same time” and “produce new end-to-end
functionality from scratch every two weeks” make many people shake their heads,
even in supposedly Agile environments.</div>
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<br /></div>
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As a result, there are many different views of what “Agile”
really is. When you show up at a client or a new team, it is likely that the
true value that you can provide is not fully understood and that people will
have certain pre-conceived notions of who you are, what you believe in, and how
you will provide value to the organization, teams, and individuals. To counteract these difficulties, one thing you can do is create and publicize a catalog of service offerings. This gives people a tangible list of things that you can do for them that they may not have even thought of asking for.<br />
<br />
Here is <a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=14aK-4nrY0EJMwDz2yTT3FOVQCvZKLd68">my catalog</a>. It is in word format and I invite you to use any and all of the text that will help you create your own service offering catalog.<br />
<br />
This idea came from Gillian Lee as she was looking to provide new ways to make Agile Coaching even more approachable and self-serve for her teams.<br />
<br />
In <a href="https://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2018/10/what-does-agile-coach-do-all-day-part-2.html">Part 2 of this series</a> I discuss ways to discover the potential needs of your teams. </div>
Damon Poolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16561311551267979837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13831777.post-25831899424232832142018-10-17T11:08:00.000-04:002018-10-17T11:08:00.473-04:00Agile Games!Over the past couple of years, and even more so lately, Gillian and I have been creating lots of Agile games, including user story games and games that teach Agile Coaching. You can download the full trove <a href="https://nexxle.com/agile/downloads">here</a>.Damon Poolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16561311551267979837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13831777.post-45556429525986029762018-10-17T11:06:00.002-04:002018-10-17T14:38:00.345-04:00Upcoming EventsI've got a number of events coming up! Tonight I'll be at the Kendal Square Agilists doing a talk/large game on "Scaling Agile Organically." You can learn more and register at their <a href="https://www.meetup.com/KendallSquareAgilists/events/254682397/">meetup page</a>.<br />
<br />
This Thursday, and every Thursday, I'll be doing an Agile Coaching webinar. Sign up for this week's webinar <a href="https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_UV5qGxYgQD67WibJegF3fw">here</a>.<br />
<br />
And if you are interested in getting your ICAgile Agile Coaching certification (ICP-ACC), I've got three opportunities coming up in Boston and Dallas. Dates and details are on my <a href="https://damonbpoole.eventbrite.com/">eventbrite page</a>. Use coupon code ICPACC1 to get $300 off!<br />
<br />
Hope to meet you in person soon. What can we learn from each other?Damon Poolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16561311551267979837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13831777.post-10161746186022803702018-10-12T12:13:00.002-04:002018-10-12T12:17:26.244-04:00Switching Focus to Agile CoachingAfter a long hiatus on this blog, I'll be switching the focus from DIY to Agile Coaching. That said, the essence of providing information for the Agile DIY'er will remain, it is just a change of focus. So, what do I mean by "Agile Coaching?" Topics related to coaching within an Agile environment. Topics like powerful questions, presence, listening, and remaining neutral. These are all things that come from coaching and are independent of any particular domain area. But as an Agilist, you are often working to catalyze change which requires good coaching skills. So, I'll be talking about coaching, but within an Agile context.<br />
<br />
One awesome thing about the Agile community is that we have so many tools that are great coaching tools. For instance, part of coaching is identifying what the issue is that needs coaching. Powerful questions are great for that. And what are speedboat and open space if not powerful non-leading open-ended questions? So I'll be talking about great tools like that within a coaching context. Let me know what topics you'd like me to cover and ask me whatever you'd like. I look forward to your participation! Damon Poolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16561311551267979837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13831777.post-26282413097242751862018-03-24T10:13:00.004-04:002018-03-24T10:16:27.419-04:00The Best Product Owners Write Small Valuable User StoriesAre you a product owner, or aspiring to be one? Is your organization struggling with producing user stories that can be implemented start to finish in a few days or less that real users will recognize as valuable and say "thank you" for? Too often, the
