Awesome Coach of the Week: Bob Sarni
We honor Bob Sarni as Awesome Coach of the Week 33, 2011
Ralf Kruse
I'm an agile42 coach. Sometimes I'm excited and sometimes I feel more like Marvin ;-) Follow me @ralfhh
I had the opportunity to work closely with Bob on a large enterprise transition. Bob has a great way to deal with people. He used to be an excellent contributor to the success of a project we did together. - During these four months in Greece, I learned a lot from him.
Leading people
I can’t remember that Bob ever used a phrase like “you do this”. He has a great way of leading by questions and from the back of the room. One special case where he impressed me a lot was during a planning meeting. There was nothing strikingly special on the outside, on the contrary—you could have had the impression that he did not contribute to the success of the meeting at all. All he did was extending the flipchart with hints how to improve the planning. The way he extended the flipchart during the meeting gave advice to the participants without interrupting them. This was an outstanding example for how to subtly lead a meeting while staying totally in the background.
Real agile manager 3.0
Most agile coaches have technical origins. A strength of Bob is his management background. This gives him the possibility to catch people from a different angle and with his supportive attitude, he challenges people and especially the management towards agility. This makes him a real agile manager 3.0.
He never loses his head, not even in the harshest situations
Big enterprise transitions always face an incredible amount of complexity and unforeseen challenges. But nonetheless, you will never catch Bob complaining or expressing concern. He is a “First Line Man”, all about settling conflict and remains calm and radiates an aura of confidence even in the eye of a thunderstorm.
Awesome Coach of the Week
All this makes him an Awesome Coach in our opinion. Thanks Bob for your contribution to our community! If you had an awesome experience with Bob as well and want to add some thing, please do so in the comments. We honor a Coach per week, suggestions are welcome!
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