Agile People Coach - Leadership (ICP-LEA) [16 Online Sessions]

Agile People Coach - Leadership (ICP-LEA) [16 Online Sessions]

Today the most progressive companies have changed the formal management role to a more servant leadership role, realizing that people are most productive, creative and happy when they have personal control over their own lives and the ability to be leaders of their destiny, private or work-related. In these organizations, everybody is expected to be a leader, so there is paradoxically, a lot more leadership there.

This training leads to an ICAgile Certification in Leading in Agility (ICP-LEA) - read more under FAQ below

Although the changed view on leaders and of the formal manager role is far from mainstream today, many organizations are experimenting with alternative structures, replacing budgets with forecasts and dynamic resource allocation, to create the best possible value. The role of managers is changing rapidly and also, the role of HR is under tremendous change, from focusing mainly on policies and processes to understanding that the future for HR lies in creating conditions for people to perform and be happy. By removing impediments, we can instead maximize engagement and employee satisfaction that will fuel speed and adaptability in a common, strategic direction.

The question is, where do managers and HR go from here? What will become of them, when everybody seems to be able to lead themselves? Will they slowly become obsolete when information and knowledge are transparent for everybody and power is not anymore in the hands of a few "talents" who were promoted because they were seen as "HIPOs" in a world where people were judged in a yearly performance review? Or is there an alternative future role that would be the natural step when leaving the process-oriented and transactional leadership style in favor of ways of working more suitable for a complex reality?

Regardless if you are an agile coach, a line manager or an HR professional, you need to understand how people strategy and people operations need to change when working in a company embracing the agile value structure. 

During the Agile People Coach training we cover 3 perspectives:

Individual perspective (YOU) Knowing yourself and why you do what you do.

• The Reiss Motivation Profile (RMP) shows your basic needs and motives, and contributes to a better understanding of yourself and your leadership, and why you do what you do…
• Helping others finding their perfect place in the organization taking their personality and situation into account

Team perspective  (WE IN OUR TEAM)

• How to increase the pace from immature to mature high-performing teams, using skills for communication and conflict resolution
• How to grow and develop teams to be independent and empowered to make their own decisions, for example about  their contribution to the organization's goals or their salaries

Organizational perspective (ALL OF US)

• How to balance an agile culture with an agile structure, providing enough support for emerging strategies where all people are involved in setting the direction (via OKRs or other kinds of relative targets)
• How to work to change behaviors – accomplishing an agile mindset and culture through removing limiting structures (budgets linked to fixed performance targets and rewards)
• Create a Learning organization where it's ok to make mistakes and learn from them (requires a platform of Psychological Safety)

Workshop program

Workshop program Session 1-5: Agile People Fundamentals

Session 1:  Introduction to Agile People and important principles / tools: The foundation of Agile Peoples mindset is about the principles, values, methods and tools that we need to start using to release competence and innovation - and what we stop doing. Your own challenges are discussed. Certification assignment and presentations.

Session 2: Psychological safety as a foundation for a learning organization: The importance of an approach that is pervaded by security and confidence to increase profitability and innovation - to increase creativity through a culture where it is ok to fail and try again. We play "The Psychological Safety Game"to facilitate the dialogue about difficult topics.

Session 3:  Emerging strategies, structures and goals: Emerging strategies instead of long-term planning, new ways of working with strategy, budgets, goals, performance processes and rewards. Using value stream mapping to optimize flows in a system instead of working with resource optimization and sub-optimization of departments. Mindset Slider exercise. WoWs to be used: Beyond Budgeting, OKRs, Impact Mapping, VSM etc.

Session 4: Building conditions for agile culture: Creating conditions for a fantastic culture where people can perform at their optimal level with a sense of being supported and secure. The gap between structures and culture / values. Structure - Culture Misfit Role Play. The importance of country culture for an Agile transformation.

Session 5: The learning Organization as Strategy and the future role of HR and managers: Boundary Spanning and the Buddy System to increase cross-border collaboration and increase the opportunity to create a fantastic organization together. Tips and examples for the change journey and how HR and managers need to change their own role to support it.

Summarizing and following up on our own challenges and the next step.