"user stories" that get implemented in a short period of time are
really tasks. In extreme cases, providing end user consumable value
takes multiple sprints.<br />
<br />
On April 4th, <a href="https://nexxle.com/">Nexxle </a>and <a href="http://bannersol.com/">Banner Solutions</a> are partnering to bring you a webinar that will introduce you to a number of story writing and story splitting techniques that can help you and your organization create small valuable stories. We'll do a quick refresher on INVEST using examples of stories that meet or don't meet the INVEST criteria and then cover story splitting techniques including
split by test scenario, split by generated list, cake slicing, and many more<br />
<br />
<a href="https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_47L-pQuWSO6vSnHbI5NiRg">Register</a> now for our April 4th webinar.<br />
<br />Damon Poolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16561311551267979837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13831777.post-29617025575145439492012-03-11T01:08:00.009-05:002012-03-13T18:07:36.780-04:0011 Self-organizing Teams Teaching Themselves Agile at the Same TimeIn a previous post I talked about how I came to learn that I could <a href="http://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-i-discovered-that-agile-can-be.html">teach Agile to lots of people</a> at the same time. In writing that post I realized that it was a great illustration of self-organization. That realization was in the forefront of my mind as I ran the session "Hands On Agile Immersion" on March 10th at <a href="http://agileandbeyond.org/?presentation=hands-on-agile-immersion">Agile and Beyond 2012</a> .<br />
<br />
Although I've trained large groups of people on Agile many times over the last few years, it never occurred to me to create a video of the experience. This time, I decided to do it to illustrate large-scale self-organization in action. There were eleven separate teams with no appointed leader.<br />
<br />
All I did was set up the learning environment, provide the materials, and give just a few instructions for each activity. The participants did all of the learning/teaching as a self-organized team on their own.<br />
<br />
In the span of only an hour and a half, all 11 teams taught themselves the basics of 9 Agile practices as follows:<br />
<br />
<ul><li>Form <b><i>cross functional,</i></b> <b><i>collocated teams</i></b></li>
<li>Pick a software product to "build"</li>
<li>Write 12 <b><i>User Stories</i></b> for that product</li>
<li>Put the stories into a <b style="font-style: italic;">backlog</b> ordered by business value with the help of a <i><b>Product Owner</b></i></li>
<li>Estimate the stories in <b><i>story points</i></b> using <b><i>Planning Poker</i></b></li>
<li>Plan a release using 2 <b><i>iterations </i></b>worth of stories</li>
<li>Do all of the above as independent <b><i>self-organized teams</i></b></li>
</ul><br />
The teams did self-organization so well, I was able to do capture lots of video clips of the session and only had to answer 4 or 5 questions about the mechanics during the whole 90 minutes of the session.<br />
<br />
As always, one of the favorite things that people learned was "Planning Poker," an Agile estimation technique involving special playing cards. I told people I didn't need them back and I also gave away all of my extras. I brought 48 decks and they were all gone at the end of the session. Not even a single card was left behind!<br />
<br />
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A short video (4:10) of the session is <a href="http://youtu.be/A5mRqgIdx2g">available on YouTube</a> .<br />
<br />
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/4XkBHmFF0qM?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
Some folks from Macomb Community College made their own video (3:58). The "Hands on Agile Immersion" part goes from 1:25 until the end.<br />
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<script language="javascript" src="http://widgets.dzone.com/links/widgets/zoneit.js"></script>Damon Poolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16561311551267979837noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13831777.post-24998768214684695862012-03-02T18:09:00.004-05:002012-03-02T18:18:20.525-05:00Agile is a Game<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizOQhovT_Vtwad_Kv_GvFt3g7IaIlcsuUY37LmjAIsXGFLX2f1dQrvNFTgMvnwT1RJ7m5pf8TumfLzW-Gdeu_BLqaCoJun30rlKCJ4RYRUFaxWgFnbRRvCQWS9NOI_4REiZK02/s1600/Todd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizOQhovT_Vtwad_Kv_GvFt3g7IaIlcsuUY37LmjAIsXGFLX2f1dQrvNFTgMvnwT1RJ7m5pf8TumfLzW-Gdeu_BLqaCoJun30rlKCJ4RYRUFaxWgFnbRRvCQWS9NOI_4REiZK02/s200/Todd.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>While attending a presentation at Agile New England last night on “Gamestorming” by Todd Lombardo I was reminded that Agile is a game. That may seem a bit uncomfortable for something that is done as a professional activity, but it is actually a very good thing from a business perspective. After all, what is a game? A game is an activity that is governed by a set of rules, has a goal, has a scorekeeping system, and is fun to do.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">The Rules of the Game</span></b><br />
