Category Archives: Leadership

You Don't Need A Cape to Use Agile Superpowers!

Agile Superpowers – Being Agile

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Agile Superpowers are feeling skills or attitudes. How can you up your game and tap into your inner wisdom to help your teams and organization? They can be looked at as a space to ‘come from’ when working with others in a team, as a leader, as a coach, or in any capacity that requires you to engage with others. The idea of Agile Superpowers is based on metskills (more on that later).

The challenge in writing or talking about Agile Superpowers, is how to convey a feeling or attitude in words. There is an essence that we don’t want to lose when talking about Agile Superpowers, but in trying to define them we risk losing that essence. One example of an Agile Superpower is curiosity. Curiosity not about being a “questioner”, but to have curiosity in your bones! I mean REALLY REALLY REALLY curious! The kind of curious where judgement and ego fade away!  Continue reading →

Please Drop Me! I'm Antifragile!

Building Antifragile Relationships and Teams @ Santa Barbara Agile

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Building antifragile relationships is about finding ways for our relationships to gain from disorder, or be more antifragile. What tools and practices can we use to help us thrive from disorder? What mindset do we need to hold to be present with the teams and organizations we are in?

I’m excited to be presenting a session at Santa Barbara Agile titled: “Building Antifragile Relationships and Teams.” The session will be on November 19th! You can signup and find specific details at the Santa Barbara Agile Meetup.   Continue reading →

Working with Team Toxins

Resolving Conflict by Working with Team Toxins

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We know from Team Toxins and Team Conflict, that toxins are normal. So we can’t just “get rid of them.” In fact, pretending there are never toxins in a team could be viewed as a form of stonewalling. There are a number of ways to resolve conflict by working with team toxins. These not “iron-clad plans” or best practices, they are approaches to resolving conflict that ideally start before major conflict has emerged.

The four team toxins are criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.

Below I list a number of ways to work with team toxins. These are ideas that make or break our teams and relationships. I believe they make the difference between being engaged and checking-out. Many of these ideas are concepts that should be explored Continue reading →

What is valuable about the team toxins?

Team Toxins and Team Conflict

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Team toxins have the ability to wreak havoc on our teams and organizations if left unchecked.

Team toxins can wreck havoc on unprepared teams!

Team toxins can wreck havoc on unprepared teams!

Team toxins can lead to team conflict if people are not aware of and able to deal with toxins. Understanding team toxins is one preemptive way to deal with team conflict.

 

The four team toxins are:

  • Criticism (or Blaming)
  • Defensiveness
  • Stonewalling
  • Contempt

Continue reading →

There are many views on Agile Coaching!

Thoughts on Agile Coaching

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There are many ideas and definitions of agile coaching.  I was talking to with some people this week about agile coaching and figured I’d summarize a bit of the discussion here.

Given that each agile coach is helping unique people, who make up unique teams, who make up unique departments, and organizations — we should expect there to be a large degree of variation as to what an agile coach does. People, teams and organizations are at different points in their agile journey. This necessitates that as an agile coach, you meet people where they are. There are so many variations of clients and situations that attempting to propose a prescription is unwise.

Agile coaches work in service to and with clients, helping them achieve the amazing results they are capable of. Continue reading →

Don’t Let a Few Thought Leaders Make Us Stupid

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What is a thought leader? If you Google ‘thought leader definition’, you get something like: one whose views on a subject are taken to be authoritative and influential. That seems like a good place to start. While this article applies to thought leaders in general, a few of the references I make are about thought leaders in the agile, leadership, and agility domains.

I will consider types of thought leaders, why they make us stupid, and how we can help ourselves as well as thought leaders improve! Continue reading →