Currently viewing the category: "Experience"

Coaching Smells

On June 12, 2012 · Leave a Comment · In Coaching, Experience, Stories

“Hi, I’m a coach and I am here to help” 

My spine stiffens and I can feel my hair on back of my neck.

“Thanks, K”

I respond tepidly

K: “I have been promoted, I am now your coach. I will do what it takes to help your team”

Me: “we need all the help [...]

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Hierarchical Amplification

On May 25, 2011 · 2 Comments · In Experience

Consider one of your peers or subordinates or juniors some one at the same level as yours or below. Lets name him Jerry.

Next time Jerry or some one like him/her requests for a non-trivial action from you, reflect on how your thinking, processes this ask.

It is my experience that I will often assess, [...]

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Afternoon ScrumMaster

On April 19, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In Experience, Stories

 

Context explains a lot of our behavior.

 

This is a most intriguing case, that I feel I can now retell. For much time has passed by and my metaphorical obfuscation will protect the innocent.

 

In the warm summer months of August, I was engaged to a client most ambitious in pursuit of [...]

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Virtual Parkbench

On November 15, 2010 · 1 Comment · In Experience, Facilitation Exercises

For large distributed retrospectives, where participants in the retrospective are in different cities, I have created a variation of popular group discussion technique called as “Park Bench”.

Some Background: I was coaching within a large organization with different scrum teams distributed in three separate cities, Bellevue, WA; Chicago, IL and Waterloo, Canada. This organization had [...]

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Walk the dog

On June 10, 2010 · 3 Comments · In Experience, Facilitation Exercises, Tools & Artifacts

This is a simple technique with a marketing twist to its name. This title came to me while coaching a team that was struggling to behave cross functionally and were paralyzed at delivering working software at the end of their sprint. It is a simple mental discipline that I have often used in crafting good [...]

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