Your Organization is Agile…YAY! You are working in a prescribed framework (Scrum, Kanban, etc.)…YAY! You are a part of a Dynamic team…YAY! You are all set and running as a defined High Performing team…NO! So, what is in the way? I can help answer that, it isn't just a team problem.

Through my experience in Agile environments, organizations check all the boxes for implementing agile, but forget the most important which are the behaviors. Over the years, I have started to focus on the behaviors needed in an agile environment. In this session you will look at what gets you excited? What makes you frustrated? What motivates you? How are you showing up? Are you owning your day or renting it? And why reflecting on these matters!

I will provide tools that we will use to identify personal behaviors and statements that you will be able to use not only within your profession, your team, your organization, but also in your daily life outside of the office.

Are you ready to show up to be your best?

Does your team have a "me first" mentality? Are people so focused on getting their own work done, their tickets closed and moved to the right, that they seldom look up to see what is happening with others? What about your division--do teams appear to be siloed, concerned about only themselves, not looking around to see how their work affects others? Let's change this!

Collaboration is not just working together. We can achieve real collaboration, the type where we inspire one another, challenge the way we work through problems and tackle work, do the things that scare us by making selflessness a daily practice. By making questions of "What did you do to help another person or team?" or "What did someone do to that really made a difference in how you worked?" into our retrospectives and mindset, we can build selflessness into the very fabric of the team. By bringing selflessness to the forefront and making it a talked-about, key ingredient to how our teams function, we can go from wishing for more opportunities to work together to achieving true collaboration.

Coaching stances are a self-charter, a guide for agile coaches and practitioners as they work with individuals and teams. They serve as a way for agile coaches to keep themselves on course and to navigate the choppy waters they undoubtedly encounter. So, how do you go about building that charter, that stance, so that you can show up authentically and as your best self? And, how do you best convey your stance to your team and in your organization?

In this workshop, Kari and Erin will lead activities designed to help you identify the values and behaviors that define your coaching stance. Through facilitated peak experience and mundane experience exercises, you will uncover and explore your values in ways that are personal and meaningful. In small groups, you will share what is important about these values in the work they do as agile coaches and how you can demonstrate these values in their work within the organization, whether that’s with teams, management, senior leadership, or other agile coaches. You will also choose an image that resonates with the way you would like to illustrate your coaching stance--or design one of your own. Erin and Kari will leave you with inquiries to further develop your charter once you return home from the conference.

With the tools and exploration in this workshop, you can return to your teams and organizations, better prepared to serve as agile champions and thoughtful agile-coaching practitioners. It is our hope that you will be inspired to help other agilists in your organizations to create their own values-driven coaching stances.

Effective facilitation is the WD-40 of the agile practitioner’s toolbox. Without effective facilitation, meetings squeak along, skip a gear, or worst of all, grind to a complete halt. But with good facilitation, teams find deep democracy, working collaboratively towards team-defined goals.

In this talk, Erin, Yogita, and Trey will discuss and model effective facilitation techniques that facilitators can use to ensure that all voices are heard. We will lead everyone through a point-by-point understanding of what a good facilitator is, the role the facilitator plays within a group, and why teams need to hear all voices. We talk about building and supporting psychological safety, facilitation methods to acknowledge dominant participants while encouraging quieter voices, and how to deliver impact feedback in a way that supports deep democracy. Lastly, we talk about what to do with teams that have achieved a deeper democracy and how to follow up with participants once they have left the room. This is a learning session, but we also leave room to practice new skills so that everyone leaves with something new for their toolbox.

The communication tools of Liberating Structures will teach you how to facilitate the discussions your org needs. I am going to demonstrate how to use these techniques in the workshop. And all the attendees are going to be fully immersed and ready to wield their new knowledge the very next day at work.

Come learn how to help your team(s), org(s), and company(ies)!!!

For more information, watch my video at http://youtu.be/UNOjqMUv8h0

A version of this workshop that was presented at Agile Tour Sydney 2016 is at http://bit.ly/2f4Bie8

From Baby Boomers to Millennials, every generation engaged in agile discovery has made an impact on our overall agility. So often the attention is placed on what makes the generations different as though the differences are a negative. If we ignore, rather than embrace the differences, we can be held back by gatekeeping, or ideological agile wars. The key is to find the best in every generation and close the agile generation gaps!

Just as there are generations of agile discovery, there are also generations of “transformations.” Many of those in the workplace have been through multiple transformations and adjustments to agile practices, with varying results. During this workshop, we will leverage the Integral Model and Boundary Spanning Leadership techniques to explore your organization's culture and altitude. Differences in ideology can disrupt work and be a dividing force in agile efforts and strategy. We will tackle those challenges and identify practical approaches to bringing a unified vision to what agile means in your organization along with ways to reinforce and continually hone the agile culture you want to thrive.

Whether you are moving to agile for the first time, or looking to boost or extend the agile culture in your organization, this workshop will provide you with tangible ways to bring out the best of each generation.

If "culture eats strategy for lunch" and "you can't change culture", does that leave you stuck, your agile transformation stalled, and your strategy hopeless?

There is hope, and the hope is you. We have learned that you CAN intentionally create a great company culture. By practicing new, intentional habits, leaders at all levels can foster a culture that honors individuals (and invites their input), embraces learning (even through failure), and encourages transparency (by making it safe).

Come practice with us, and make new habits, and create a company where people bring their whole selves to work.

Agile frameworks and methods harness the team concept and “collective intelligence”. In a world of silos and individual achievement, why not stand together? This talk will highlight the journey of two internal coaches who were put together in an organization to help grow its agility. No-one could predict the power and bond of these coaches and what they would create together. We will talk about attributes, benefits and potential downside of pair coaching (if there is one). Tips on how we hold space together during sessions, how we challenge one another to keep growing, learning and becoming stronger as individuals and as a pair.