Müge İrfanoğlu // Allianz Türkiye - Agile Coach
Team Coaching Toolkit (Tony Llewellyn)
“The illiterate of the 21st century are not those who cannot read or write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” – Alvin Toffler
I'm here to present a new series. In this series, which I present the first part of, I will share the books that I recommend to those who work in different roles in agile organizations or who want to read in-depth about agility, that I have in my library and that I frequently refer to.
Most of my time as an agile coach is spent in teams of different sizes and dynamics. I observe the birth and growth of teams, the pains they go through while growing up, excitement, rebellions and ultimately their journey towards better themselves.
Although the structure and maturity stage of each team are different from each other, it is obvious that they show similarities at certain points of their journeys. People and subjects change but processes and needs show parallelism. My focus as an agile coach is to support the formation of a fast, effective and competent team that works collaboratively “under the circumstances.”
Tony Llewellyn's Team Coaching Toolkit, published in 2017, is a guide for all leaders, coaches and project managers working with cross-functional teams.
In this book, Llewellyn offers readers 10 techniques and 45 tools to increase the impact of team coaching, which he describes as the implementation of a series of interventions that create and develop a culture of unifying behavior necessary for the team to achieve the expected result and meet the performance standards they set.
He shares both theoretical knowledge and practice examples of some techniques we are actually familiar with in the agile world, such as asking effective questions, active listening, visualization, storytelling through case studies, slowing down to gain speed.
It also introduces 45 different tools that are compatible with the 5-stage 'Team Coaching Model' gathered under the headings of Assessing the Environment, Setting Up, Communication, Build Resilience and Improvement and Learning, by blending theory and practice. The methods outlined in short steps are ready for immediate application.
So, what did I learn from this book?
It would be a miracle to expect that a group of people with different characteristics and expectations comes together to form the perfect team for a common goal by going beyond a working group all of a sudden.
For this reason, it is very valuable for all leaders working with agile teams to know and effectively use the tools and techniques that will facilitate this transformation
As an agile office at Allianz, we use many of the tools and techniques here, with minor nuances.
I’ve already took notes to my agenda the below tools:
- "Dangerous Assumptions and Moments of Destiny", which aims to question the assumptions,
- "Strong Field Analysis", which will enable to realize the supporting and hindering forces that can be used while solving a problem,
- “Who Wants to Play the Fool?”, which will make the team think from different angles,
- "Reset Key" that will revive disabled teams,
- “What Do We Know?” tool, which will strengthen the learning team concept
P.S. You can find most of the methods in the book on the author's site, Team Coaching Toolkit (here).
Happy Reading!
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