Coach Dan's Blog

Somehow in the workplace we've equated being a good leader with being infallible... with never making a mistake or a misstep.  I gotta be honest, that sounds EXHAUSTING to me!  I would argue that one of the most important characteristics of being a great leader, is showing that it's ok to make mistakes.  That it's ok to be wrong.  To take risks that didn't work out the way we hoped.  To give us permission to be human as we strive to serve our customers and our users. Consider this During an Australian Open tennis match in March of 2020, star player Rafael Nadal returned an out-of-bounds serve and absolutely (and quite accidentally) CLOBBERED ball-girl, Anita Birchall in the head.  Now mind you, Rafael did nothing WRONG.  It just happened. but it impacted poor Anita. The referee checked in to make Anita was OK, even as clearly shook Anita (who is definitely a boss-girl) scanned her zone to see if the ball (that had just bounced off the side of her face...

 Today is Tuesday, 2/22/22.  Can anyone think of a better day to carve out two minutes of your day, and say "Thank you" to a partner, peer, coworker or friend who went out of their way to help you? If you've been paying attention, you already know that showing gratitude at work can measurable improve a team’s performance.  Did you also know that "Overdoing Thank-Yous" is also shown to help improve a team's (and an organization's) psychological safety, which (wait for it) is necessary for a high performing culture? Daniel Coyle, in his book The Culture Code , states that one of the key components of the cultures of highly successful organizations is a sense of belonging.  Take a few minutes and think about a really great team you've been a part of. (It could be a work team, a sports team, a school project, a community/volunteer effort, it doesn't really matter what kind of team, just a great team.)  What were some of the things that made that team...

 

 I know it's an assumption, but I would still make a bet - everyone likes to receive gratitude for a job well done.  That moment of clarity where another person lets you know just how much you're appreciated.  It's a great feeling!  It can take a cruddy day and turn it around.  It can help a good day get to a great day.  It's really an easy thing to do... saying "thank you" to someone who did a great job, or helped you out, or challenged you to be better at what you do.   Showing genuine gratitude is a really simple but powerful tool that costs a team very little in energy or effort, but can pay off big-time in helping teams to achieve their goals. Consider research done at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania .  A research team randomly divided university fund-raisers into two groups. One group made phone calls to solicit alumni donations in the same way they always had. The second group — working different days than the first grou...

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There's been something that's been on my mind lately, and I can't quite get my head wrapped around an answer. I figured at this point, instead of just puzzling over it - the best thing I can do is just ask y'all what you think. So here goes... What's stopping you? Seriously, what's stopping you? We've been working on this "agile thing" now for quite some time. People have been trained on the mindset. PowerPoint decks, and playbooks have been distributed. Workshops have been conducted. Scrum and Kanban has been installed. Teams have been formed and registered them in a database. Jira and confluence have been rolled out. Dashboards full of metrics have been published. That means we're agile, right? Maybe, I guess. But for those of you who have started your agile team journey together, let me ask you this... do you feel agile? Does it feel like you are closely connected to the customer and business problems that you're helping to so...

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