How to begin your Agile journey with The Agile Coaching Growth Wheel: Part 1 Insights from Agile Coach Fred Deichler

What if your work meetings could be super productive and you could lead your team to new heights with the power of emotional intelligence? Get ready to explore these possibilities with our distinguished guest, Fred Deichler, an Agile coach and regular conference speaker. Immerse yourself in a thrilling exploration of the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel, a powerful tool for professionals navigating their Agile journey. Fred shares his personal experience of overcoming language barriers, and how it contributed to his personal and professional growth.

Emotional intelligence and facilitation play a crucial role in Agile coaching, and Fred dives into how you can harness these skills to enhance team dynamics and facilitate more effective meetings. Through shared experiences and anecdotes, Fred unveils key competencies that every Agilist must master and how to read cues from team members for successful coaching. Let's venture into this insightful discussion on balancing personal goals with career investments and how to imbue courage into your everyday work practices.

As we wind up the episode, prepare to get valuable insights into the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel, its various levels and competencies. Fred imparts wisdom on being an effective leader, spreading knowledge without coming across elitist, and the delicate art of knowing when to use specific teaching techniques. Whether you're a certified Scrum Master or new to Agile, you'll find this episode filled to the brim with practical advice and insightful lessons. Don't miss this opportunity to supercharge your Agile journey!

https://agilecoachinggrowthwheel.org/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:21

Welcome to the podcast that challenges you from the inside. Welcome, be More and Discover the Agile Within. And now here's your host, greg Miller.

Speaker 2: 0:34

Okay, it's Mark and Greg. Back again Agile Within. Today we have a wonderful guest, a man that we've, mark and I, just talked to at the Agile Online Summit talk and his name is Fred Dichler and, if you're in America or if you're not, he lives out west in Washington state and he's been an Agile coach, worked for multiple organizations helping on their Agile journey. He's also a frequent Agile conference speaker. If you're on LinkedIn, follow him, fred Dichler. You can see all the conferences he's in. He's does a lot of conferences all around the country. I don't know how he does it. Welcome to the show, fred.

Speaker 3: 1:16

Dichler, thank you, I'm so excited to be here. And only one slight correction, greg, I know not.

Speaker 2: 1:24

Washington right, it's Oregon, correct.

Speaker 3: 1:27

But I did live in Washington on my own personal travel journey.

Speaker 2: 1:34

I know, I just you know I get confused because I knew that you lived in Oregon. As soon as I said I was like it's Oregon, it's Oregon. I knew right away.

Speaker 4: 1:42

Is that an insult, Fred?

Speaker 3: 1:44

Yeah, is that an insult? No, I've only been to Oregon for a couple of years. I did live in Washington and California for significantly longer than Oregon and I never thought I'd end up here. But you know, life takes you places.

Speaker 2: 1:57

Yeah, nice. So, fred, you were talking to us early, maybe kind of about all the conferences you do, about the cool Austria conference you just did, about speaking German to the folks.

Speaker 3: 2:09

Yeah, absolutely, I've been a. I have German heritage and it's something I took German in college and then I stopped speaking it and a few years ago I decided to start it up again, do a lingo, kind of like a New Year's resolution, and it's so gamified, I just stuck with it. But one of the things is you really have to speak it to people and speak it to native people in order to practice like conversationally versus by the book. It's kind of like, you know, similar to Agile, you know you got to practice it Right Practice anything right?

Speaker 3: 2:43

Yeah, and you know, I did visit Germany earlier this year on a layover from another conference in Europe and I spoke very little German there because I was nervous, I was scared. And I had this opportunity at this Agile Austria conference last week and I'm like you know what? I'm just going to kick it off speaking in German to the point where I'm going to kind of make the audience a little confused because I'm going to say I'm a little bit nervous because my German isn't perfect. But you know, anyways, let's go. And the audience thought it was kind of funny and I will say I was a little bit inspired by Mitchell Queen's Artur Vaginieri. Whenever he talks he always talks in the native tongue and I would say I wasn't copying him, but he definitely inspired me and it got me past that, my own personal barrier of fear that I had about doing this thing, like I've invested years of my life into this game of learning German and I just, you know, I'm like I'm just going to go for it.