Nobody really likes rules, but what is the first thing you ask when you are about to play a new game? You ask “what are the rules?” You want to make sure you understand all of the rules and that people are “playing fair.” When these two conditions are met it is a lot easier to learn how to get good at the game and have fun.<br />
<br />
The rules in Agile are deceptively simple. They are things like "iterations should be no more than 4 weeks" and "all iterations should be shippable." Following the rules mostly involves unlearning years of what you will later realize were bad habits.<br />
<br />
The best part of the rules in Agile is that they are so clear. Don't ask me what the rules are in traditional development. I have no idea and I played that game professionally for more than twenty years!<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Winning the Game</span></b><br />
The next question you ask when learning a game is “how do I win?” This is the goal of the game. It is important to know what the goal is so that you can work within the rules to achieve the goal.<br />
In all of this, it is important to know how to keep score because it is usually how you know how close you are to your goal.<br />
<br />
There are aspects of software development that make it difficult to know the actual score, which is the amount of value produced. Value is a lagging indicator which you don’t really know until after somebody has used what you have provided and given you back something in return. Most of the ways of “keeping score” within Agile, such as burn up and velocity, are really only a proxy for the real score (value produced), but they are still important to know and monitor.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">The Fun of Playing</span></b><br />
You may wonder what “fun” has to do with a professional activity. Well, I don’t know about you but if I have my choice between working in a “fun” environment or a not-fun environment, I’ll pick the fun environment every time. Another way to look at fun is “doing something that is satisfying.” I believe that most people want to gain satisfaction from their work and that usually comes from feeling that you have provided something of value that benefits others in some way. In my experience, high job satisfaction corresponds directly to personal productivity.<br />
<br />
The game of Agile development is simple to learn and to play, at least in comparison to traditional development. As a result, it is much easier to reach the goal and provide a high degree of job satisfaction. In my book, that’s a win-win.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Cooperative Play vs Competitive Play</span></b><br />
One last point on this subject is that Agile development is both a team game and a competitive game. It is a team game within your organization and it is a competitive game that your organization plays in the marketplace. Now, get out there and win, win, win!<br />
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<b>Learn the rules of the game:</b> Boston, March 20th, <a href="http://www.valtivity.com/BostonAWTT.html">Agile Whole Team Training</a> .Damon Poolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16561311551267979837noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13831777.post-30810433113554365932012-02-26T17:28:00.001-05:002012-02-26T17:30:38.319-05:00Software Development Nirvana vs Hotfixes<div class="p1">The purpose of software development is not actually the development of software. If one could accomplish the same result that software development provides without developing any software, then that is what people would do. The purpose of developing software is to provide value to the user of that software. Ideally, the user could get new value from their software as soon as they realized that they needed it or as soon as somebody discovered something new that could be added that would deliver new value. But in the real world it takes time to deliver something new.</div><div class="p1"><br />
</div><div class="p1"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Development Efficiency vs Market Efficiency</b></span></div><div class="p1">The value of any particular feature erodes over time. If you take 2 years to develop a whole bunch of great new features and they were all developed really efficiently, that’s great, but what if the value of most of those features has eroded away during the time it took you to do it? You may have gained development efficiency, but you’ve lost market efficiency. Development efficiency is important because cost needs to be less than revenues or you’ll eventually go out of business. But market efficiency generally trumps development efficiency because revenue is so closely tied to delivery time. That is, the faster you can deliver something that people value, the faster you will get the return on that investment. Equally valuable is failing fast; learning that you are headed in the wrong direction and finding a new and more valuable tact to take.</div><div class="p1"><br />
