Fostering Constructive Work Environments Through Team Coaching

Fostering Constructive Work Environments through Team Coaching 

by AgileTeam Coaching 

Coaching culture and team coaching are increasingly recognized as vital components in building a constructive and productive workplace culture.  

This article delves into the essence of coaching culture and explores how team coaching fosters a positive and effective work environment. 

What is Coaching Culture? 

A coaching culture is an organizational environment where coaching practices are embedded in daily interactions and management strategies. It’s characterized by open communication, continuous learning, feedback, and a supportive atmosphere that encourages personal and professional growth.  

In a coaching culture, the focus is on developing employees’ skills, enhancing their performance, and empowering them to reach their full potential. 

The Benefits of a Coaching Culture 

  1. Enhanced Employee Engagement: When employees feel supported and know that their development is a priority, their engagement and job satisfaction increase. 
  1. Improved Performance: Regular coaching helps in identifying areas for improvement and developing strategies to address them, leading to enhanced overall performance. 
  1. Fosters Continuous Learning: A coaching culture encourages an attitude of continuous learning and adaptability, which is crucial in today’s fast-paced business world. 
  1. Better Communication: Coaching involves active listening and open dialogue, which improves communication across all levels of the organization. 
  1. Increased Innovation: By empowering employees to take risks and think creatively, a coaching culture fosters an environment of innovation. 

Team Coaching as a Pillar of Coaching Culture 

Team coaching is a specific approach within the broader context of a coaching culture that focuses on enhancing the performance and dynamics of teams. It involves a coach working with a team to improve their collaboration, communication, and collective problem-solving abilities. 

How Team Coaching Builds a Constructive Culture 

  1. Promotes Team Synergy: Team coaching helps in aligning individual goals with team and organizational objectives, promoting a sense of unity and purpose. 
  1. Enhances Communication and Trust: Through team coaching, members learn to communicate effectively, listen actively, and build trust among each other. 
  1. Resolves Conflicts Constructively: Coaches equip teams with tools to manage and resolve conflicts in a way that strengthens team dynamics rather than weakening them. 
  1. Develops Leadership Skills: Team coaching often involves developing leadership skills not just in formal leaders, but across the team, encouraging a shared leadership model. 
  1. Adapts to Change: Teams that undergo coaching are better prepared to adapt to change and navigate challenges, contributing to a resilient organizational culture. 

Implementing Team Coaching 

Implementing team coaching requires commitment from all levels of the organization. It starts with top management endorsing the value of coaching and permeates through the organization by training managers and leaders as coaches.  

Regular team coaching sessions, combined with individual coaching and ongoing support, ensure the development of a strong coaching culture. 

Agile PeopleOps Framework Certified Systemic Team Coach™ 

The Agile PeopleOps Framework Certified Systemic Team Coach™ course stands out as a significant program for future skilling participants in the field of team coaching. 

Explore the upcoming dates for our course here, and enroll to start your journey.

It is tailored for HR professionals, PeopleOps leaders, and managers, focusing on enhancing team communication, collaboration, and leadership skills over a 12-week online program. 

Conclusion 

Integrating a coaching culture and team coaching practices is a powerful strategy for organizations aiming to foster a constructive, collaborative, and high-performing work environment.  

By focusing on continuous development, communication, and team dynamics, organizations can unlock the potential of their employees and teams, leading to sustainable success and growth. 

One Metric that Matters – Part II

by AgileAgile PeopleOps FrameworkAgile Metrics

Measuring the Progress of Transformation

If you’ve ever seen a Transformers movie, you’re well aware that one of the bots transforms, even if it’s in smooth (if not longer) action. The pieces and features melt away to reveal something new, but there are similar parts involved. Any change happens when organizations change.

In Part 1 of this two-part post, we discussed measuring specific metrics at each stage of a product’s lifecycle. We introduced the One Metric That Matters (OMTM) framework that helps identify a single measurement to gauge a product’s success in a given stage of development, cutting noise from the signal. Useful, right?

