Being a coach is about having good conversations. Sure, there are times when you are reading documents, examining data or making observations, but the reason you are doing those things is to prepare for the conversation that you will be having with the person or team that you are coaching. The conversations that you have… Continue reading How do coaches stay interested in people?

I was helping someone make some improvements in their team recently, to be more "agile."I made the point, almost apologetically, that we had changed direction a few times and iterated in what we were doing. I started with a workshop, then some coaching, then we had some team meetings and then we seemed to succeed.… Continue reading If we want to teach agile, we should be agile in our teaching

I was talking to someone about a request from a client to "look into something weird." The client was not sure if something was a problem or not, so they raised it with someone they knew in the team and a couple of hours later the case was solved. It got me thinking. Where do… Continue reading Does your team get involved in solving mysteries?

I recently completed three courses on Coursera, each achieving the goal I set out with. The first course was a six sigma course that I used to refresh my knowledge on something that I am familiar with. It contained what I wanted to learn but was typical of old fashioned e-learning (and face to face… Continue reading Good training stands out

I have done many personality profiles over the years. Sometimes they seem to contradict and sometimes there are consistencies. One thing that is consistent though is that I see myself as more co-operative than competitive. However, I was doing a course recently and a point of discussion was when we are all more competitive or… Continue reading The variable nature of comparisons