In our recent webinar titled Humanizing the Workplace: The Key to Finding and Keeping Top Talent, experts Regina Martins and Birge Kahraman delved into the essential aspects of fostering a positive work environment. The discussion revolved around the challenges organizations face when transitioning to remote work and the importance of humanizing the workplace when it comes to attracting and retaining top talent. The speakers emphasized the importance of servant leadership, active listening, and the creation of purpose-driven goals to cultivate a healthy and happy workplace.
Resilient leadership is about adaptability, open communication, and creating a positive culture. Leaders need to build strong relationships, set attainable goals, and foster collaboration within their teams. By embracing these insights & watching our leadership webinar, you can navigate uncertainty with greater confidence and resilience.
In this webinar, our coaches Gregory Keegan and Alessa Leuschen go beyond traditional performance assessment methods and dive into how we can more effectively evaluate and measure teams in an Agile environment. They explore the key challenges and complexities to assessing Agile teams, give practical approaches on how to better assess Agile teams, and how we can leverage those results to foster a culture of continuous improvement and growth.
There are endless resources, tools, and guidelines for professional coaching, but what makes coaching so magical is that it is an intensely personal experience for the coach. And yet, the personal is often missing when people talk about coaching.
In this webinar, ICF-accredited coaches, Pascal Papathemelis and Ebru Yalcinkaya share a personal insight into professional coaching. They talk about their journey, what they have struggled with, and what they have done to grow as a coach – so that you can, too.
Getting better results often requires a shift in organizational culture. But culture is about far more than just beanbags, table football, and free snacks.
While we can’t design company culture, we can influence and monitor it. In this webinar, Giuseppe De Simone and Simon Sablowski explore why a coherent organizational culture is so important and the different types of cultures that exist. They give a detailed guide on how we can influence and measure our company culture to build one that is more conducive to our goals, as well as how agile42’s OrgScan™ tool can help you to achieve this.
Goals are what drive us and create a path to our success. Many of us have a big goal in mind that guides us. But one big goal can be overwhelming: how do we decide on the smaller parts and day-to-day actions that will help us achieve it?
In this webinar, goal-setting experts Regina Martins and Birge Kahraman introduce you to the concept of OKRs, or Objectives and Key Results. They show you how to break your big, ambitious goals down into small, achievable, and clear steps. They outline how you can write action-orientated and strong objectives as well as impactful key results. Together, they explore how Agile teams can use OKRs, and how we can connect them to our business goals.
Every year, as we approach the year-end, our coaches find themselves having more conversations about burnout. It’s a concept we’ve been hearing about for decades, so why is it still such a big problem?
In this webinar, Regina Martins and Pascal Papathemelis tackle this concept. They share their personal experiences to cover why burnout happens and how we can spot the signs in both ourselves and others. They also explore some long-term sustainable solutions to this problem, and the roles that coaches and leaders in organizations play to prevent burnout from happening in the first place.
In software development, technical debt is a concept that reflects the extra development work that arises when we use quick or easy solutions. But the concept is useful beyond the world of software too. In the digital world, where new technologies and ideas are emerging just about every day, technical debt is almost unavoidable. So we need to know how to deal with it.
In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, trends like “The Great Resignation” have kicked off a long overdue conversation about hybrid and remote work, and how to do this well. For example, some hybrid workers complain that they go to the office to log on to Zoom or Teams only to spend the rest of the day with their headphones on because the rest of their team is at home. A lot of people feel disconnected from their teams and that they are missing out on the human element of work. agile42’s coaches recently discussed this in the Humanizing Hybrid Work webinar.
Watch now |Humanizing Hybrid Work
At agile42, we’ve worked in hybrid and remote setups for over 15 years, and we specialize in helping to build more effective and resilient teams. In this panel discussion, our Agile coaches, Regina Martins, Debbie Hishin, and Daniel Lynn offer a different perspective by focusing on the human element of hybrid work and by using the four Agile values as an anchor point for this discussion. Watch as they unpack the complexities of this conversation, delving into the pros and cons of various working arrangements, and share the innovative solutions they’ve come up with to make things go more smoothly.
According to coach and director of agile42 South Africa, Regina Martins, goal-setting has helped her and her teammates communicate effectively. In fact, goal setting can be used for organizational change. They are very explicit about their goals and co-created them to make sure that everyone is aligned and working towards the same things. Being face-to-face is not a prerequisite for being more effective. Virtual interactions and the value obtained from these interactions can be as effective as those that take place in person if you’re aligned on agreements and goals.
2. Be intentional about hybrid working
We discovered through this discussion that people have many different definitions of hybrid work. For some people, it means going to the office some days, and for others, it means that some people are together while others are at home. While there are varying instances and definitions of hybrid work, our coaches agreed that we should be intentional about it. Collaboration that requires lots of creativity and constructive conflict benefits from being in one room. So, things like design, strategy, and goal-setting could be good opportunities for people to meet in person. Another option is to hold your Scrum events (excluding the Daily Scrum) in person. Make sure that your in-person days are centered around building connections rather than going about your day-to-day tasks.
3. Human connection is key
What a lot of people seem to lack in hybrid setups is human interaction and connection. There are many ways to overcome this, such as team-building activities or using tools that encourage collaborations, such as a virtual whiteboard or Miro. Agile coach, Debbie Hishin, also shared that a camera-on policy is a good idea to make sure we are picking up on non-verbal communication. Some other ideas could be to use a team notice board or a kudos channel. As a leader, make some time to check in with colleagues and see how they are feeling.
Just because there is no office doesn’t mean there can’t be any office banter. Get creative with ways to connect. Debbie Hishin suggests trying a GIF Friday where you can only reply with GIFs!
Lastly, when you do meet in-person, make sure these sessions are geared towards human connection. So that we can build trust and make sure relationships are intact for when we work remotely.
4. Always come back to your why – understanding people’s needs
Many companies are asking employees to return to the office which has been met with mixed responses. If you are unsure about new policies or what will work in the long term, it always comes back to your “why”. Ultimately it should be about meeting the needs of our employees. Are these needs being met in the office or at home? Just like companies need to think about why clients would buy something, they should also think about why their employees would buy into working from home or at the office. What are the selling points for people, and then try to work around that.
Leaders in remote and dispersed environments need to understand these needs and make sure they are creating a safe environment for people to perform their best. This is where Agile leadership can make a meaningful impact.
US-based coach, Daniel Lynn, shares that empathy is very important in remote settings, and this means understanding people’s boundaries. Zoom fatigue is a very real thing, so make sure you are regularly taking breaks. Often, to make up for the lack of face-to-face connection, people get bombarded with meetings. In this case, it’s important that people feel empowered to say no and have boundaries.
It’s also the case that not everyone wants to participate in work events after hours, and that’s okay too. Just because we are working in hybrid settings doesn’t mean we should over-commit or feel that we have to prove anything.
There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about what it means to be an Agile coach. Agile coaching companies have difficulties explaining the value they will bring to their customers, and the role is often treated like a multi-team Scrum Master. In this webinar, our hosts, Martin von Weissenberg and Magnus Kollberg, take a hard and in-depth look at the Agile coaching profession. They clear up some of these misconceptions so that you can find a clear and understandable explanation of what an agile coach is, what an agile coach does (and doesn’t do), and the value they can bring to organizations. They also give guidance on how to become one, sharing the relevant credentials and competencies you may need, as well as challenges you may face and how to overcome them. Lastly, they answer our audience’s most pressing questions.