So how can we take this approach to enterprise transformation, especially in the HR space where metrics are everywhere but don’t always exemplify the success of a team of people? If leveraging the Agile PeopleOps Framework, there is a charter that captures the change to be made. We recommend using this approach to identify OMTM metrics and specify them in stages.
For starters, let’s revisit Steve Glaveski’s table, with People Team-transformation additions:

Taking these metrics, and documenting and tracking your use of the charter, will help your APF change stay the course. It’s a great coaching tool for leadership (example: “What can we do better here?”), but it’s also a great live document for the people you’re working directly with (it tracks progress). Can do). A great way to do it). A great way to track and track your progress). Helps to show.)

Give it a try and let us know what you think!

Author: Christopher Goscinski

Graph-and-Samsung

One Metric that Matters – Part 1

by AgileAgile HRAgile Metrics

What Really Counts?

(Editor’s note: This is a two-part post. Part 1, below, introduces the One Metric That Matters’ approach to metric measurement. For more on this and taking a lean approach to analytics, we recommend you read Lean Analytics, by Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz. Part 2, to come, will take this approach and overlay it with enterprise transformation, particularly that of the Agile HR variety. Enjoy!)

We live in a data-rich world, filled with trackable, measurable interactions that can help us iterate on products and processes in nearly real-time. We have a wealth of information at our fingertips about user behavior, and we have a number of ways to validate just how successful we’ve been in a given initiative.

This is, of course, good news: Generations before us couldn’t imagine the user-level data we have today, nor the tools we have available to churn it all into meaningful insight.

So we have a lot of data. But do we know what matters in this mess of numbers and metrics? What really matters when we talk about whether we are increasing user engagement with a given product or service? Are click-through rates or downloads really indicative of how likely your service is to appear next year? Let’s assume you have a mature product: how do you know what customers want in the next iteration? What measurements will you use to help take your solution to the next level (whatever it is – it’s all relative.)

Data is dangerous when we abuse it – and it’s very easy to do: When a product is in beta the metrics may not be relevant to a year-old solution with a solid customer base. In fact, we need to identify which metrics to shortlist and which will be the single metric that defines the success of a solution in the wild.

What is that One Metric That Matters (OMTM)?

The OMTM is less a concrete thing, and more of a guideline that helps you, the solution owner, identify how a product is doing. The concept comes from Ben Yoskovitz’s “Lean Analytics”, a book primarily for startups, focusing on deriving meaning from data.

When it comes to OMTM, different stages demand different metrics, and of those metrics, there should really only be one that you rely on to tell you how things are going. This sole focus helps cut noise from the signal and allows you to make very specific decisions for very specific reasons.

Steve Glosky, entrepreneur and founder, has put together a nice table of metrics describing which metrics can be used at what stage of the hypothetical innovation program in a corporation. Out of the many steps listed in each step, the OMTM framework demands that you obsessively pick just one to track and decide on it.

OMTM Framework

What happens once you’ve identified your One Metric? You measure it! You’re free to track other metrics too, but the One Metric becomes your North Star. As things mature (or reverse course), change what that metric should be for the various stage. Glaveski summarizes, and suggests themes for each stage of growth (again, for that hypothetical Innovation Program):

Hypothetical innovation program difference table

Since your initiative or product may be different, the above tables may not apply to you. Nevertheless, the concepts remain the same: cutting data noise from signals, and investing in that sensing and responding to that signal, will empower you to make impactful decisions for product development. Reduce the search for non-significant numbers, and see real progress where it matters.

Author: Christopher Goscinski

 

What is Agile Method and How It Works

by AgileAgile HRAgile PeopleOps Framework

If you’re reading this, there is a high likelihood that you are familiar with Agile methodologies in software development.

You know about Scrum, Kanban, SAFe. You’re familiar with why these methods work, and the value they deliver not only to organizations, but teams leveraging them.

You recognize the value inherent in iterative development, and collaborative environments.

Agile has taken the business world by storm: Adoption on Engineering teams continues to accelerate (12th State of Agile Report).

And the values and principles behind the Agile Manifesto are evolving to meet the needs of other business functions.

Agile in HR isn’t particularly new – plenty has been written to date about why HR would benefit from such a framework.

And yet, there hasn’t been a very good answer as to how Agile values can be tactically brought into an HR organization.

