The Agile Within
Providing agile insights into human values and behaviors through genuine connections.
The Agile Within
Revealing the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel Part 2 with Fred Deichler
Are you ready to turbocharge your Agile journey? Join us as we sit down with Agile maestro, Fred Deichler, who unveils the secrets of the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel. This powerful self-improvement tool is for those of you who’ve mastered the Scrum Guide and are hungry for that next level. We don't just stop there. We also discuss the intriguing Shu Ha Ri journey and how having a mentor can amplify the benefits of the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel.
Dive deeper into the Agile mindset with Fred as he sheds light on his experiences and revelations. Fred emphasizes that Agile isn't just about following a process – it's about living its values and mindset. We tackle leading with a mindset over process, and debate if offering advanced certified scrum master certification to Agile novices might be a step too far. As we unpack the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel, you'll gain a deeper understanding of its various competencies and how they apply to real-world scenarios. You don't want to miss this episode brimming with wisdom and practical advice to accelerate your Agile journey.
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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:It is Mark and Greg again the Agile Within. Thanks for returning. We have a returning guest here whose show was so wonderful last time that we had to bring him back for part two. If you listened to the show about a month ago, we had on a man named Fred Dichler. Fred is back in the house. Fred is an Agile coach who worked for multiple organizations helping people in their Agile journey. He's a frequent Agile conference speaker. He was recently in Nebraska. I'm sure everyone's seen him all over LinkedIn. He's a wonderful person to talk to. Welcome back, fred Dichler.
Speaker 3:Awesome, Great, Awesome. Thanks for trying me back, Greg and Mark. I'm excited. I know our first conversation. The time just flew by. We only got through about half of the stuff I was hoping to talk about. Coming back for round two is just. It is very exciting. That's right.
Speaker 4:With some sound effects. Greg, like some cheering from the audience whenever we introduce for it.
Speaker 2:Okay, do you know? Sorry, I don't know why this was going through my head, just a diversion. I was thinking Mark and I recorded an episode before this and we were on it. I was taking a dinner break and I'm walking up here and like what am I going to? How am I going to open this with? I'm thinking like to use some intro music, because I used welcome back codder. I don't know if it's copyrighted, they don't care. But when Mark and I came back earlier this year and I'm thinking, for some reason Eminem was in my head. I was like, how does it go? Now I lost. It was like all it knows about mom's spaghetti. It was Eminem and it was like, oh, look who's back, look who's back, look who's back, look who's back, look who's back. Da, da, da, da da. I was like, yeah, I should use that, but he would probably sue me so I can't do that. But yes, mark, I was going to try to do something fun, so I should find something that couldn't copyright. That would be awesome.
Speaker 4:Greg dropping the beats for us here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my Eminem skills there. That's probably terrible. I have to edit that out probably.
Speaker 4:Can you freestyle?
Speaker 2:No, that's about it. That's all you got for me?
Speaker 3:No, my Eminem skills are limited to chocolate variety.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there you go, my Eminem skills. Last night was Halloween, if you're listening to this. So Fred got Eminem. So Mark likes Reese's we found out the last show. I like Reese's Cups too, and Snickers and Skittles. So anyway, it's November. It's November 1st today. We're recording this on November 1st. So anyway, fred is talking about Agile Coaching, growth Wheel. If you haven't listened to the first episode, please go back and listen to that. I can't think of the number, but it's Fred Dichler. There's only two on our show. Just listen to the first one, that'll help you, the first one we talked about. If you just got certified and you're a Scrum Master brand new what do you do? Fred took us through. I don't know if you took us through all of them, fred, but there was six themes and 20-minute competencies. Do we go through all of that? I can't remember.
Speaker 3:No, we went through a couple of them that are important when you jump in. So, for those of you jumping in, what we talked about was self-mastery, which is composed of balance, emotional intelligence and personal transformation, and then your foundation, your facilitation, skills, frameworks and practices, serving the team and teaching, and so today we're actually going to talk a little bit more about like hey, you've been a Scrum Master for a little bit and how do I improve my skills? I want to get to that senior role. And one thing for people listening in right now if you're in your car, keep listening. Well, either way, keep listening, but if you're at home, feel free to pause this podcast. Head over to agilecoachinggrowthwheelorg. You can pull up the wheel. It's agile coaching in the name, but it really is, for anyone working in the agile development space is who it can work for, got it?