Speaker 2: 3:49

Sweet, that's awesome. Yeah, that's very good segue into talking about Agile. So, uh, oh, I don't know Depends on when you're listening to this. We were recording in October but we did record. Uh, so, their second time with Fred. Then on the Agile within. First time on the Agile within. You heard me in the intro for Fred. Uh, everyone out there familiar with Vasco D'Orte I'm sure you are the scrum master toolbox we recorded a session with Fred for the Agile online summit. That will be out. Well, I don't know when you're listening to it, but it's coming out the end of October, october, was it 24th, 25th summer around there Uh, you'll be able to hear us talking to Fred for the North American leg of the Agile online summit, with Vasco D'Orte talking about the Agile coaching growth wheel, and you can go.

Speaker 2: 4:41

There's a website, agilecoachinggrowthwheelorg, if you want to find out more about that. But we talked a little bit about it in there. Fred was so gracious to come back. We thought it was a wonderful topic. We invited him here to talk more about the Agile Carthing wheel. So Agile coaching growth wheel. See, I can't say that it's a big mouthful. Agilecoachinggrowthwheelorg Five times faster. Got it tough times fast. No, I can't ACGW. We were joking about it. Yeah, yes, right. Anyway, we want to talk to Fred about the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel. If you're new, if you're a new Scrum Master, if you're here, been listening to the show for a while, lots of people talking about how do I get into becoming a Scrum Master? Right, I just saw it recently on LinkedIn, especially with like layoffs and people maybe wanting to move into it, things like that. So, fred, someone just got their exam, the Scrum certification. What do they do now? How can this help them?

Speaker 3: 5:44

Yeah, because we all know, when you first go to that dear exam, you go to a two-day course and you come out of it as a master, which, as you know, you're the master of nothing. I do want to let the audience know that the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel from AgileCoachingGrowthWheelorg it's big, it's dense, it's 21 competencies over nine themes. And if you'd like you know if you're not in the car, you know you can pause our podcast right now Go to AgileCoachingGrowthWheelorg so you can follow along, because it's a great way, so you can really get the mental model we're going to talk about. And you know, greg, you asked that question about, like, I've just started out as Scrum Master, what do I do? And that's where I go into the AgileCoaching Growth Wheel.

Speaker 3: 6:33

At the core of it, we have this competency theme called self-mastery, and talk about that one for a moment. And self-mastery, it's the core of what it takes really to be a professional, and this transcends any job. You know, we say the AgileCoaching Growth Wheel I think AgileCoach in the title, but this isn't just for AgileCoach, it's just for anyone who's working in a job probably, you know, with an Agile space. Because when they started, when the group started this journey to create this wheel in 2018, the question they asked was not how do you become a good AgileCoach. It was like what are the skills needed to successfully coach teams and organizations in Agile? That was their base question. That was their product goal. It's not about being an AgileCoach, it's about coaching teams and organizations.

Speaker 3: 7:36

So at the core of this is this idea of self-mastery. Self-mastery has three competencies that fall into it, and all of these are things when you think as a professional, these are very good things. The first one is personal transformation and what that really is. It's about being the change that you want to see and how do you embrace continuous growth through reflection and learning. Like you are that, if you're going to help transform organizations and teams, you first got to work on yourself.

Speaker 3: 8:12

The second piece with an Agile self-mastery out of three and then I'll let you ask some questions, guys is emotional intelligence. This is how you cultivate an awareness and regulation for your own emotions to improve your relationships, and also how you sense those emotions from others. There's a lot of information on emotional intelligence and I'm doing it zero justice with that very small overview. The third part of self-mastery is balance, and the reason that's important is because, as with everything you think about a teams and scrum, they're supposed to be working at a sustainable pace, and balance is the way that you can integrate you know, work, play and well-being and then recognize when you're out of balance let's say you've been working too hard, putting too many hours and you need to recharge your batteries so you can come back and be your best version of yourself. So really, at the core of all this stuff is this concept of self-mastery.

Speaker 2: 9:19

That's great. Yeah, that's a lot to unpack, you're right. Yeah, so I do any of those justice in an hour. Right, we could talk about each of those individually, probably.

Speaker 2: 9:32

But personal transformation first thing I heard you say was you can't help anybody until you help yourself, which I've heard that in like self-help things, and if you go to counselors, you hear that too. Right, you got to work like well, I guess one thing I can talk about I've been divorced once and you talk about that coming out of that healing. People can relate anything. That that's just where my mind went to me, like anything coming out of that. Right, you got to help yourself and you got to be well yourself before you can help somebody else.

