Coaching Approach
Improving capabilities of an organization is an important journey that requires support from individual contributors to executive team sponsors. Training and mentoring are needed to begin the journey. As teams mature and improve their capabilities, the next significant leaps require improving relationships. These include person to person, team to team, division to division relationships.
Using a combination of training, facilitation and coaching, I help organizations build a change program that strikes a balance between the pace of change and the pace of the organization. This includes coaching on, but not limited to, strategic techniques and agile leadership skills that results in more expansive organizational problem solving toolkits for leaders and their teams.
Typical Clients
My clients range from executive leadership teams in the Small-Medium business space up to divisional directors of multi team organizational units who are looking to gain the benefits from agile delivery methods and organizational coaching techniques.
I work with these leadership teams to raise awareness of the gaps between the delivery teams, leadership teams and delivery practices. Through thoughtful interventions consisting of training, assessment and coaching, we progressively close these gaps resulting in increased customer satisfaction, team engagement, and organizational results.
Results Achieved
Worked with a public agency in the financial services sector to assist with an agile adoption strategy. Onboarded 6 delivery teams in agile practices. Designed and facilitated all-team retrospective sessions for 120 people which provided actionable insights for the divisional leadership team.
Provided continuous team coaching for delivery teams resulting in an improved relationship between the delivery team and their business sponsors while improving employee engagement.
Provided agile coaching to partner organizational units resulting in improved understanding and alignment of work streams. This alignment resulted in greater transparency and improved planning synchronization which ultimately reduces delivery costs as cross departmental delays were minimized.
Onboarded and coached two agile delivery teams at a financial services organization with a focus on providing the opportunity for a senior manager to adjust his power style from one of authority to one of a catalyst leader. This resulted in more open minded communication where the manager was able to assess differing points of view. Combined with mentoring on Product Management techniques, the manager was able to retain his authority for the product line while improving his capabilities as a relationship manager. Delivery time was halved due to improved clarity of product requirements and a conscious shift to a learning based organization.
Catalyzed a transformation of the IT section within a financial services organization using agile methods to rescue a stalled project. This involved working with the middle management team to see how incremental delivery practices could speed up feedback cycles which resulted in improved goodwill between the organization and their tier 1 partners. Six delivery teams were involved plus a shared services team and the product team. Collaboration increased and shifted the organizational culture to consider shared benefits as opposed to “Us and Them” thinking which dominated the pre-transformation culture.
Role modeling important steps in the change process resulted in a faster time to market by a factor of 6 as delivery teams emulated the practices.
Improved the cohesion of a leadership team at a financial services firm by teaching methods of meeting discipline and intra-team collaboration. Meeting discipline included role modeling strategic facilitation techniques and helping educate the team about sub-optimal leadership team practices. A coach like approach was taken to raise awareness of the power dynamics between team members which improved communication and cohesiveness of the team. This improved cohesiveness enhanced leadership capabilities of delivery team leads resulting in greater risk taking, more innovative product offerings and improved team esprit de corps.
Professional History
Experience in Information technology for over 20 years, 12 years in the financial services industry, 10 years with agile methods. Progressive coaching experience for 30 years from grassroots cohorts in university to present day coaching in organizational contexts.
Formal coaching training includes training in lean-agile practices and emerging leadership and organizational coaching practices in systems coaching.
Experience in developing and delivering training workshops both in-person and online. Focus is on combining narrative with experiential learning workshop design.
Credentials
- Associate Certified Coach (ACC – International Coaching Federation)
- Certified Organizational Coach (University of British Columbia)
- Certified Agile Leader (CAL 2 – Scrum Alliance)
- Certified Team Coach (CTC – Scrum Alliance)
- Certified ScrumMaster (CSM – Scrum Alliance)
- Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO – Scrum Alliance)
- Business Architecture (Process Renewal Group)
- Certificate in Applied Business Analysis (Simon Fraser University)
- SAFe 5 SPC (Scaled Agile)
- BSc Computer Science – Software Systems Design