Speaker 2:So Mark and I have been Scrum Masters for a while. How would this work for me? What do I do now? I've been a Scrum Master for a while? Senior level creative plan for myself. What do I do next?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. So I kind of see this overall as if you think about from the Shu Ha Ri journey. If you're familiar with that, where you know Shu is where you're in the space where you're just mimicking, you're copying the motions. You might not quite understand the core principles underneath it. In that senior space you're really getting. You're in that Ha space where you understand what's built in and you're trying to figure out where potentially I can break or bend the rules in the future. And so if you're feeling the way personally where you're like you got the Scrum Guide down pat. You're following some of us here on LinkedIn or various podcasts and you're like how do I get to that next spot? Some organizations you're lucky, you have a mentor that works there with you, but not everybody does. And using the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel is a tool that you can use as a self-growth tool to help you out on that journey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, great.
Speaker 4:So, fred, I just want to interject here. So I have started, just started, but I have started delving into the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel and I want to get your take, possibly on this. But so I actually have a coach, a personal coach, that I meet with, and she's actually a former guest of ours, michelle Pauch. So that's a plug with her Sweet.
Speaker 4:So yeah you think about our vision statement here the Agile within of providing Agile insights into human values and behaviors through genuine connections, and so that was a genuine connection that Greg and I made with Michelle, and Michelle is a licensed coach, and so what she's doing is she's taking me through the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel, and it's the first step.
Speaker 4:What she wants me to do is to go through and just identify which areas that I actually do have experience with, because it can be daunting when you look at this, at this growth wheel, and you see so much that's on here and you're like I just really can't get started. There's too much. You know I'm trying to boil the ocean because there's so much here, but I thought that was really interesting. It's been helpful for me to look through and just kind of gauge my own, because I focus many times I focus on my weaknesses or so that I focus on my strengths. So it's good to have a coach to help counterbalance that, and so, yeah, maybe I can share some some insights from my experience as I progress forward through that. But it was just interesting that you talk to us about the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel and then my coach introduced it to you as well.
Speaker 3:That's great. That is great. I mean it's, it's, it's gaining some of that traction. You know we're looking out there because I mean, that's definitely a hallmark of a real, of a real profession Always it reels the wrong word, but like, of a, of a, like a recognized profession and career path, is some of these like universally recognized tools and evaluation methods. And and this might be it, and one of the one of the cool things coming out, probably by the time this podcast is out, is comparative agility is going to have their next version of their Scrum Master Assessment for self assessment and it's a lot closer to what the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel is. It uses it as a framework and this is something. Comparative agility is something you know, like Bob Galen and Mark Summers both contributed to this and I'm excited for this, this next version, because it gives people the you know, a place they can go to like measure their, their progress. And, mark, I did want to come back to things you mentioned. It's, it can be overwhelming.
Speaker 3:If you think about the growth wheel, like looking at it, you know you're sitting there at your computer listening, you're looking at it. You see 21 competencies. Each of those competencies have five levels, that's a hundred and five statements and these are just like. These are 105 different paragraphs to evaluate and it is draining. And that's that's why, like when I looked at it, I thought, like how can we rearrange this into a potential ladder or growth tool for scrum masters? And it's not about limiting what they should be exposed to, but saying, hey, here's some areas where you might consider focusing. And you know you can say, like, within this area, within one of the areas, you should be a practitioner level. That that's, that's fine because, like I said, it's got five levels within each of these competencies and it's so much. And so that's where you know the first one we had.
Speaker 3:We talked about self mastering, foundation, and today we're going to the two we're going to dive into. I've broken them down into mindsets and guiding. That's just kind of the theme names I've given them and below each of those you know, are seven more competencies. Total. They're going to guide you from that. You're been a scrum master for a little bit. How do I improve my skill set to be that, that senior, that recognized person? Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:So why don't we dive into those? Why don't we? You said the first one was mindsets. Yeah, mindset that's. That's a huge thing.
Speaker 3:When you think about it, that Shu Ha Reedjury he's like how do you, how do you work on your mind?
Speaker 3:So you're approaching things in such a way that you can be the most effective, and so, under mindsets the first one we like to focus on is agile and lean mindset. Now we talked about frameworks last time, which is about understanding that agile is greater than scrum. There's so much out here and so, with the agile the mindset, you're moving beyond frameworks. You're thinking about those, the agile principles, the agile manifesto and the scrum values, maybe like how can you pull these things in together into your mind? So, as you evaluate a situation, you know how to approach it. Like you move beyond the spot where these are just words on a page and you know how you and your team embody that mindset. You get this deep understanding of those values and principles and you really the thing I like to say is like you start to apply them as a way they were intended and then experiment with empirical evidence, using things like customer satisfaction and continuous improvement like to focus your mind on the idea of what's going on. Focus your mind on agile and lean.