Workshop program Session 6-12: Agile People Leadership

Session 6: Why Agile Leadership: The impact of big trends and the VUCA world and the drawbacks of the waterfall method for development of new products. Problems with the way we still manage and lead and the better way. Theory X and Y view of leadership - examples. 

Session 7: Types of leadership: A walkthrough of Leadership history and how it has developed until today.

Session 8: What is Agile Leadership? Examples of frameworks and cases. 9 leadership principles and the gardener metaphor. How performance can be supported with alternative ways of working. Leadership Maturity exercise.

Session 9: Knowing and leading yourself: Emotional intelligence, mental models and mindful leadership. The organization as a social construct and interpersonal mush vs. interpersonal clarity. How we are biased: 4 examples of biases that we all hold and the antidote. The 4 selves of a leader with a self assessment.

Session 10: Conflict resolution: Basic conflict theory and finding the right balance between harmony and creative conflict in a team or organization.

Session 11: Effective Communication: How do we make sure that what we communicate get the intended result and that we are clear on how to communicate the right stuff in a way that would make sense for people, regardless of cognitive differences?

Session 12: Boundary Spanning - working cross-functionally and spanning boundaries of different kinds, inside and outside the organization and between topics, areas and diverse people. Buddy System exercise.

Conclusion and next steps: Retrospective (ALL) and KUDOs

Workshop program Session 13-16: Agile People Coach

Session 13: Introduction to Agile Coaching and the four roles of a coach: Mentoring, teaching, facilitating and coaching. What is the difference between an Agile Coach and an Agile People Coach?

Session 14: Agile People Coach - the 9 roles and Self-assessment - how skilled are you in the different roles and where do you need to improve. What are the skills that you need to add as a regular Agile Coach, Leader or HR-person if you want to increase your agile & people skills and to be able to call yourself an Agile People Coach? Scenarios for practicing when to take what role.

Session 15: My motivation profile as a base for self-leadership and understanding what drives me and other's: Communicating with people who are different from yourself and knowing how to understand what makes other people do what they do and how they are different/similar to you. My 3 defining needs.

Session 16: Team Leadership: Understanding how a team matures and what kind of coaching technique to use in each stage of maturity - when is a team high-performing and what are the dangers that we need to look out for if teams become too strong compared to the rest of the organization? My Washing instructions and team exercises.

Conclusion and personal retrospective

Helgi Gudmundsson is a passionate agile practitioner, professional coach, and facilitator with over fifteen years of experience developing organisations and teams spanning private-, not-for-profit-, and startup sectors.  Having both served and led on over a dozen leadership and project teams and with hands on experience guiding an organisation through a 15-month change process, Helgi brings a combination of exploration, concrete experience and an evidence based approach to developing agility, effective leadership and robust collaboration at all levels

Helgi holds degrees in International Business & Marketing as well as Occupational & Organisational Psychology, with a further specialisation in Conflict Resolution, Group Facilitation, and Professional Coaching (ICF).  He is the co-author of the ICP-ALP Agile Leadership course, in collaboration with Pia-Maria Thorén.

We are working with Zoom for presentations and team exercises, Trello for keeping track of the agenda items and exercises and Slack for communication between the sessions. There will be some work to be done after every session, so add about 5 hours more every week. Course literature and material will be sent to your location and distributed digitally. 

During the period, you take part in 2-hour sessions. Totally 16 sessions - six options, depending on where you are in the world. The date and time is the start time.

FAQ

How does the process look for this training?

The training is a copy of the physical training but we will use online tools instead of face-to-face meeting. You will need a good internet connection and an undisturbed workplace where you can have a quiet background. We will work in break-out sessions in Zoom and use Slack för communication between the instructor-led sessions, which will happen every week between 15-17 Central European Time.

All material will be shared via a Trello board and a Google drive. We will let you know everything about practicalities during the first session.

Yes, classes will be scheduled on specific days and time. See above what applies to this course.

After training completion, what is the process to become ICAgile Certified

The process of certification is that you need to finalize the certification assignment, which is to describe how you would turn around HR and leadership in a company that has gone bankrupt due to not being agile enough (real case, a Swedish fashion company). When the assignment is finalized (approved with feedback from us), we will make your certificate download available from ICAgile via a link.