Speaker 2: 10:09

And, like I would imagine this is like, oh, I don't know, when I first got into agile, I couldn't help anybody else because I was learning myself and going through, I guess, the little bit of a transformation and picking all of up, picking all of the stuff up, and then I got to the point where I wanted to start this podcast because I felt like I wanted to help somebody else and I was there at that point where I could, where I felt I knew enough where I could help somebody and be of help. Is that kind of along the right lines or am I off track there?

Speaker 3: 10:48

Yeah, absolutely. I think you are on the right lines. You know, if you think about it, another way to put self mastery is that investing in yourself. So you got to this point where you had kind of enough knowledge, where you're like I can go out there, I could share some stuff, but I'm going to learn along the way. Correct? You know you're embracing that continuous growth. You're thinking about, like, how can I become a better Agilist?

Speaker 2: 11:12

Oh yeah, I'm not at the point where I never am, at the point where I think I know at all. I think none of us would say that in any profession. I don't think you would say that. But yes, I got to the point where I just wanted to share what I know with other people and help them.

Speaker 3: 11:28

Yeah, and that's really like how one of the ways I got started off like in LinkedIn mentioned that earlier. I do try to post frequently, and early on in my you know, in the career of posting frequently, it's like I got to post something amazing every single time, or I got this great concept no one's thought of, and early this year I just decided I'm going to post about the things I experienced, and so I had this little journal with me. Every day I just write down an Agile learning or observation I had. I just write a little post on that, because that's what people actually care about. You know, I am not a guide or a catalyst in agility. I'm a, you know, I'm a practitioner. I'm just sharing what I know and I'm also I'm willing to learn.

Speaker 2: 12:14

Right, there's just some of the best posts, by the way, from yourself, and for other people it's not these. I see some that are just go on and on, paragraph after paragraph after paragraph. They're trying to be deep, right, but that's what I try to do. I don't do what you do, but, yeah, something will come across me. I'm like, yeah, that's worth a post and, yeah, something's usually something I experienced. So, yeah, I would just encourage people out there that on social media, you experience something you think that it could help somebody else. I would encourage you to post and I'm sure a lot of people can get something from it, absolutely.

Speaker 4: 12:55

Before we move on further, one of the other things that registered with me, fred, was I think I'm saying it what you said is it be the change that you want to, that you want to see? Is that what you? Is that the?

Speaker 3: 13:10

phrase she used. Yes, that's the one that I choose to use.

Speaker 4: 13:16

Yeah. So that really resonates with me trying to push down the urge to say, oh, whoa is me, things are bleak, nobody will listen. What difference is it really going to make, instead, having the mindset of really living the values that you're trying to practice, and not just so?

Speaker 3: 13:42

another, I guess another way to say it is practice what you preach right, then, absolutely is a way, and it starts with you, know, it starts with you and that's really where the core of this agile coaching growth wheelorg is. Is this self mastery, and it's really, if you're not willing to invest in yourself, you know what are you doing here Exactly. Yeah, sorry to be a little blunt for people, but you know.

Speaker 3: 14:10

I think the people are choosing to listen to podcasts like this and many others. They're already investing in themselves. Thank you for being here.

Speaker 2: 14:19

This right here is yeah, we hope that that's the idea of the podcast is the agile within that? It's besting yourself to learn to grow. That's the idea. Yes, exactly, so didn't do that justice, I know, but it's just again touching on that. Go to agile coaching growth wheelorg. There you go. The next one was emotional intelligence. That's a giant one, right, that I talk about a little bit in my day to day thing, or it comes across my mind, but yeah, let's go more into that.

Speaker 3: 14:59

Yeah. So emotional intelligence it's the first thing is really, it's it's your own awareness and regulation for how your words, or words of others, like, affect you and what you put out. Because you know, even when you're co-located you could more easily sense how the emotions would change within a team. It's a little bit harder remotely, especially if you don't have a video going, but you can hear different people's approach to work. You know as a scrum master, if you're invested in your team, when someone sounds a little bit different. You know when you deliver a training or a workshop if it's landing well. And so this emotional intelligence, it's about sensing and responding to those kind of cues.

Speaker 2: 15:47

Yeah, I just I had. I had a dose of this, I know for the good, but last week, to your point, I was delivering training at my company. We're going through, we are moving towards safe, for good or for bad. That's what we're doing, sorry, no.

Speaker 3: 16:06

I'm I'm about to release training here, so it's okay, it's okay, yes, no, so no, it's good.

Speaker 2: 16:12

Actually, 6.0 is is great. I'm SBC. I was training the teams, the safer teams, for a new teams, a train that's getting ready to launch in our mortgage areas. So I, I was, it was me and this other woman and she I could tell she didn't have well, her emotional intelligence wasn't working well that day. Let's put it that way.