Speaker 4:So I'll give you a good example here, greg, maybe you can use this up for it. So when I was going through this, I was looking at this was one of the first ones that I looked at the agile and lean mindset. And so I'm trying to evaluate myself. I'm thinking, well, agile, read a lot about agile. Um, you know, I have some certifications in in agile coaching. I feel, you know, like I haven't arrived, but I definitely feel comfortable there.
Speaker 4:What about the lean mindset? What do I know about lean? And I'm just going to get a little personal here. I'm like well, I know that lean consists of eliminating waste. And then it kind of stopped and I was like you know what? I really don't know a whole lot more about the lean mindset. Other than that, and in true mark metz fashion, I go out, start doing massive Google searches, looking at papers, and I'm like wait a minute, that's not what this wheel is intending for you to do To take just a thousand foot leap into a pool and then just start swimming as hard as you can. So I had to kind of put the brakes a little bit and say, okay, this might be an area I need to work on Exactly.
Speaker 2:Um, so the first thing I'm thinking of when you I don't know what, what do you guys think I'm? I'm like, okay, part one was about agile coaching growth wheel was I just got certified? But my, my big hang up say, okay, I get certified. I don't know about you guys, but when I went through PSM class with a professional, I don't know what's called, my mind was called the professional scrum foundations, like 10, 13 years, 10, 11, 12 years ago to get the PSM one, I I don't remember being taught much about the scrum values. I don't even know, I think if I understand it right. I don't think the scrum values were. Were they not added till later in the scrum guide? I don't know that they were always there. Is that correct? Is anybody now, like from day one, were they always there? I'm not sure.
Speaker 3:I'll say I'm not sure, I don't know.
Speaker 4:Do you know? Yeah, go back to the new product development game. They weren't in there, yeah.
Speaker 2:Because, well, here's my point is that I remember being taught heavy process. This is scrum, this is what you do right In person class doing simulating iteration that's great. But it wasn't until I wouldn't say I mean, I would say I started picking up on the values, that there was values pretty quickly. I don't remember it was through scrum. I was like I was into, I was going through Six Sigma and I was a BA at the time, learning different things, and everything was swirling for me and I just kind of like had an epiphany within the first couple of years that it just like dawned on me. I was like, oh my gosh, it's not just following a process, it's all these values, it's the way I have to behave and think and act.
Speaker 2:And this is long winded. All to say is that I would like to think, I would like to see that this mindset be moved to part one. I would like to see classes being taught and maybe the adrocarjian growth wheel have the mindset earlier on. Maybe you guys disagree or not. What do you think about it? I mean, I think that we need to start leading more with that and not be so heavily on process.
Speaker 3:The interesting, interesting point. I can't say I don't disagree with you. So I'm trying to. Yes, and I mean you had that epiphany and I've had that epiphany too. Mine was actually the one. I got my advanced certified scrum master certification and my wonder is is it too much for someone who's kind of new? Like if you think about a team you got to meet them where they're at on their agile journey, on their agile growth, and getting someone into that, you have to embody this mindset. There might be a lot. And that's where you know, like you, as you're telling your story, I was thinking you hot it right there. Yeah, yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker 2:I mean, maybe. I mean maybe it just maybe just hit me earlier than a lot of people, but it was, I don't remember it. Maybe some other like to hear from people. If you've had this, when did you, you know, like to hear from people? When did you have you ever heard that there's a mindset side to agile? Hopefully you did. Agile manifesto principles and values, and scrum has five values, by the way. I hope you're focusing on that. That's the whole kind of premise of this podcast. So, but yeah, it just I don't remember being taught it. It just came upon me. I was like wow, and ever since then I was like, yeah, the two together make, and I've heard that. I've heard that throughout my career, though, right, I've heard, I've always heard that, oh yeah, you can't just be doing the process without having the values that you're not really being agile, right, if you don't have both together.
Speaker 3:Yeah, as I think back to my early, my first surface from masterclass you know it was a fire hose. I bet my trainer did tell me the scrum values I will say I did not remember them for a long time, probably years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Maybe that's me too, Maybe I just didn't remember it, but so we'll put it this way. If it did, it didn't impress me right. It didn't make an impression upon me, which I guess is my point. It didn't impress upon me that, oh, I got to fuck it. It was more of the process. So, anyway, that was a long. I kind of have a, that's kind of a, I guess another, I don't know, I wouldn't say pet peeve, it's something that kind of like. We need to kind of like talk about it more, I guess is my point.
