I recently went through the CAL E+O Certification with Bob Galen, who masterfully took us through an exploration journey inside the mind of the leaders and the key role they play in supporting Agile implementations.
The hours I spent with the cohort reviewing the content where unbelievably valuable and full of rich and diverse experiences. However, after the class we were required to, individually, complete a survey which providing amazing insights towards setting growth actions.
In this post I would like to share the most important takeaways for me at the end of the certification.
Building self-awareness
Through the program we were asked to take The Standout Assessment, which a free assessment that help to identify your strengths. For me, this is a great tool to improve our Self-Mastery, which an area I have been developing as part of the volunteering work I have done lately with the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel.
If you would like to grow this core competency, I highly encourage you to take the assessment and explore how the results may impact your self-awareness, your balance and, eventually, how will it catalyze your personal transformation.
I am certain that this exercise will help me to support better leaders as they navigate through change.
Story telling
Another action that I would like to start as soon as possible, is to practice my story telling techniques. This is a valuable skill that can help a lot to build empathy and get buy-in from the people we are working with.
Through my experience, one of the biggest impediments in Change Management is a poorly communicated purpose and the leadership plays a key role in communicating the reason for change.
If we, as Agile Coaches, can guide our leaders to improve in this skill, they will be able to convey a clearer message to the entire organization and get more buy-in into any change they would like to implement.
First Team
This could be a whole subject on its own, if you would like to explore this further you can the book The Five Disfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni if you have not done it yet. What I found remarkably interesting about this is the potential to remove silos within the organization.
I have been in several instances where the leaders are extremely focus on their work and the teams they work with, but they dismiss talking to their peers. This causes conflicting priorities and misaligned objectives.
By creating a leadership team that moves through regular cadences of transparency, inspection, and adaptation they will be able to guide their teams through clear goals and continuous improvement.
The Bottom Line
So, to summarize, through the class I found value in:
- Working on our own growth
- Focusing on deliver a clear and inspirational message
- Inviting our peers to work together in bringing joy into our workplace
I would like to challenge you to choose one of your personal growth actions and explore how it could impact the teams you are working with.
Agile506 