During the lockdown, I happened to watch the 2019 movie "The Lion King" . This movie was an eye opener to me and what I learnt in those 120 minutes truly amazed me. The movie has all the learnings & Trappings of What  Servant Leadership is all about.

In the proposed talk, I try to bring this learning to all of you. This talk delves into the reason why Servant Leadership is the need of the hour in this crisis time. I draw inferences & inspiration from the movie "The Lion King" to drive home the relevance of Servant Leadership in our work life.

The Cynefin framework has had a huge impact on being able to talk about complexity in systems thinking, and its widespread use facilitates many of us situationally finding which approach might suit our current problems. However, as simple as it looks, it can be difficult to learn and use.

Sure, there are alternative ways of exploring Cynefin. I've used the corridor game, designed a 3D printed model (see below), and even scripted a Lego stop-animation movie for it -- but recently got a lightbulb over the head moment -- maybe it would be easier to learn as a board game?

I've had some initial thoughts, but thought it would be fun to collaborate with others on this, to co-design what it could look like. Dave Snowden is already on board and keen to see what could be developed (he's also keen on the Lego movie, but that's for another day).

70% of people worldwide have felt like an imposter at some point in their career. 46% respondents to a women-in-tech survey agreed that help overcoming imposter syndrome would make them happier and more successful. Do you worry sometimes that you're not as smart as the other people in your organisation? Or that you won't be able to keep up and they'll find out that you don't really belong there? Do you stress out about living up to the expectations of the people you manage?

People working in tech, specially those in leadership positions, often struggle to overcome prejudice and lack of privilege but still end up feeling like they don't belong, like they are a fraud, even when they're achieving success and making an impact. Imposter syndrome can affect people at any stage in their career - whether they're new to tech or in a senior leadership or executive role.

In this talk I'll go over personal experiences with imposter syndrome and practical strategies I've developed that anyone can apply to banish imposter thoughts and prevent them from getting in the way of your success, career progression, mental health, and happiness at work. An easy to remember acronym (REACT) with 5 realistic steps you can take away and practice can help you create a more accurate representation of your performance. You can take these steps away for yourself, or if you are a people leader, use them to help coach your people through the confusing world of imposter syndrome.

Ahh, that thorny problem, how do we place the right 'bets' on the right ideas that have the best chance of become winning products? As a lifelong learner, I'm propelled by searching for tools and techniques to support my continuous improvement journey. 

I've long been a fan of the Google Design Sprint.  Over the past couple of years, I've become more familiar with Pretotyping, Alberto Savoia's technique to ensure you're 'building the right it before you build it right'.

Recently I've been incorporating pretotyping into design sprints, resulting in even more focus on validating an idea and determining how likely a product is to succeed. Doing so requires higher order facilitation skills and additional pre-planning. However, in the sessions I've run to date, the addition of pretotyping has resulted in the testing increments more tightly aligned to areas of concern. This means potential blockers ie sprint goals or potential 'how-might-we' HMW statements can be effectively tested and real data gained, rather than just more internal opinion. 

This approach is potentially of interest to people in organisations that have difficulty getting product to market; find it hard to align on common business goals; or who are looking for an additional evidence-gathering approach to support effective decision-making in product development. 

Metrics on employee happiness, theoretical value, and work not done are just plain dumb. I will reveal the metrics that you need. That mean something. And that get results. Join us as we discover THE BEST AGILE METRICS!

"You better bring it!

Oh, it's already been broughten!"

The purpose of cheerleading is to support and encourage their team to achieve peak performance - they give the team the extra oomph to carry them over the goal line! The cheerleaders not only support and celebrate the wins, they also encourage the team when they need to push through their trials and tribulations. Cheerleaders build the hype of the team fans by creating infectious energy, just imagine your stakeholders hyped up because of your awesome team!

In this session we will take lessons from professional cheerleading and apply them in an agile team context.

We will cover the 3 pillars of agile cheerleading - chants, dances, and symbols and explore the fundamentals and benefits of an agile cheer so that you can super-charge your teams.

BE! AGILE! BE! BE AGILE!

This session is a twinkle in my eye! I have drafted an outline but haven't completed it yet, so it is very much a work in process. I usually write the abstract last, so this is a change for me. Essentially it's about how an agile coach needs to practice the fine art of ZFG. This session is mostly about the "why". For example, I review how fear is the "mind killer" and how fear prevents many coaches from speaking truth to power. As another example, I review "clean bias" and how a coach should not only be explicit about bias, but also also understand what their biases are so that they can provide objective feedback. In contrast, I also cover how ZFG does not mean "I don't care" and I distinguish between the two. My goal in this session is to help coaches understand the philosophy of ZFG and how it is a critical skill to embrace in order to be a truly effective agile coach.