Speaker 2: 16:42

There were, there were, and I was watching the crowd when she was, and she was, she wasn't picking up on a lot of cues. Mainly around break time, people were getting, people were getting a little restless and they were. They were starting to check out and she kept on going and so when I got up there, I told myself I'm not doing that. So we were up there and talking, I was talking and it just my.

Speaker 2: 17:13

I didn't really look at the clock, at my internal clock told me I need a break and people need a break. I said let's, let's break. They all broke for 10 minutes, came back and it was a different crowd and they were it's like you popped air out of the balloon and it was good, and they felt they weren't more, more engaged. So all that to say is, yes, there's cues that that we need to be as Agilist, I would say, really, really aware of. We need to have really good emotional intelligence, my experience and sense those things when we're dealing with team members. If someone has their arms folded or looking at their phones, we need to be very aware of that, in my opinion, and it's going to make us a better Agilist 100% and I like what you said there about that facilitation part.

Speaker 3: 18:04

And if we, if we expand out from the core of the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel, out of self mastery, there is there's a component, a theme called facilitation. There there's similar, there's components of each within, within. You know emotional intelligence, but having those facilitation skills is also a key component, you know being an effective scrum master.

Speaker 2: 18:31

Absolutely.

Speaker 4: 18:33

I would say it would be very difficult to be an effective scrum master if you're, if you cannot facilitate right.

Speaker 2: 18:42

Well, yeah, well, but some, some people think that's all the scrum master does, the Agilist does, is facilitate meetings. Right, I think, set them up.

Speaker 3: 18:53

Yeah, sets them up and runs them. Runs or takes notes.

Speaker 2: 18:58

True, I send out the notes. Get coffee, get pizza and mountain dew.

Speaker 4: 19:02

I guess what I was thinking more of was being the change that you want to see and if, if you can't be the facilitator, give a good example of facilitation to others. It's going to be A steep road up. I guess that's where my mind was going.

Speaker 3: 19:19

Absolutely, and one thing I love to do is I'm a frequent participant in meetups all sorts of different ones and one of the things you don't really think about when you first start going to meetups is how much you could learn about facilitation from the facilitators in the meetup. I know I observed one a few months ago and it really helped me get the confidence to rain a meeting back in and that was just like I wasn't there for the facilitation portion, I was there for the content, but just watching the skill facilitator, I'm like this person. They safely brought us through the entire goal of what the meeting was and it was brilliant, it was inspiring. That's a good point, yeah that's awesome.

Speaker 2: 20:04

But yeah, it's back to emotional intelligence. Yeah, I think you can. Definitely I can spot someone that doesn't have very high emotional intelligence. If you're someone that's talking about yourself all the time into your things, be aware of that. Be aware that, unfortunately, people don't always want to hear about you. They want to talk about themselves. It's been my experience. They don't want to talk about themselves. Don't be someone that talks on and on and on and doesn't give the other person read the cues, like here we're interviewing. We have our cues. Fred talks, he stops talking. That's a cue for one of us to talk Things like that. Be aware of those things.

Speaker 3: 21:00

Absolutely, and that's where also people lack emotional intelligence. They don't own how they are received. They blame the receiver for how they feel about situation Instead of taking some ownership on a thing. How could I have presented myself or my idea differently?

Speaker 4: 21:14

It's a really good point, fred.

Speaker 2: 21:16

Yeah, that's right. All right, the third piece of mastery agile coaching, growth wheel, balance, balance, absolutely.

Speaker 3: 21:31

Yeah, that's that thing. I mean we, even if we think about our conversation day, we're trying to balance out like our goals for the call. It's a little different, but balance. I mean we're all three of us very invested in agility in our careers, but also we have lots of other things that we love and focus on and if we over index on any of them we throw our whole system out of whack and that's why that balance piece is so important.

Speaker 2: 22:00

Definitely.

Speaker 3: 22:07

So that's the core of the agile coaching growth wheel and the thing that I did that's a little bit different, which you're not going to get from looking at agile coaching growth wheel at org is I thought about my own personal career and how did the agile coaching growth wheel, how did my journey map to it? It's something we talked about at the agile online summit and as I was going through thinking about a couple of talks I had I have going on it became very clear that there were themes and competencies that were relevant for me on each part of my journey. And if we go back to your entry question, greg, you talked about I'm that new scrum master. What do I need? You're on that self mastery, that investing yourself, but beyond, that kind of gets a little bit into what what market talked about, which is your foundation and for me, the foundation it comes from four key competencies within the agile coaching growth wheel.