Speaker 4:All right, Fred, Keep this moving buddy. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:So you know the other thing, you know you think about from a process standpoint, you know you think like one of your things that we talked about this last time is facilitation. But there's a mindset to facilitation. It's not just about setting the event up. It's like how do you create this environment where curiosity and positivity are hallmarks of those events that you're facilitating, where you act as that neutral party in there, where you can help guide the conversation where it needs to go and you don't impart your will onto the people. Instead, you honor the group, their decision, how they move forward, and that's such a it's a big thing to think like how can I become an effective person or an effective facilitator for the group, getting them to where they need to be? And that's that. Second part of the mindset is facilitation mindset, facilitation mindset yeah.
Speaker 4:So that's really interesting because most of the time when I hear facilitation skills immediately comes to mind Scrumorg has a professional Scrum facilitation skills class but really don't hear as much, if at all. I'll be honest with you, the facilitation mindset. Until I looked at the edge of coaching growth wheel, that concept really didn't. I wasn't aware of it. So maybe take us a little bit down that about what really you did a little bit, but how is the facilitation mindset different from the skills for it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so that's like one of those, like they were both blended together for you when you were first introduced to the concept of facilitation and so when you get into that mindset, there's two real big areas of the mindset. The first one is and this comes from, if you want to read more on this, it is on agilecroachinggrowthwheelorg is internal focus, and that's where you create a reflective, positive and flexible mindset in you, because you really, if you've been a manager, like getting out or a supervisor, getting out of that mindset of driving the group towards your decision. It's huge. And so you have to think about things that maybe come from the professional coaching realm integrity and ethics and positivity. Those are like things that are in that internal focus.
Speaker 3:And the second part was something I alluded to, which was the belief in the group. You know that's where you know that the group they're creative and resourceful and, with the right focus and understanding where they need to go from an outcome perspective, they can get there without needing it. Well, so you as a facilitator, with your belief in the group, that's where you have to be very neutral. Let them go where they need to go. You need to create these environments where curiosity is king and you let the solutions that the group needs, the group I say group I mean team, or even a group, a larger group the solutions will that are the correct ones at that moment for that team are the ones that are going to bubble to the surface. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So yeah, as a facilitator, we need to be basically a genderless right. We don't have our own, we don't program with our own personal agenda.
Speaker 3:Right, it's whatever the team wants to. You might have an idea of where they might need to go, but you need to be malleable enough that, if the conversation goes in a different direction, you can help guide them. In that way and as a facilitator, it is a skill, but part of the mindset is getting to that conclusion, getting to that decision. So it's not like we wasted a bunch of people's time and money sitting in a meeting, right?
Speaker 4:Sounds like there's overlap between the facilitation and the coaching mindset.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. That's the next one, which is coaching mindset. That's the third of the fourth mindsets. Whenever you go about like when the group that originally created the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel went about this, they're taking this large, amorphous amount of skills in like how can they divide it? And there's a point where you just have to divide something and call it something and realize that they're distinct enough. And that's where you know there is that between coaching and facilitation.
Speaker 3:Facilitation is probably more with the group mindset or and coaching is more maybe with the individual or small set, and so that's where you do pull in from a coaching mindset perspective. That third of the fourth in the mindsets is that professional coaching, you think about integrity, ethics, the various coaching stances. In addition, like, how do you create psychological safety? And if you're talking about from like a one-on-one perspective, just like, you have to honor the group and facilitation from a coaching mindset, you have to believe in the person that you're coaching. You're not instructing them, you're not leading them, you're coaching them, and so it's a big growth thing to have that believe in yourself that you can coach another person.
Speaker 4:It's a hard mindset and it's one that I'm on a journey to trying to improve in this area, and I mentioned this in a previous episode. But there's a book called the Coaching Habit, michael Bunga Stannier, and, regarding coaching, one of the things he mentions is that we need to resist the avoid, the. What is it, I'm trying to think now? The advice monster, tame, the advice monster?
Speaker 4:That's the word, the term that I'm trying to look for, and boy, it is so hard when you have this experience in either a group or someone else is explaining their situation, how often do we want to step in and say, oh, I've experienced that before and this is how I solved it and this is what you need to do. It's really hard and I don't really know of a better word than mindset, because it really is a shift that you have to take in your mind to to take that advice, monster, shove it down a little bit and really be in tune with either the group or the person, and I like what you said about leading them in the direction that they're trying to go, or maybe that they need to go.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, absolutely Stepping all over each other. Greg, did you have?
