Ian Spence
Scagilize Network Partner (Trainer & Consultant), Advisor & SAFe Fellow
As Agile Coaches we all know the importance of communicating with empathy and respect, and we all recognise the importance of the first line of the Agile Manifesto:
“Individuals and interactions over processes and tools”
Which is why I find certain trends within the Agile Community to be so disheartening (framework wars, inventing enemies, never accepting that the coaches are the root cause of many agile failures, presenting agility as a binary concept, the hubris of many Linked-in contributors, Elon Musk as an agile hero). Most of which I can’t do very much about, but something critical to the achievement of business agility that I think that we can all easily start to address is the way that as Agile Coaches we connect and communicate with the executives, leaders, and managers within our organizations.
As many of us come from a development background, we know not to talk down to developers and other knowledge workers, but sadly this is not something that is carried over into our discussions with or about the leaders and managers within an organization.
I’m sure we can all relate to the following quotes (and even provide some of our own favourites):
“In many ways, effective communication begins with mutual respect, communication that inspires, encourages others to do their best.”
Zig Ziglar
“To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use the understanding as a guide to our communication with others.”
Tony Robbins
“Bad communication ends a lot of good things. Good communication ends a lot of bad things.”
Frank Viscuso
But to be honest, this often seems to go out of the window when Agile Coaches talk to – or about – the executives, managers, and other senior stakeholders within their organizations.
It’s not surprising that I’ve heard this joke arise many times:
- Q: What’s the collective name for a group of Agile Coaches?
- A: An arrogance.
Or that there are so many games of Agile Buzzword Bingo available on the internet.
So please let’s all take a deep breath and acknowledge that it’s not big and clever to describe things to people using newly invented terms that they don’t understand, or to talk down to people whilst making them feel like they’re the problem, and instead do everything we can to prevent the Enterprise Agile Coach becoming the new Pointy Haired Manager and/or Catbert.
Remember, as Agile Coaches we are there to make sure that everyone benefits from an improved way-of-working, feels valued and empowered, and profits from being part of a more adaptive, more agile, more successful organization. Even the middle managers and the accountants.
This month my small contribution to help you to grow agility with humility within your organization is some editable, free to use slides to complement the popular Jargon Free Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) blog published a few months ago. Simply fill in the form below, "Slides, please".
Apologies for this month's rant.
Next month normal service will resume with the second blog on the
Hidden Benefits of LPM.
Slides, please!
*Mandatory fields. You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking on the link in the footer of our emails. Information about our privacy practices can be found on our website. We use Pipedrive to send our newsletters. By clicking "register" above, you consent to your data being transferred to Pipedrive for processing.
