James King

I thought this was about coaching tax Last week I wrote about “coaching tax” from the perspective of being in a coaching conversation (time on task) versus not being in a coaching conversation. This week I thought I would write an article about “coaching tax” from the perspective of the coach who is already engaged…

I love coaching I like to believe that coaching has a really positive impact on the person being coached. At best it is a “generative conversation” that leads to either new action or new insight. I have heard this summarised as discovering what is “next or new.” When coaching an individual, the conversation is one…

We sometimes talk about moving out of your comfort zone so that you can really stretch yourself and thereby grow more. Moving out of your comfort zone can, however, be a bit harder than we make it sound. But why is it hard? Overcoming inertia One reason is inertia. We are not making the deliberate…

My last article, I suggested that we should move out of our comfort zone in order to learn and grow. I looked at how you can target specific areas for growth and then volunteer for scary adventures that take you through “the fear zone” and into a longer term learning zone where you continue to…

I recently participated in a workshop where we discussed the growth mindset and the need to push yourself our of your comfort zone in order to learn and grow. We spoke about the need to move out of our comfort zone if we want learn and grow. When you come out of your comfort zone,…

Tom Angove and I gave a talk today on what we think a great product owner is. We were at the IIBA “Festival of Business Analysis,” so there were quite a few people who knew what a Product Owner was. I would love to say that the talk consisted or erudite guidance from the presenters…

I am supposed to be working on a talk I am doing in a couple of days. I have some time available and some rare space to think. So of course I have started reading some books on topics that have nothing to do with my talk, and I am pondering how these impact life…

A problem is (also) a question to be answered or solved. Especially by reasoning or calculating Cambridge Dictionary – https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/problem I love problem solving I love to help others to learn to solve problems. But there is a problem with this. When I say problem I often mean “a puzzle to be solved” or “a…

I strongly believe that coaching teams (and leaders) is a great idea. I think an agile coach can do a lot more than increase velocity with a team or have decent stand-ups.  I also read a lot about different approaches to coaching and like to hone my craft as a coach so that I can…

Some time ago, I was wondering why I was noticing people moving away from agile approaches (and cultures). One of my theories was that people were neglecting “craftsmanship” when coaching agile teams. I am an agile coach and I often explain to people that agile coaching is about helping teams build the capability to interact…