Speaker 3: 23:13

You know I want to start off with that facilitation skills. That's one of those key competencies as an effective whether scrum master, coach or anyone who's actually going to lead an effective meeting. You know I made the joke earlier about being the scrum mom where sometimes you know, an entry scrum master might think like, okay, I'm responsible for scheduling the meetings, but there's a huge difference between scheduling a meeting and facilitating a valuable event. Being a good facilitator also means that you have a deep understanding of many frameworks, methods and practices that you can apply to different meetings in order to make sure they're successful and people walk away thinking, yeah, that was a good use of my 30 minutes, my hour, my full day that I spent, and that's where that facilitation skill is Right.

Speaker 2: 24:08

I know in the facilitation classes I've taken that and what I've seen in my in at work. I think it's very, very rare for me to see meetings set up Like I think when you're talking but when you're talking through that I'm thinking you know an agenda, an agenda laid out, maybe a time frame, and you get into the meeting and people keep it. The facilitator keeps it moving, they keep it on track, they keep it on time. Everyone knows what's going on. I rarely see that happen. I typically see meetings sent out no agenda. It's in the title and I guess people are assumed that they, from the title, they know what they're going to be talking about. There's no agenda laid out. I can't say the meetings go badly. Most of the time they go fine. But some of the techniques I'm sure you're thinking about, I've rarely seen it in action.

Speaker 3: 25:17

Yeah, it definitely is a frequent that people just schedule meeting because they're low on time. You just need to get it on the calendar. I think I've heard that before. But if you think about the number of people involved, meetings get rather expensive. So investing the time up front to prepare a good quality agenda, remind people why they're there and keep people on track is some of the most value you can bring to a team or to an organization, correct?

Speaker 2: 25:50

I think a lot of for me, maybe not for me personally. I think a lot of times people they don't know what they're doing. They've never been taught how to facilitate a meeting and maybe, depending upon the titles of the people in the meeting and if you're like especially where I work now if you're lower title, you may feel like if you have to tell an executive or a director to keep it moving or to move it along, it might feel awkward. So those are some of the things I've seen. Yeah, right?

Speaker 3: 26:27

Yeah, absolutely, and that's you know. One thing I think about and I'll let you jump in, mark is like courage. You know we have the scrum value of courage when you get that meeting invite with a blink agenda. Have the courage to ask, like, why am I being included in this? Like not in a combative way, but ask that organizer like, what's our plan? How can I help? And especially where an Agilist can come in and help someone maybe hasn't facilitated a lot, lend your expertise to that person. They will thank you so much for that, Correct.

Speaker 4: 27:01

I'll just say one strategy that I have used successfully before not always, but sometimes is that we're all busy and our calendars tend to stay full. So you know, fred, sometimes I'll have to admit there are meetings that show up and I just accept them and don't really look, spend a lot of time. I just know that somebody else scheduled it, invited a certain number of people, and then all of a sudden people gather and you hear something along the lines of the person who organized it. I just wanted to get everybody together here to talk.

Speaker 4: 27:33

Right and it's like okay again. So you mentioned courage and it takes a lot of courage, but when they're struggling and you're not the person to call the meeting, I have gotten the courage for a time to say I think I could help here if you would like some. And usually people are like oh my gosh, please. Yes, we need some help and just do a simple lean coffee is a very easy way to just get everybody's thoughts out on the table and then be able to vote to see what people think we need to talk about, and then have those other topics split off into other meetings, not have everything discussed in this one meeting, because I think everybody has been in that, that never ending meeting right where everybody wants to talk about all their problems all at one time on every single side of the business. So, yeah, there you go free of charge. I don't know, Greg, do we have a payment plan that people can come up with and pay us if they?

Speaker 2: 28:39

Well, you're always asking for money. I don't know if you told Fred how much he owes us for this. We can talk later, right, so?

Speaker 4: 28:45

Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 2: 28:46

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 28:49

Oh no, Didn't that build to Washington?

Speaker 2: 28:51

Washington yeah, but the Fred Dijkler in Washington, not Oregon Exactly.