</div><div class="p1">Look at it this way. Which would you rather do? Option 1: plan to deliver 12 features in a year and “efficiently” deliver them in a year but only 4 of the features are a hit with customers. Option 2: have a flexible plan, make changes all year long, and deliver just 10 features in that same year, but 6 of the features are a hit with customers? Also consider that in option 2 the quality is higher. Hopefully, you picked option 2 and voted for market efficiency over development efficiency.</div><div class="p1"><br />
</div><div class="p1"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Software Development Nirvana</b></span></div><div class="p1">Based on this, I would say that software development nirvana would be 1 developer, 1 tester, and 1 user documentation writer producing changes and delivering them as fast as they possibly can. And of course the customer(s) are sending money to the team just as fast as that team delivers the software. I realize you may have questions about quality, architecture, and just how fast a customer can take changes. And of course we will want to be able to replicate what this small team does on a larger scale. Let’s park those thoughts for now and just consider that it is hard to imagine a more effective team than the one described here.</div><div class="p1"><br />
</div><div class="p1"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Hotfixes to the Rescue?!</b></span></div><div class="p1">It turns out that there is something that all development teams do that mimics this description of Nirvana. It is something that is done very quickly, gets whatever resources are needed, and is done because it is absolutely the highest value producing activity that the organization can do at the time that it is done. That’s right, a hotfix!</div><div class="p1"><br />
</div><div class="p1">Why do you do a hotfix? Because if you don’t somebody somewhere will be losing a great deal of value. That value may be revenues, customer satisfaction, or something else of value. In any case, you do a hotfix because it produces the most possible value to your organization compared to anything else you could do at that moment. It may not seem like value, but negating a negative value is a positive value.</div><div class="p1"><br />
</div><div class="p1">A good deal of my Agile thinking stems from this one observation: if the process used to resolve a hotfix is the best way to produce the highest value as fast as possible, then why don’t we do that with all of the software we produce all the time? One caveat is that most hotfix processes cut corners in order to go fast, but what if there was a way to do hotfixes without cutting corners? </div><div class="p1"><a href="https://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-url="http://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2012/02/software-development-nirvana-vs.html" data-text="Software Development Nirvana vs Hotfixes" data-via="damonpoole">Tweet</a><br />
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</div><div class="p1"><b>Read: </b><a href="http://damonpoole.blogspot.com/2012/02/one-piece-flow.html">"One Piece Flow"</a>, an intentional version of hotfixes.</div><div class="p1"><br />
</div><div class="p1">Check out our free webinar <a href="https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/890181495">"Panning for User Story Gold"</a></div><div class="p1"><b>Date:</b> March 6th at 1pm ET.</div><div class="p1"><a href="https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/890181495">Click here to register</a> </div><div class="p1"></div><div class="p1"><b>Description:</b><i> "Putting User Stories into business value order is a key tennet of Agile, but that's just the first step. There's much more value to be extracted from your user stories using specific story splitting techniques combined with reducing cycle time. By splitting user stories you can separate the gold from the dirt as well as reduce the cost of implementation. This session will cover a variety of methods for splitting user stories and reducing cycle time including the "create/read/update/delete" method, the acceptance test method, the split by value method, frequent grooming, Kanban flow, and software tool support."</i></div><div class="p1"><a href="https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/890181495">Click here to register</a> </div>Damon Poolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16561311551267979837noreply@blogger.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13831777.post-21633654441871320032012-02-26T17:09:00.000-05:002012-02-26T19:22:49.656-05:00One Piece Flow<div class="p1">One piece flow is a concept from Lean and is the key to succeeding with Agile. One piece flow is exactly what is done when producing a hotfix. The only difference is that one piece flow is an intentional practice rather than something done in reaction to a critical problem.</div><div class="p1"><br />
