“Professional Coaching for Agilists” by Damon Poole and Gillian Lee
This months’ pick for the agile book club is “Professional Coaching for Agilists” by Damon Poole and Gillian Lee!
Having a coach is one of the most beneficial things we can do to ourselves. In this episode, we share thoughts on the importance of coaching and our experiences. It’s all blended into the review of the “Professional Coaching for Agilists” by Damon B. Poole and Gillian Lee. This book is not only a wonderful introduction to coaching but also a place to revisit to continuously improve your skills.
As Paul said in the interview, even the Appendix is so rich with actionable ideas and exercises that it’s worth any price.
About the book
Coach Individuals, Teams, and Organizations to Greater Success with Agile
As Agilists work to increase an organization’s Agility, they will run into major obstacles with mindset shifts, moving to self-organization, and organizational adoption. Over the past decade, more Agilists have been using Professional Coaching to help individuals, teams, and the organization as a whole uncover these obstacles and move forward faster.
In Professional Coaching for Agilists, Damon Poole and Gillian Lee draw on their experience with thousands of Agile coaches and practitioners to show you how to use Professional Coaching to accelerate your Agile adoption. The authors’ approach of learning by doing teaches by using well-honed exercises, real-life stories, and example coaching conversations.
This guide is framework-independent and has been designed for Agile Coaches, Scrum Masters, and any Agilist involved in Agile adoption. It teaches high-value coaching skills, step by step, from coaching by objective to managing mutually successful engagements.
- Leverage coaching to create aha moments that lead to real change
- Learn dozens of coaching techniques and more than a hundred powerful questions
- Help people uncover blind spots and assess their opportunities more clearly
- Offer your expertise while maintaining your coaching mindset
- Help people improve performance by connecting them with their values, goals, and strengths
- Blend professional coaching with group facilitation so both work better
- Become a great coach by making coaching a natural extension of who you are
About the authors
Damon has provided Agile coaching and training for thousands of people at companies such as EMC, Capital One, Oanda, Ford, and Fidelity. He speaks frequently at Agile Alliance, Agile New England, Kentucky Fried Agile, Atlassian Summit, Agile and Beyond, Agile Toronto, and others. As a coach of coaches at Eliassen, Damon led the Agile Delivery team which grew to hundreds of Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches in the field.
He created Eliassen’s Agile Transformation approach and the training content across all aspects of Agile, and led the effort to provide opportunities for the coaches to advance in their coaching journey. This background gave Damon the opportunity to learn from hundreds of Agile Coaches in an enormous variety of client environments and from the wider international Agile community.
Damon is an International Coaching Federation Associate Certified Coach, International Coach Academy Certified Professional Coach, and is an ICAgile Certified Professional in Agile Coaching.
Gillian helps teams and organizations deliver better business results by coaching and mentoring them on the Agile approach. She helps engage and grow staff through playful facilitation and intentional peer-to-peer learning.
Gillian is an ICAgile Certified Professional in Agile Coaching with a background in engineering from MIT. She has worked with software development, non-technical and leadership teams of product and professional services organizations in currency exchange, earth sciences, eCommerce and manufacturing.
Gillian co-organized the AgileTO meetup since its first event in November 2015 to March 2017. In this past year, Gillian presented sessions at Regional Scrum Gathering Canada, Agile 2018, Toronto Agile Conference and Gatineau Ottawa Agile Tour on topics such as Agile Development with Javascript and Team Health Checks. Gillian also facilitated sessions at TAC Open Space, Agile Coach Camp Canada East and Play4Agile North America.
Marsha is a facilitator of meaningful conversations, a host of dialogue, and a passionate agilist. Through her keynotes, books, workshop, and leadership coaching, she empowers people to grow their leadership range and show up authentically in their lives and work.
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On top of that, the agile book club decided to plant one tree every month per patreon they have in that month.