Speaker 3: 28:56

Mark. What you outlined there, Mark, was a good understanding of a practice. You're in a space and you have this practice and you know it can work to emerge the greatest things that people need to talk about. And that kind of brings us into the second piece of our foundation from competency this is from the Agile and Lean, it's frameworks and practices. One thing you'll learn early on, or you should learn, is that scrum is not the only flavor of Agile. Along my journey, I've looked into Kanban, xp, test-drum, development and scrumban all about pulling these different practices and these different methods, ways of working, in for what's right. For my context, it's all about also designing and delivering sessions that focus on what's most essential for a group. We talked about facilitation. That also goes into practice. How can I create an environment where people participate to bring the most value out of the product that we're building? And it's very important as an Agilist to continually research and learn about new practices and frameworks to see if they can improve the way you work.

Speaker 2: 30:10

Right, so just to back up, did you mention? So we said facilitation skills, frameworks and practices. Was there a third one you said in there?

Speaker 3: 30:21

There's not. There's two more after that, but I'm kind of following the conversation.

Speaker 2: 30:25

Yeah, just wanted to make sure for those listening that we're on frameworks and practices correct. Yes, we are Okay, got it, just making sure. Yes, yeah, I would agree. I, along with that, I prefer the title Agilist for the reason you just said. I've worked at companies where, and, just to be clear, I really don't care what my title is, but I think Agilist makes more sense or something more generic like that. Agilist is the best term I could think of, rather than Scrum Master, because I think we should be able to do more than just Scrum. We should be able to do Convon, xp, test-driven development, and I've looked into all those too. Like you said, I think there's what I've been at work. People have been talking when we're going safe, but people have been saying, oh, less, and then Scrum has their Nexus, which I went up there and went through that. But, yeah, I think we should know lots of different frameworks. So what about you, mark?

Speaker 4: 31:32

Yes, and my first thought was be careful, greg, saying you don't care what you're called, because that can come back to bite you.

Speaker 2: 31:42

Well, okay, well.

Speaker 4: 31:44

Waterfall Warden. It doesn't matter what you're called.

Speaker 2: 31:49

Well, I was trying to be say that I don't care about titles. I'm not a big title person. Is what I meant to say by that? I just care what I'm called. Yeah, I know I do care what I'm called nothing bad. But yeah, I was just saying I think Agilist makes more sense based on what Fred said, is that Scrum Master paints us into the corner of all we do is Scrum and Scrum Master is what it's called in the framework and that's fair if that's all you do. But what I've seen a lot of companies they might start off with Scrum because it's the most popular, they heard about it and that's where they start. But when you're on a in real world, like we've seen most teams, scrum doesn't talk about user stories. Scrum doesn't talk about Kanban boards. It leaves it so open and it says it intentionally. Right, it's open, it's a framework and people don't I don't think people realize that user stories and Kanban boards are not in Scrum Guide.

Speaker 3: 32:57

Absolutely. Our implementations are the collection. I wanna move us into a third part of the entry Scrum Master, your foundation. That's something we hear a lot, which is serving the team. That's part of the serving theme, and serving the team it's another one that can be easily misunderstood. We joke about coffee, but you know, or notes, or updating your JIRA or your Azure DevOps. People think that's might think that is serving the team or being a servant leader, but the question is like how does it help them become self-managed? And like how is that actually serving the team by doing those basic things? If our goal of serving the team is to help them become self-managed, we gotta think about their effectiveness, the dynamics of the team working both internally and with external partners, and where they're at in their formation journey. Those are all elements into, you know, serving the team.

Speaker 2: 33:57

Yeah, that's a good point. Are you serving the team properly if you're doing something for them, right? I think that's where you're. I see you going there, like if you're. If someone doesn't know. If I was just thinking as you were going through that there's some things I was thinking of that I do, but I've done for the team, like little things like that, and it's because they didn't have access and I did. So if I just do it for them and don't grant them access, did I serve them properly?

Speaker 3: 34:32

No, you probably helped them get past a one-time impediment, but then you made yourself an impediment.

Speaker 2: 34:37

There you go. We don't want to be the impediment. Yes, it would be better in that case to grant them that access, if you can. I know some companies, mine included, get a little weird about access to certain things, but I think that would allow the team to become more self-managing. The more that they can do, my opinion, the more they can do. The less I can do for them. Puts them down that path.

Speaker 3: 35:04

Absolutely, because at the end of the day, they're the ones who have to do the work anyways. Right, Correct?

Speaker 2: 35:08

And I'm not always going to be there. I take vacation too, I get sick and I'm out. Yeah, I'm really big about spreading knowledge and knowledge sharing and not having a bottleneck. There's a lot of people that work in my company that have been there 20, 25, 30, 40 years, and some of them are starting to retire. I was given this example I ran into in the training class I mentioned last week and someone said, yep, it just happened to them. So these people will retire and you will retire one day too, and if you have lots of knowledge in your brain and you didn't share it with people, it's going to hurt them down the line, just like it is hurting you now.