</div><div class="p1">There are four main concepts in “one piece flow.” Each story is done as if it was the only thing in the release, each aspect of developing a user story happens in rapid succession, there is as much done in parallel as possible, and each team member focuses on a single user story at a time. The result of one piece flow is that the time between when the team first starts working on a user story and when they can ship it fully developed, tested, and documented is very short. The timeframe is generally on the order of a week at most and usually days.</div><div class="p1"><br />
</div><div class="p1">In one piece flow, when development starts on a story, QA should be creating test cases for that story (story testing) at the same time. When development is done, QA should then automate the test cases and make sure they all pass. At the same time, the user documentation is written. One last step that must be completed prior to considering the story done is that all of the artifacts connected to that story such as source code changes, documentation updates, new test cases, etc must be integrated into the source code mainline.</div><div class="p1"><br />
</div><div class="p1">Ideally, when following one piece flow, you would have done everything required to release the product to validate that the story really is done. That’s generally an impossible goal when just getting started with Agile, but it is a goal to keep in mind as you go. When working on stories, try to adhere to the principle of one piece flow to the greatest extent possible. As you read on you will find additional practices which simplify and reinforce the practice of one piece flow.</div><div class="p1"><br />
</div><div class="p1">One last point. It may sound from the name that you can only work on one story at a time when following one piece flow. But really it means that for any story that is being worked on, it is progressing as fast as it possibly can without anybody that is working on it switching between multiple tasks. Another way to look at it is that the team should only be working on more than one story if the second story can be worked on without affecting the total time it will take to complete the first story. Likewise, the team should only be working on three stories if it won’t affect the total time it will take to complete the first two stories on an individual basis, and so on. A good rule of thumb is to only be working on as many stories simultaneously as you have developers on the team.</div>Damon Poolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16561311551267979837noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13831777.post-45862223673650416242012-02-24T12:40:00.004-05:002012-03-05T21:26:10.436-05:00Burning Down Hours is Anti-Agile Because Working Software is the Primary Measure of ProgressA burn-down chart can use anything for the units, such as hours or points, but originally Scrum's burn-down chart tracked hours of work remaining in the iteration. Many people still use an hours-based burn-down chart as their primary measure of progress during an iteration. That’s a useful tool, but it is similar to tracking yardage in an (American) football game. It measures activity, but not accomplishment. After all, what percentage of a touchdown is 30 yards?<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Working Software is the Primary Measure of Progress</b></span><br />
One of the principles from the Agile Manifesto is "<i>Working software is the primary measure of progress</i>". But burning down hours is measuring and reinforcing progress against a plan without any requirement to have working software until the end of the iteration. That's pretty much the same as not having to have working software until the end of a waterfall release! This is one of the reasons that many people have moved away from burning down hours or supplemented it with other tools, such as burning up story points.<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Burning Up Points to the Rescue</b></span><br />
<div class="p1">The Burn-up by points chart is one of the very best tools in Agile. It brings together many of the best aspects of Agile all in one place and gives you an instant heads up as to how you are really doing. The way a points-based burn-up chart works is simple.<br />