Speaker 2:something. No, I was just saying yeah, that they need to go, yeah, that they need to go, not that you want yeah, not that you want them to go.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. You know absolutely that's and that's a huge part of your, of your growth. And you know one thing about from you know I mentioned the coaching stances is, as you improve with your coaching mindset and your facilitation mindset, recognizing when that group or when that individual needs you to shift your stance, like when do you need to teach, when do you need to advise? Because sometimes, mark, advising is the right course of action, but it can't be your only stance that you take ever Right.
Speaker 3:All right and rounding out our mindsets, you know. The fourth one is is a learning mindset. Yeah, and this just isn't about your own personal learning. That's why you all are here, listen to us. But what environment are you creating and advocating for, for the people around you to be able to learn Once again?
Speaker 3:You know there's this concept of belief in the, in the person like they, they're, they're creative. You know that when you're going through and maybe facilitating or constructing events for these, for these people, making that right environment where there's psychological safety and trust and respect, and that's where then you can pull in in that learning, learning area, in that mindset like, how do you share experiences in the right way? But also, how do you get to put revalidate their understanding? Because it's very easy to talk over someone have nod, you know, because you're the smartest person in the room. But you know, talking to them at their level and their journey and making sure, if they don't understand something, how can you bring that out? Because you want them to to get value out of that time you spend together that they can then apply at least some of it in in your, you know, post event, when, post event time, when that learner is out on their own.
Speaker 4:So, fred, what do you do when you try to validate understanding and you get silence?
Speaker 3:That's where you reach into your bag of tricks and you say you know from a facilitation and you know you can bring up. And you can bring up that inverse situation where you say okay, all right, instead of you know. Oftentimes you'll think silence is compliance, I think about silence is disagreement. Or you can go into something like with liberating structures, one to four, all where people can talk, you know, work through what they understand situation or how would they apply it. And you know, after the meeting, you know how do you apply this tomorrow. Take a minute and think individually how you're going to apply this tomorrow. Then I want you to go with your neighbor two minutes, talk about together for two minutes how you're going to apply this, what you learned today. Tomorrow, then a smaller group and then everyone together which then get that chance for other people in the room to repeat what you said in different ways, which maybe that will land more closely with what, with what that learner who's maybe is unsure of matches with how their brain thinks.
Speaker 4:Three a curveball. What about cultural differences?
Speaker 3:That is a huge one and it's something you know I've kind of I've dealt with in time time. You know, working with global teams and you know one of the tools I used when I got quiet was two things. One was a silent meeting. Meeting had to be written down on stickies like on a board, people to tack on to that. And the second one was I encourage them, when we did this one, two, four, all to speak in their native tongue. Oh and, you know, got them a chance where they could have really good, deep conversations in those two, on those one is two people together or four people together, and then they had the time to think through what they were, what they talked about and translated into my native tongue. Those were two tricks, a tricks, two techniques that I've used in, you know, to embrace the silence.
Speaker 4:I'm writing it down.
Speaker 2:I like that. So when they spoke in their native tongue, they were. They were speaking to each other or to you, yeah, they were speaking to each other, to each other. Okay, yeah.
Speaker 3:And it's just like you don't have that same buffer that you have when you're trying to speak in non-native tongue. Where you could, they could just talk back and forth rapidly. They could make the most of those two minutes or four minutes. And then when we got back together, they had that opportunity to think like how do I tell Fred this thing? Right, and it was they. I heard later that they really enjoyed that. It felt like I was embracing their culture and embracing the uniqueness that they were bringing to our team. Nice, I like that. That's great. All right. Mindset All right. That was mindset before. We had agile mindset, learning mindset, facilitation mindset and coaching mindset Got it.
Speaker 3:The other other one I want to talk, to talk about today, is what I call guiding, and there's only three in this one. Okay, and so first of all I want to hit on is coaching skills. We talked about the mindset, but there's also the skills. Coaching skills aren't something we expect really of an entry level or junior scrub master. I want to junior. Like you know, you're fresh scrub master, but as you get more experience, as we got, lean into those skills and there's many different systems to coaching. But you know, things I like to think about is how we creating the right environment like what skills means to create the environment and the process. I'm going about having those conversations.