Speaker 4: 36:02

I'm going to avoid going down a rabbit hole, but maybe we could talk about this another time. But it's always such a good, such a delicate balance to have, because you can come across as very elitist if you're not careful. Well, no, I don't handle granting privileges to people. That's beneath me. You need to go to somebody else to do that. I could, but I've got bigger and better things to do. So I'm being a little over the top here, but I just always think of trying to keep those things in balance between being an effective leader as well as an effective servant and trying to find the right balance between those two. But all right, I'm going to take the top off that and put the top on that. Set it up on the panel, Fred.

Speaker 3: 36:49

All right, let's hit up that fourth and last part of what I view as the foundation and you kind of hit on that a little bit which is in there it's teaching. Now, teaching is, you know, it's probably one of the most important they're all most important foundational skills. But teaching is not telling. It's rooted actually in the ability to convey important knowledge to others. And sometimes, you know, teaching is not something as a school master or coach you can really measure, but you'll start to see it evidenced by the observations of the behavior and vocabulary change of those that you serve. Teaching is like, really also about understanding. Like when I'm delivering a workshop, like how do I design it in such a way? Or, you know, design in such a way that people already get the most out of it, and for workshop and also I want to substitute the word retrospective in there when you're designing your retros, that's about finding teachable moments.

Speaker 2: 37:46

Right, yeah, I love teaching, I love classes that I'm doing, and you said it. You said something good when I don't remember how you just said it about when you hear people reflected back. I just experienced that the other day too, and I was like someone said something that I had said pretty much the way I said it, I was like that's great, they got it and they're starting to reflect it back. I think you said yeah, it was a good feeling.

Speaker 4: 38:21

And to be an effective teacher. Sometimes I like that. You said it's not always, you know, telling someone. Sometimes the most effective teacher is to actually fail or misstep or learn from mistakes Not always, but that's the nuanced part of, I guess, as you're progressing through this agile coaching growth wheel, to learn when to employ things and when to not. But all that to say is that, yes, I totally agree that teaching is not always about telling, but knowing the effective times when you have to let people learn it for themselves.

Speaker 3: 39:07

Absolutely. And there's a great quote I'm trying to pull up in my brain which is like tell me something and I'll forget. Teach me something, I'll learn and involve me and I'll get it. That's a very bad quote representation. I'm sorry for whoever said it, but it's good. And so you know, teaching that rounds out what I view as that foundation of a scrum mastery of our frameworks and practices under agile, our facilitation skills, serving the team and teaching.

Speaker 3: 39:38

Now, one thing I kind of alluded to during teaching is like how can you measure some of these things?

Speaker 3: 39:44

And that's what I want to go back to the agile coaching growth wheel and say it's not just about these seven competencies that we've talked about so far today.

Speaker 3: 39:52

Within each of those competencies, the creators of the growth wheel actually broke it down into five levels, starting with beginner, then advanced, beginner, practitioner, guide and catalyst. And the great thing about that is you as a practitioner I just use that word again you as an agile list, which I love that title, greg, that's one of my favorite titles you can take and measure yourself on the agile coaching growth wheel. You take a look at these different levels for each of these competencies. Where am I at If I'm a beginner. Maybe that's just where I have that textbook knowledge advanced beginner getting a practical experience, and then all the way up to catalysts, where you have innovative approaches. It's something I work on and the beautiful thing, like I said, about these levels is that you can measure yourself today. Then you go out in your continuous learning and continuous improvement journey, measure yourself again in six months, identify these areas to work on, to make you that agile list that you want to be.

Speaker 2: 41:04

Yeah, that's awesome, I'm going to do it. I haven't gone through it yet. I definitely want to do it. Have you done it yet, mark?

Speaker 4: 41:11

I have not, but I've got it up right now.

Speaker 2: 41:14

Do you?

Speaker 3: 41:14

Awesome. Yeah, I did want to give a plug. I worked on a tool. I had this idea in my head, I worked with two great developers and we could share this in the notes for the description for this podcast. It's also on my LinkedIn. It's actually a tool you can download from GitHub, where you enter in your ratings and it generates a beautiful looking radar graph that then you can timestamp and say this was my October 2023 self-evaluation. Then, when you do it again in six months, pull those right next to each other and just like wow, maybe you're growth we're not talking about. I wouldn't expect anyone to go from beginner to catalyst in six months Six months, no. But if you grow a couple boxes on your growth wheel in that time, it's amazing, it's phenomenal. It's something where you should recognize as an Agilist. You're on your journey, you're making those investments in yourself and that continual improvement and you're serving everyone better.

