Coach Dan's Blog

📖 “In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” -Friedrich Nietzsche Nietzsche's thinking about how individuals interact when in a group closely aligns with the concept defined by Irving Janis in 1972 called "groupthink." ✏️ Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon in which people strive for consensus within a group. In many cases, people will set aside their own personal beliefs or adopt the opinions of the rest of the group. Individuals with differing opinions, or even opposed to the group's decisions frequently remain quiet in order to keep the peace rather than disrupt the crowd's uniformity. This phenomenon is common in the workplace, as the decision-making cycle continues to compress, and the pressure to deliver increases. It's a danger to leaders and managers because it reduces the likelihood of teams identifying and mitigating risk. Creativity and innovation is pushed to the side in favor of "goin...

  📖 "Any fool can know. The point is to understand." - Albert Einstein The siren call to action can be impossible to ignore. In fact, the pressure to "do" can be so great, that we'll look at data- make an assumption and then act without ever looking back. Albert Einstein seemed to be warning us not to confuse knowledge (data) with understanding... something worthy of exploring. I got curious and tried a CHATGPT prompt. (Data vs. information vs. insight vs. understanding.) I was presented with following response- 💻 Data –Raw, unprocessed facts or figures without context. 💻 Information –Data that has been organized, structured, or contextualized to make it meaningful. 💻 Insight –A meaningful interpretation or discovery derived from information, often leading to action. 💻 Understanding –A deep, holistic grasp of patterns, causes, and implications that allows for better decision-making. 💻 Each level builds upon the previous one, moving from raw data to action...

  Over the last 24 hours, I heard 3 questions that really caught my interest. The first question was "How can you coach someone to get better at something if they don't think they need to improve." The second question was "What do you do with that one person on the team who always seems to have an excuse as to why things aren't finished." The third question was posed today on LinkedIn by our very own Andrew (Drew) Boyer, "Is the demand for Leadership Coaching coming from Corporate Leaders or Employees??" What struck me is the answer to all three questions is quite the same... A coach can't help someone improve if they aren't open minded and ready to improve. If there is no invitation for coaching, no coaching will occur. If the person you are working with doesn't believe they need to improve - the likelihood of them investing in improvement on their own volition is small. You may show them data indicating there is room for improvemen...

  📖 “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” ― Anne Frank What are you waiting for? ✔️ Reflect ✔️ Set a goal ✔️ Make a small change ✔️ Repeat You don't have to swing for the fences every day. Small experiments bring about small changes that add up over time. What's stopping you?

  📖 “Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.” - John Dewey Some people view failure as a negative, and I can understand why that might be. Consider this.... 🤔 If you never fail, did you really give everything you could to something? 🤔 If you never fail, have you discovered everything there is to know about what you tried? 🤔 If you never fail, did you really ever take any risks? Making a team afraid to fail means they will never accomplish all that they could have in the first place... Try something and fail? Reflect and apply your learnings - this is the way to continuous improvement. What's stopping you?

  📖 “Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.” ― Marcus Aurelius   It's easy to be so confident in a direction or a belief, that we forget to reflect. Challenge yourself to reflect and identify bias in your own thinking. You may be surprised about what you find. We all win together.

I was having a random conversation with another coach last week, and we had a bit of a shared 'ah ha' moment. We, as champions of agility, say the word "agile" (as though it were a destination, or a goal,) way more than we should. Perhaps WE, as coaches, scrum masters, and champions, need to challenge our own use of the language a bit. Instead of saying... 🚫 We're changing to be (or heaven forbid, do) agile. maybe we should be saying... ✅ We want to respond to change WITH agility. ✅ We want to solve problems WITH agility. ✅ We want to achieve outcomes WITH agility. ✅ We aim to work WITH agility. Isn't our goal really to respond to change, solve problems and achieve outcomes? And isn't it all the better to do those things with agility? When we challenge ourselves to use our words differently, we can shift the focus away from frameworks and mindsets... and toward APPLYING those frameworks and mindsets toward ACHIEVING something. What words do you use ...