Speaker 3:I mentioned Bob Galen earlier. He's got some great books on coaching that where he talks about the coaching trajectory arc, the coaching arc of a conversation. That's something I would expect the senior to know or to be growing into. Where you have your kickoff, your meat of it, then your wrap up and how you work within each of those sections is extremely important. You know, when we hear professional coaching, a lot of times think about is maybe powerful questions where you ask the person like and when do you think about that, which sometimes the person just doesn't know, and that's where you switch your stance. But knowing when's the right time to use the coaching, a powerful question. So if you think from an organizational standpoint you don't want to be get a people that and everywhere in the world is saying, oh, fred just comes in and he has asked me these introspective questions and sometimes I just need help.
Speaker 4:I was going to say.
Speaker 3:Some people consider that annoying, yes, but that's one of those powerful questions, is this? Another one is like the use of metaphor and analogy. It's a great tool that Scrum Master's have. How do you relate complex situations and complex topics to people in ways that they understand, like, is it related to a car, to cooking, etc. It's always different. And how, then, do you use the tool like? There's tool reflection, where you either you reflect back to the person or what they had told you, or you ask them to reflect back what they heard. That's part of that skills, the skill set that you need as coach.
Speaker 2:Okay, and then yeah.
Speaker 3:I would say yeah. And the last part of coach is I'll leave with is like there's you know concept of levels of listening, or what level of listening are you? And this is something I am currently exploring, like how can I listen differently? There's, you know, there's an active listening where you're hearing what said. Then there's like the next level where you're hearing what's not said, and then your history with people bring in where you know where you. That's all part about being being a coach.
Speaker 4:I'm sorry, I was distracted. What'd you say?
Speaker 3:for it. That was a level zero, level zero.
Speaker 2:My wife would say that about me, level zero. Are you listening to me? All right, what's the second one in guiding Fred?
Speaker 3:Second one I have in guiding. It is one that actually, when you read the scrum guide, it's one of the accountability of the scrum master, which is serving the business. I think there's a lot to be said about, like business acumen that scrum master should have, especially as we think towards the future of scrum master and actual coaching, is you need this business acumen to show more value to your organization. If you just come in with the dogma and the frameworks, what people are going to ask, like what value are you bringing? So it's like you know, as you serve the business and help the team, you think about like how can I help them better understand the customers? Like, what activities can I do to help bring the customer closer to the team? Backlog processing is also part of serving the business. Like making sure we have a clean and clear backlog with the product owner that matches that vision that we're going for with the product and how do you bring stakeholders into that conversation are all aspects of how you serve the business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, that's kind of everywhere I've been. It seems to be a never ending battle with Agilis trying to show their value or kind of defend their existence. Right, we talked about this I think it was Mark. We talked about it before about, are we overhead? Right, we are, we're just expense. Basically it says it right on my time sheet expense. When I fill it out it says I'm an expense. I'm like great, okay.
Speaker 2:And I look at the developers and they're putting theirs as like I don't know what's this. It so Expensive capital. Right, yeah, expensing capital. I'm expense their capital. I'm like oh, okay, yeah, but yeah, so we're always trying to find ways to yeah, and I mean a part of my Like in my review or my other, whatever, it is the goals or something that I Might know, if it's in my job, to not trying to say my job description, but what I have to do is, yeah, it reach out and and serve the business, and that's if you can show value there Other than just oh, yeah. You know, what does an agilist do and you hear people say, oh, we're just yeah, the fun, the fun people. They, you know, they help the team feel warm and fuzzy about their work and stuff like that. So yeah, it's.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think back to a conversation I had earlier this year with Vasco Duarte At a coffee shop in in Finland. Was beautiful, we're like in person. You know it's part of this, you know getting outside my comfort zone, but we talked about and one, one idea he brought to me. As far as showing value is, first thing you need to understand is like what's the business value equation? It's like how does your company you work for, or your division, make money and you can kind of figure out like there's some there's probably number of customers times number of transactions, type, average transaction value equals revenue and everything you're doing with your team you know whether it's ok, ours or or the product vision, sprint goals Leads into one portion of that of that business value equation. It does you.
Speaker 3:And then you got to figure out like how do I measure that if it's about getting more like the average transaction volume, val or average transaction value up, you know, let's say right now it's a hundred dollars per transaction, you want to get to a hundred and two dollars. There's probably something within your product you're working on to drive that additional value that customer wants and you can go back to Say, okay, I helped drive us. You know Exactly hundred two dollars, which then became this much revenue, and that's how you show that value to To the organization. Like I have this impact and and one thing as Chrome master's coaches We've got to not be afraid of, is saying, yes, I had this impact, I know we talked about that, not always a direct impact.
