Thank you for running an awesome Agile Coach course, which attracted some very talented Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches and Agile practitioners from around the world.
Conrad Swinfield-Wells
Course Overview
The Systemic Agility Team Coach course is a highly interactive, experiential journey that will help you develop the attitudes and learn the skills of an effective Team Agility Coach. You will learn and practise techniques and behaviours from the worlds of professional coaching, mentoring, and teaching, all in the context of fostering self-awareness, self-organisation and effectiveness in individuals and teams. You will leave the course feeling empowered with skills, models, and styles of working with individuals and teams in their journeys of becoming more self-aware, self-organised and effective teams and team members.
Topics Covered
The Agile Coaching Context
Agile Coaches draw on a variety of skills and practices. In this part of the course we will put Agile coaching into context and attempt to answer the question: What is Agile coaching and what shifts might we need to adopt?
Professional Coaching Skills & The Coaching Conversation
A coach assumes that team members have an individual and a collective wisdom, and that the task of the coach is to elicit the answers within. The main skills taught are listening actively, asking effective questions and following a coaching process. As this training is particularly experiential, you can expect to learn about your strengths and your own areas for development.
Coaching Alliances and Contracts
Setting the stage for a coaching relationship involves clear contracting and designing of alliances. You will learn the ABC (Always Be Contracting), how to design a coaching alliance and contract, and how to facilitate team agreements.
Key Mentoring Skills & Mentoring Agile Role Transitions
At times an Agile coach needs to impart Agile expertise and to guide the team by making suggestions, giving feedback, instilling practices, and guiding transitions to Agile roles. Along with such changes come fears and “resistances” and so a framework for working with change is presented. Knowing when to coach and when to mentor is a key skill of an Agile coach.
Key Teaching Skills & Teaching Agile
Teaching the basics of Agile is an activity the Agile Coach performs again and again and is conducted both in and out of the classroom. There are different techniques and approaches to learning, and you will practise including these in your teaching methods.
Foundational and Systemic Team Coaching
In this part of the training we focus on the dynamics at play within groups and teams, and in building our observational skills as coaches. This involves looking at the system of all humans involved and the connections between them. It also involves being able to articulate these observations in service of the team.
Team Development & Coaching the Journey Toward High Performance
How can we as Agile coaches help a team to develop as a team, along with developing psychological safety and trust? Along with a series of models, much of the learning here will come through reflecting on our lived experience in this and other groups and teams.
Handling Conflict
We look at strategies for handling conflict and for raising awareness in the team. We also address inter-personal communication skills that foster effective communication between team members.
Handling Organisational Impediments
Often the forces that impede the team come from other parts of the organisation. In this part of the training we will look at ways that the Agile coach can help the team to surface such impediments and to make decisions on how to work with them.
Tools and Practices You’ll Explore
- The House and Pentagons of Agile Coaching – a holistic model that describes the skills and practice domains of an Agile Coach
- Team Canvases – various canvases to create and revisit team agreements, coaching alliances, and Agile coaching contracts
- The Drama Triangle – how to break out of the Drama Triangle and move your team to the Winner’s Triangle
- The GROW model – following a coaching process that has stood the test of time
- The Question Bank – a powerful game for asking powerful questions to unlock your team’s potential
- Systemic Coaching and Constellations – developing a systemic lens to see the invisible in groups and teams
- Force Field Analysis – the coming together of different perspectives to align with organisational forces outside of the team’s direct control
- PLUS tools for Building Trust and Psychological Safety, Fostering Collaboration, Giving and Receiving Feedback, and Dealing with Conflict
Certification
Those who participate in the full course will be issued with the Team Agility Coaching certificate issued by Systemic Agility and the ICP-ACC certificate issued by ICAgile.
About the Trainer
Philip Atkinson
Philip supports senior leadership teams and general managers to become Agile in a sustainable way.
Philip is an industry thought leader and commentator. He writes a regular Leadership and Agility Column in Pharmaceutical Marketing Journal and is part of the HCA Healthcare Communications Association Think Tank.
Philip is an accredited individual and systemic team coach and is a teaching faculty member with the AoEC, Academy of Executive Coaching. He’s qualified in the Leadership Circle Profile and uses this powerful model to support individual Leaders and their Leadership teams and whole departments. He’s experienced in Agile Transformation, Scrum, Design Thinking and Hackathons and is a PCC accredited coach with the ICF, International Coaching Federation.
Website: hive-logic.com