Enter the Agile PeopleOps Framework (APF). APF enables HR teams to intentionally adopt a more Agile mindset.

It shifts from a worldview of VUCA to one of flexibility, responsiveness, and transparency.

APF borrows heavily from the structure of the Agile Manifesto to bring a refreshed list of values and priorities, directly in line with the HR business function.

A Tale of Two Manifesto

Mirroring the structure of a Scrum Team (and at scale, a program team), APF focuses on human capital strategy, and intentional talent acquisition.

It is a full-service framework, accounting for COPs, KPIs (now called Human Effectivity Indicators – or HEIs), and end-to-end value delivery (from Talent Acquisition, to long-term employee.)

Roles and processes are similar to Scrum, and the underlying feel of adoption is not unlike that of software development.

If your organization has adopted Agile methodologies within its Engineering Teams, consider APF as part of your organization’s journey.

There is, of course, a lot to unpack here. Values, principles, roles, and processes differ slightly from that of their traditional Agile counterparts.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll discuss some of these changes in greater depth. We’ll detail how the APF Agile HR Manifesto differs from that of the Agile Manifesto.

We’ll discuss where we believe Agile (as a mindset) is heading, and why we think Agile is here to stay, albeit in various forms.

Also peek into the processes that drive APF – diving into the customizations of Scrum and Kanban that were made in response to different environments and goals.

Finally, we’ll look ahead and talk about what it means to be culturally agile, and how to get there.

A fair warning: this is Systems Thinking-type stuff. Get ready to think big!

We’re excited to introduce APF, and we think you’ll begin to find value from Day 1 of adoption.

Our PeopleOps Coaches offer 1:1 coaching, and other services to help you get started on your journey (or to help accelerate!)

Author: Christopher Goscinski

Agile PeopleOps Framework Manifesto

by Agile

Agile PeopleOps Framework (APF) is a unified conceptual framework that facilitates human capital strategy, planning, talent-acquisition and engagement through Agile practices. The Agile HR Manifesto for APF has been written to “build better ways of developing an Engaging & Enriched PeopleOps Experience by practicing them and helping others around you to practice it.”

The APF Manifesto includes:

Team of teams over traditional hierarchies: Deloitte Human Capital Trends Report 2017 highlights that 32% of respondents believe they are transitioning to a team-centric model, by moving away from traditional hierarchies. According to APF, we need to give more importance to transparency, accountability, nimble decision-making, free flow of information and feedback, & collaboration.

Growth Mindset over fixed mindset: Individuals with a growth mindset strongly believe that their abilities and skills can be continuously developed, and they have a flair for learning, receive feedback constructive and strive to achieve high-performance and mastery. APF Manifesto gives “more value” to a growth mindset as its imperative in today’s business world where continuous learning, agility and collaboration are key to sustainability.
A staffing organization (to whom we recently provided APF Training) leaders came to a consensus during a simulation session that they would imbibe the mindset to work with ‘agile-way’ and practice processes between and across their team to harness hiring agility and stay competitive in the industry.

Coaching Culture over command-and-control: HCI-ICF Report on Coaching Culture confirms that organizations with a strong coaching culture reported 46% higher revenues and 61% of their employees are highly engaged. According to APF Manifesto, Managers as Coaches need to leverage their members’ capabilities, strengths, and create opportunities for their members to build on their capabilities, ask stimulating and powerful questions to boost creativity, and create avenues for the team to grow and develop.

Transcultural Competence over cultural competence: In today’s diverse and dispersed global world, it is imperative that members successfully adapt to different sociocultural settings, and develop new boxes of solutions to issues created by cultural differences (that came into existence due to one’s own survival mechanisms, adaptation to environment and shared learning as a group). For example, an employee organization will need to plan and plan how their talent champions can practice translational competence while interacting with global talent and key stakeholders during the talent acquisition process.

Which APF Manifesto do you and your team practice at your team/organization level? Feel free to share your thoughts and comments.

Source:

Walsh, B. & Volini, E. (2017). Rewriting the rules for the digital age – 2017 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends. DUP, Deloitte Development

Human Capital Institute (HCI) and International Coach Federation (ICF) Report “Building a Coaching Culture with Millennial Leaders”