Speaker 4:But so for me, one of the things I think of as a scrum master is is you really help, help the team to focus? And so you're not actually like I don't. There are some, but you know I'm not writing code, I'm not reviewing pull requests, I'm not Releasing code into production, but Invariably all these different demands come up. It's a one of the ways that scrum team or scrum master can help or coach is to keep the team focused on their goals. And so to your point, fred, that yes, you did help because you helped keep the team focused to say no to less important things, to focus on the most important thing for this goal, for the Company that's exactly what I was thinking.
Speaker 2:Mark, that's that, that's I. Yeah, we helped them not to get distracted and Take their eye off that ball and fix this other defect or do something else that some other VP asked you to do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Exactly, yeah, you help them right. Size that experiment so they could get out there and learn to make sure thing in the right spot right.
Speaker 2:Those are things that there's the things that I don't think to your point for it. They don't get surfaced enough To up to the upper levels that see, they don't see that stuff, so they don't know that we add value because they don't see it. So it's to your point. It's not always their fault. We have to do a better job of bringing that up.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. And if you think, you know, if you look right now, it's the fall of 2023. There's, you know, the great agile Reset, or culling of 2023. I mean, it's all because we failed as a, as a, as a community, to be able to speak to these things. And the question then is in 2024, how are we going to improve as a community with showing our value to organizations?
Speaker 4:Did you say the great culling of 2023?
Speaker 2:Yeah, he did, I did. I like haven't heard that before I've heard that yeah. I've heard it.
Speaker 3:I thought I made it up, that was like that was a analogy, like I made up, that I, that I used right now as part of my coaching skills, oh, but as soon as I said that, you instantly know it's felt it. Oh yeah, power. And then you know, I'll say the last part of guiding, because there's three in there. It is mentoring. Mentoring is definitely.
Speaker 3:There's a huge skill in mentoring and Mentoring is just not about the mentee, it's about you too, because there's amount of work that goes into coaching and mentoring someone that happens outside of those, those meetings together. That's where you figure out like when's the right time to share my expertise, use those coaching skills, but you got to be with the men, with that mentee, on kind of like you know, a semi-long journey, get them to, you know this where you might enter into a coaching contract with someone, where you define your relationship, that you're both invested in this, in this mentoring Process, and you know this is where you, as a more experienced Agilis, can, you know, connect your experience with the needs that they have.
Speaker 4:Well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm unlike you, mark, we don't do. I mean, mark, do you have a Like a mentor program at your at your work? Not formally no yeah, I don't either, that's. Yeah, I was just curious because that my work. They had talked about it, but we haven't really done anything about it.
Speaker 4:So that's why I went, that's why I went outside and, yeah, somebody for some Person help.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she's a good one yeah.
Speaker 4:So, fred, I'm not sure, do we have more, more to go?
Speaker 3:No, no, that's it. I would say, you know, now we can look into like some more deep questions on the guiding. You know, maybe mentoring, because we just talked about that, yeah, or we want to go so question I have is so we mentioned at the at the beginning.
Speaker 4:Maybe You're working at a small company or you just have a few, a few coaches or scrum master, so you're kind of going this alone and you're working your way through the, through the agile coaching growth wheel and let's just say, like advising is something and you think like advising skills and advising mindset, that's something that a Scored myself low-end and I need to improve on, but you're doing this as a solo effort. What next? What's your next step?
Speaker 3:So next step is, like if you go to agile coaching growth wheel org, under resources, there are references to, to tools, like you know. They could be articles or Videos about some, or books about some these areas. So if you think about what you'd asked about, which was advising, like if I looked that up, there is and Books listed, like one of the great ones in advising that I read years ago I think I can't be years Based on the state, but radical candor, that's part of advising. And so you read some of these. You read some of these books. You figure, like, how can I apply them into my practice? So that's, that's one avenue.
Speaker 3:You can take the second avenue, like you did, mark, which is reach out and find a mentor, whether it's someone you've interacted with and had that personal connection, or by joining like a meetup group and just maybe there's someone else in the crowd that you just kind of like you jive with and Maybe they're in that spot you want to be next. That'd be a great like icebreaker or conversation starter when you see someone like, hey, you know, hey, mark, hey Fred, hey Greg, you know you all are experienced, you know what do I do got to do to get there and depending on you know your capacity, their capacity for time, you know you can meet up, you know every three to four weeks and just and talk about these kind of things.
Speaker 4:Is there any sort of what am I looking for the word here like is there a community that Works with the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel that you know has like chapters? I'm thinking of things like that or or local groups that you could you could meet with on this, define others?