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</div><div class="p1">For the iteration you are about to commence, total up the story points in all of the stories you have targeted for that iteration. Let’s say it made up of two 5 point stories, two 3 point stories, one 2 point story and two 1 point stories. That’s a total of 20 story points. Make a chart with an X axis that represents all of the days in the iteration from the first day to the last day from left to right. Let’s say it is 10 days. The Y axis represents the number of story points completed and in this case would go from 0 to 20 story points.</div><div class="p1"><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEits-YawwHdI_4vMo5MTZvgcJCjpwdMqBIVeO2qiBkqabhWUV7tq8kiVTKbecBQkaJB_jAc8dNHegDDToh2VTTZB6QOQoyWwIViq6xRvQikaiD1mLGNWdbcDZVJ3PNHWqtRSbQ9/s1600/Burnup.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEits-YawwHdI_4vMo5MTZvgcJCjpwdMqBIVeO2qiBkqabhWUV7tq8kiVTKbecBQkaJB_jAc8dNHegDDToh2VTTZB6QOQoyWwIViq6xRvQikaiD1mLGNWdbcDZVJ3PNHWqtRSbQ9/s320/Burnup.png" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div>At the end of each day you tally up the story points associated with all of the stories that meet your definition of “done” and record the total on the chart. For instance, if you completed a 1 point story on the first day, nothing on the second day, and a 2 point story on the second day, your chart would have a 1 point bar for the first day, a 1 point bar for the second day, and a 3 point bar for the third day.<br />
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A points-based burn-up chart lets you see graphically day-by-day how much progress you are making towards your goal. It only records accomplishment, not activity, and allows you to see if you are on track or getting behind. To me, this is exactly what is meant by "<i>Working software is the primary measure of progress.</i>"<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Won't The Chart be Empty Until the End of the Iteration?</b></span><br />
At first you may think that the chart will show that you are behind for most of the iteration and catch up only at the end when QA is able to start testing and marking stories as done, but whenever the chart shows something other than a steady march to the end of the iteration, here are some of the questions you should be asking:<br />
<ul><li>Are our user stories too big? Is that preventing QA from getting involved earlier?</li>
<li>Are people working on too many stories at once?</li>
<li>Are we unable to produce a stable build for QA to test?</li>
<li>Are developers producing a bunch of problems and then going on to the next story instead of helping QA resolve the problem?</li>
<li>Should the developers drop what they are doing and lend a hand writing automated tests?</li>
</ul><div class="p1">Using a points-based burn-up chart gives everybody, from team to manager to the organization as a whole, an instantly understandable picture of the health of the project and team. It simplifies the life of the manager because if it indicates a problem anybody can stand up and say “hey team, we’re messing up, what are we going to do about it team?”</div><div class="p1"><br />
</div><div class="p1">A burn-up chart reinforces the following ideas:</div><ul class="ul1"><li class="li1">Use story points for estimation, it enables whole-team thinking such as this whole-team metric.</li>
<li class="li1">Make stories as small as possible to get them done as fast as possible to keep the focus on accomplishment rather than activity</li>
<li class="li1">Have as co-located and as cross-functional a team as possible to enable the fastest possible turn-around time on stories</li>
<li class="li1">Enable the team to work as a team and to manage more things on their own</li>
</ul><div><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Unlike Burning Down Hours, Burning up by Points is Fully Automatic!</b></span></div><div>You may not be ready to give up burning down hours yet, but there's no reason you can't use both. And most Agile Project Management tools, such as <a href="http://rallydev.com/">Rally</a> , <a href="http://versionone.com/">Version One</a>, and <a href="http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/overview">Jira</a> will generate a points-based burn-up chart for you automatically.</div><div><br />
</div><div>There's one more reason you may want to consider moving from burning down hours to burning up points, assuming your user stories are small enough in general and you are mostly getting stories done all the way through the iteration. In my experience, team members don't really like having to enter their hours remaining for their tasks every day, often forget to do it, and it keeps the focus on activity rather than accomplishment. Also, the only manual step required is to mark the story done, which helps to make the whole process much smoother.</div></div><br />
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<i>[Excerpted from my free eBook "<a href="http://www.valtivity.com/eBooks.html">Do It Yourself Agile Kickstart</a>". ]</i><br />
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