ICAgile Certified Agile Coach Workshop

This workshop is more like a curated collection of interactive conference sessions than a typical certification course cramming you full of slides. There are 21 live one-hour modules. The level of interactivity varies by module and includes Q&A, open discussion on specific topics, breakout rooms, individual and group activities, sharing experiences within your breakout room and with the full class, and the use of Zoom, Mural, and other tools.

Two thirds of the workshop is spent in fun group activities and games in zoom breakout rooms with 2-5 people depending on the activity. Most of the activities are also available as free downloads, professionally created boxed kits or both. We encourage you to have interesting materials on hand for use in some of the activities such as colored markers, Legos, pipe-cleaners, or whatever works for you. At the completion of the workshop you will have dozens of games, activities, and techniques for use with your teams and organization. Discover where you are in your Agile Coach journey and learn new skills and techniques to progress further and faster in that journey.

The focus of the workshop is applying the skills of Professional Coaching within an Agile environment. What you will learn is framework agnostic; applicable for coaching in any Agile-oriented environment whether people are using Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, LeSS, or any other Agile-oriented set of practices.

• Professional Coaching – In this module we’ll define “Agile Coach” and start to engage with the differences between Professional Coaching, facilitation, mentoring, teaching, and “doing the work.” The instructor will give a demonstration of Professional Coaching with the help of one of the participants as coachee.
• Powerful Questions – The primary tool for exploration in Professional Coaching is asking questions, “powerful questions” in particular. Powerful questions inspire people to learn about themselves, find fresh perspectives, and imagine new possibilities. Discover seven characteristics of powerful questions and three anti-patterns. Learn the connection between the power of questions and how well you absorb what the coachee is expressing. Participants will also use a coaching “cheat sheet” to practice Professional Coaching with a fellow participant.
• Powerful Questions 2 – a continuation of exploring Powerful Questions.
• Acting as a Mirror – just as we need a mirror to see our whole selves, we need other to help us see blind spots in our thinking and actions. An important role of a coach is to act as a mirror for others. This goes beyond the traditional “levels of listening” associated with active listening. We will learn about and practice how to do this using intentional perception, presence, and the four skills of emotional intelligence. We’ll also explore the connection to rapport building.
• Feedback and expertise – giving and receiving feedback and sharing expertise can be daunting. We will look at how to spot blind spots (yours and theirs), what makes for successful feedback and sharing of expertise, and Non-Violent Communication. We’ll also cover a way to provide expertise (mentoring) via a coaching conversation that leverages a Professional Coaching mindset. We’ll also learn about the three levels of advice and play a game about advice.
• The Learning Environment – adults have very particular requirements for learning. We’ll take a look at those requirements as well as the VARK and Honey & Mumford views on the different ways that people learn. We’ll also look at how to learn about how the people we interact with learn and how to accommodate different learning styles.
• Session Management – when we are coaching it is important to know the end goal of the session: the session purpose. It is much like acceptance criteria: you’ll know the session was successful when what is true? Once you have the session purpose, it is important to help keep the coachee focused on that purpose which may require orienting. Finally, we’ll look at the steps to take at the end of a coaching session to make sure there is a plan and that the coachee will hold themselves accountable.
• Decision making, disagreement, and conflict management – most disagreement is healthy and leads to better decision making. Learn about how to come to agreement faster by pro-actively building team collaboration muscle, and learn about various conflict management approaches including “Toxins and Antidotes.”
• Coaching Leader – We’ll explore the qualities that make for great leaders.
• Shared vision – there are many things in an Agile ecosystem that work best when working towards a shared vision such as what it means to be Agile, product vision, team working agreement, and iteration goals. We will explore this concept with a group activity to create a shared vision.
• Best Team Ever – great teams live and breathe the Agile principles and values, trust each other, have high morale, are self-organizing, and have the support of the organization to succeed. Learn new tools, techniques, and activities for how to instill these values and capabilities into individuals and teams and help to increase the organizational support for Agile. We’ll play the “Team with the Best Results Ever” and “The Agile Economics” games.
• Teaching an Agile Framework – a bit more on feedback and advice using the COIN method. You’ll practice using COIN by giving feedback on a fellow student’s teaching of an Agile Framework. And, you’ll also teach a fellow student an Agile Framework and receive feedback from them.
• The Agile Journey – Agile is easy to describe, but hard to achieve. We’ll look at ways to describe, measure, and teach Agile that help people grow from where they are to where they want to be.
• The Coaching Engagement – this is all about working with the organization, teams, and individuals to set, manage, and document expectations between the coach and others in both directions.
• ADKAR – an exploration of ADKAR, a change management model based on individual change. What it is, the benefits, and how to apply it in an Agile environment at the team and organizational levels. Useful for finding impediments and opportunities to affect change through facilitated group activities.
• Coaching Modes – A survey of the different modes that an Agile Coach will use in their day-to-day interactions and how they differ: Professional Coaching, Mentoring, Teaching, and Facilitating.
• Coaching Practice (4 modules) – there will be many opportunities to practice and apply what you are learning in real coaching sessions with other participants using a series of specially designed coaching formats. These formats include: “Cheat Sheet Coaching”, “Reverse Coaching”, “Slow Motion Coaching”, “Do/Avoid Coaching”, and “Free-form Coaching.”
• Coaching with Feedback – a session where you are the coach and in which you receive feedback from an instructor on how you are applying what you have learned to the coaching session.

Testimonials from Attendees