Speaker 3:That is a great question that I don't believe the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel has that yet. But most major cities and I mean now with us all being remote meetups are a great, great resource. You're going to find someone there who is smarter than you that you just got you reach out to. And the thing I love that's beautiful about the Agile community is so many people just they want to talk, they want to share their stories, they want to help other people improve their craft. I mean, I mentor a couple of people that out from previous employment situations that weren't we worked together before any of us were in Agile and they must have liked how I led them in the past and they saw where I was at and they're like hey, fred, I'm looking for someone to Nice. I don't even know if they said specifically mentor me, but they said looking for a little bit of help, you know, in my Agile journey, and it became this mentorship relationship. That's crazy.
Speaker 4:I'm looking for a friend.
Speaker 2:I need a friend. Where can I find a friend?
Speaker 3:Yes, Absolutely Well, I'm here in Oregon. I'll say my schedule is a little bit busy right now. Yeah, I guess you're Definitely.
Speaker 2:Well, we've hit the 45 minute mark, Mark. Do we have anything more to dive in? We could talk about this for a long time with Fred. I know it's a lot to go into. It's just the tip of the iceberg, I'm sure. As far as the Agile coaching growth, Do we go through all of it? Is that both parts? That's not all of it, is it?
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 2:There is still seven more competencies.
Speaker 4:I thought.
Speaker 3:So Beyond that, that's really where you're getting into that being an Agile coach range is areas that I'm definitely working on. If you think about Agile transformation, it's a big section that within there they don't call it Agile transformation. It is Really quick Transforming. So organizational design, organizational change, there's being a visionary, leading for growth, advising skills, these are all things that really get more into that Agile coaching realm. I mean anyone can get into there. But the way I've kind of broken down the Agile coaching growth wheel is, I think, gives individuals a roadmap where they can kind of go down and say, if I work on these things as a, my first couple years as a Scrum Master, I'll have a great foundation and then, as I get more and more into this profession, I become that senior level. But then the wheel's the limit.
Speaker 2:The wheel's the limit?
Speaker 4:yes, so here's a challenge outdoor listeners, if you'd like to hear Fred come back for part three. Three, I'm going to go a little bit deeper on Agile coaching growth wheel. I tell you what we'll put a, greg. We'll put like an informal poll maybe out on our LinkedIn, on our LinkedIn page, and see what interest people have in having Fred come back.
Speaker 2:How about that? I know Fred's busy.
Speaker 3:he said he's traveling around the world giving his talks, absolutely, if that's what interests people. I love talking about the Agile coaching growth wheel. That's the reason why I'm now part of the group working on it a bit, because I have this passion for this and it's a big part of what I'm hoping to talk about with people in 2024. So, if you listen, now follow me on LinkedIn. Let's connect. There's a chance that I'll be talking about Agile coaching growth wheel and maybe my journey with it in the near future, just like you all. We all talked about not too long ago. That's kind of talks I like to give on my journey and where can we go?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great mark. I was also thinking part three. If anybody out there, if you're listening and you do go through the Agile coaching growth wheel, at whatever level. Part one you just got your certification. Part two you're a Scrum Master and you go through it and you want to share some things, you're going to reach out to me, greg Miller at theagilewithincom, like to talk to you about it. Maybe have you on to talk about how it worked for you.
Speaker 2:This is something Mark and I love having Fred on talking about it. We're kind of getting into it. It's kind of cool. It's growing out there. So we'd like to hear, maybe, your journey and if you want to share with us, mark, mark's going through it right now, so but yeah, unfortunately our time is up with Fred. Part two we'd like to do part three, hopefully if Fred's not too busy traveling the world being an international famous speaker and thank you so much, Fred, for being with us. By the way, fred was with us on the Agile online summit and so was Michelle Paak. Are there still out there, mark, on YouTube, or was that just I'm trying to remember?
Speaker 4:Don't know that they are, unless you're out there, unless you're out there to pay to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, to do the pay to. Okay, I knew they're on YouTube but wasn't sure if folks could access that. But yeah, maybe next year, if they come on again on the Agile online summit, we could share that with you again. So, anyway, this has been Mark and Greg. With the Agile Within, you can reach us. We have a LinkedIn page too, the Agile Within. Also Mark Metz and Greg Miller on LinkedIn. Fred Dichler on LinkedIn. He said he connect with you. Go over the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel. Agilecoachinggreithwheelorg was the site. We only touched on two of the competencies. There's five more left to go out there and take a look at. So lots to learn out there. Thank you for listening. This has been another great episode with Fred and for now, this has been Mark and Greg. We'll talk to you later.