Speaker 2: 42:17

Right Especially if you've been focusing on certain areas. Sorry, Mark, it's good to see to track that progress, because you might think I'm focusing on it. I don't really feel like I'm any better. Then you look at it and you rate yourself and you're like, yeah, Hearing what people say about you, I think it's really important.

Speaker 4: 42:39

You hit where I was headed on this, greg is just a question for Fred. When you go through this and you're rating yourself, are you getting input from other people, or are you asking other people to fill in certain scores or answer certain questions, or how does that work?

Speaker 3: 42:58

Yeah, I think it probably depends a little bit on your situation. I'll describe it the way I've done it recently. When I first experienced it, I graded myself. I'm leading a team of Scrum Masters. I graded myself just because I was very curious at my own growth. I then took this tool the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel and turned it actually into career growth for the Scrum Masters who worked with me when they submitted their first draft of it. There's many times I need to challenge them about maybe they're rating themselves a little high. Or I said, hey, maybe you're a little bit too low If you've worked with a group of Agilists for a while. I think this is a great way to show transparency with each other on your own growth and say, hey, this is how I view myself and invite others in to maybe validate or challenge some of the ratings you gave yourself.

Speaker 4: 43:53

I'm really interested now.

Speaker 2: 43:56

I'm very interested now. Yes, we are about out of time. Can you believe it? It always goes so fast again. Fred, would you honor us? Would you like to come back again and talk more about this?

Speaker 3: 44:11

Oh, absolutely. I mean, this is the tip of the iceberg. I wasn't sure how much content I would have and we got through like half of what I wanted to talk about. I think next time, guys, what if we talk about like you've been a Scrum Master for a little while and you want to make that? How do you become a? You know, move into that senior space? I know Senior Scrum Master isn't in the Scrum Guide, but it's an industry title. So how does someone get that seniority?

Speaker 2: 44:36

Absolutely, I agree with you. Yes, okay, we'll get you on it. So if you like Fred, like we do, fred's going to come back and talk some more about that. So, in wrapping up, if you want to get ahold of Fred, he's on LinkedIn. If you're on LinkedIn and you're in the Adler community, you can't miss him. Hook up with him there. What other ways, fred, can people get ahold of you? See, here you had a conference coming up. Any conferences you want to talk about coming up?

Speaker 3: 45:07

Any conference. I don't have many conferences left for the rest of the year. I'm planning actually talking about the Agile Croach and Goath wheel in 2024. It's what I am promoting, but I do have a couple of meetups coming up, so take a look. Yeah, connect with me on LinkedIn and there's a few meetups I have scheduled in the rest of 2023. We can hear me talk about a variety of topics, and one of them, with Agile the one in Ireland will actually be about my career growth journey from a development manager to Agile Coach. Awesome, that's cool.

Speaker 2: 45:40

That would be great. Yes, so we'll look forward to that. So, and don't forget, agile Online Summit is going to be on YouTube. Our video with Fred will be up there in October 24th. Did I say that 24th or 25th? Is that the right date?

Speaker 2: 45:59

24th or 25th, not sure. 25th 25th Not sure. When you're listening to that. If you're listening to this before October 25th, go and find the Agile Online Summit. You'll see Fred's Agile Coaching Growth wheel. It was a great conversation. We are going to have Fred back, so thanks for listening to this. This is Mark and Greg the Agile within. If you want to get ahold of us, we also have a LinkedIn page. Both of us do, mark, matt, greg Miller. We also have the Agile within page on LinkedIn. You can email me, gregmiller, at theagilewithincom with any comments, suggestions.

Speaker 2: 46:37

If you want to be on the show, great. We want to hear from you. Want to hear some voices that maybe haven't been heard from before. Take some courage. You want to get out there? Talk about something, get in. You don't want to do post on LinkedIn? You're ready to be on a podcast? Email me. Want to talk to you about some stuff? Find us on LinkedIn. It's ex formerly Twitter. We're out there too. Get ahold of us there. Thanks for listening. It's been a lot of fun. We'll be posting another episode with Fred soon, and this has been Greg and Mark at the Agile within. We'll talk to you next time.