Whether it’s lack of alignment between team members, or friction between areas within an organisation, conflict leads to unhappiness and poor flow of work. Learn how to run a workshop to surface the antidote to conflict – empathy and common ground.

This workshop is designed to support teams or organisations who are eager to find a functional way beyond either silent, or outspoken conflict. It uses several tools from systems coaching (Relationship Myth, Lands Work and Third Entity), but no special skills are required to adapt it to your own team or workplace.

You can use this workshop in contexts such as team or organisational reset activities, or as a standalone conflict resolution intervention.

This is a learning by doing workshop, so expect to jump in and have a go!

Ever been spellbound when someone spun you a great yarn? Storytelling connects folks with your message and makes them care about it. In Agile contexts, where we care deeply about effective communication, story-telling is a super power for aligning folks on a vision, and bringing them on the change journey. Lean how to use this skill in all sorts of contexts, from being heard in meetings, to job interviews or presenting at events.

This learning by doing workshop guides you through how to get started – from devising your message, crafting your first line, to engaging your audience.

The workshop uses a fun step-by-step approach, that does not require any skill whatsoever as a writer, just the openness to give it a go!

If you are up for some laughter and to push your boundaries trying something new, come along and learn how to tell your story with impact.

Have you ever felt frustrated when you cannot influence change? 

Have you felt you tried your very best but things don’t seem to improve? 

If any of the above resonate, this workshop will unlock a new perspective for you!

Using a Systems lens to transform a complex system can be a game changer for leaders and coaches. A Systems perspective will shed light on the ‘unseen’, ‘untouched’ or ‘ignored’ parts of a system, without which any system-level action would be ineffective over the longer term.

This workshop will help you look through the Systems lens and use it in your everyday work. This workshop is for everyone, from novice to seasoned Systems Thinker – we will explore the concepts together and identify various ways to put them into practice. Don’t be surprised if you realize you have been using Systems Thinking concepts already! 

The workshop is inspired by Donella Meadows ‘Dancing with Systems’ and ‘Leverage Points’.

Duration - at least 90 minutes

Have you ever walked into a meeting and wished it won’t be boring and people will talk to each other? If your answer is “yes”, then maybe you could be the person who lightens up the environment with some appropriate and impromptu jokes. In this session we are going to learn what a sense of humor is, the benefits, the similarities between a stand-up comedian and an Agile coach, how stand-up comedy teaches us to be socially aware, and develop better EQ. Can a good sense of humor be the x-factor to build a resilient culture? Are you curious now? Come and explore the answer!

RELEVANCE

A sense of humor and coaching have many relevant similarities. A person with a great sense of humor helps people to connect with each other, gains trust, and improvises their jokes based on the audience. These are also the attributes of a great coach or leader. Having a healthy sense of humor can help model how to fail with grace, learn fast, and energize the people around you. Humor can help to create a positive environment for teams to be creative. You also need to be aware and understand appropriate humor based on your audience and when not to overdo it.

Learn how to run a workshop to build a collective vision of a team's dream workplace and then reveal their current state and collective agency to create their dream. This workshop was designed to help teams in their early forming stages, but can be used at any time that they are missing the spark and energy to work better together. 

The workshop uses a tool from Organization Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC)  called Informal Constellation. This tool is one of my favorite tools that I often design into various coaching situations. ORSC works with teams as a whole and seeks to improve the intelligence of the collective or system by revealing what is not seen.

This workshop works well as a precursor to creating a social contract, team agreement, team charter, or designed team alliance DTA (an ORSC tool ).

You will learn how to run the workshop by doing it. This workshop is a cut down version of the actual workshop that I use with teams.

The Agile Coaching Competency Framework (Agile Coaching Institute) describes Professional Coaching as "Partnering with clients in a creative process that inspires their personal & professional potential (from ICF - International Coaching Federation)".

LAST (Lean Agile & Systems Thinking) involves many changes in mindset, process, practice and ways of working.  We often get stuck as we try to figure out how to incorporate LAST into our daily work.  Coaching is an approach for helping people to get unstuck and trying to accelerate their transition to a different way of thinking and working.  In this workshop we will also move away from Agile and Agile Coaching and explore Professional Coaching as described by ICF and how it can help people's personal and work lives in general.  

In this workshop we will explore two parts of coaching.  The first part consists of supportive behaviours and the second part the coaching-specific skills.  We will then have the opportunity to practice coaching skills in pairs.