Leaders, How to drive results from your work?

“Execution is everything.” –John Doerr

“You don’t get any medal for trying something, you get medals for results.” – Bill Parcells

We might have a perfect plan, great team members, but when we do not get the desire result, the leader has failed, and the team has failed.

So as a leader what are the skills we choose to polish which will assure that we drive for the result.

All the leaders who want to drive result they all have a common skill which they refined well. They consistently employ these skills to drive the result.

What are those skills which support leaders to drive result?

“Success is almost totally dependent upon drive and persistence. The extra energy required to make another effort or try another approach is the secret of winning.” – Denis Waitley

Effective leaders inspire team members to embrace the company’s mission and work hard to contribute to team success. 

Set stretch Goal: All leaders who drive for the result, formulate a stretch goal for all the team members and influence all the team members to accomplish the same. 

"One of the huge mistakes people make is that they try to force an interest on themselves. You don't choose your passions; your passions choose you." - Jeff Bezos 

Accountable: People should be accountable for their own work. If they are not serious, then work will not be done. A leader has to ensure team members understand accountability and impact on the end result. Leaders coach the team members if they meet any challenges with accountability.

Committed: Team members should be committed to their result, Leaders should look for the opportunity to help their team members to increase their commitment. Committed team members always keep their promise.

End in mind: Leaders begin each day, task, or estimate with an explicit vision of your desired objective and target, and then proceed by flexing your proactive muscles to make things happen. Leaders who drive for results always visualize the result, they search for all the opportunity to achieve the end goal whatever may be the challenges. 

Cadence and follow up: All the leaders who drive for the end result, they establish regular cadence with the stakeholders, seek for issues or bottlenecks and work to mitigate those.

Resilience: While executing there will be many challenges but leaders desire to demonstrate a bounce back mindset. Leaders should be able to rapidly come back to a natural situation. The leader who is high resilience is aware of situations, their own emotional reactions and the behavior of those around them. In order to manage feelings, it is fundamental to understand what is causing them and why. By remaining aware, resilient leaders can keep regulation of a situation and realize of fresh ways to tackle problems.

“He who would accomplish little must sacrifice little; he who would achieve much must sacrifice much; he who would attain highly must sacrifice greatly.” – James Allen

Curious and open mindset: All these leaders are Curious and ask compelling questions to discover what is progressing on at the ground level. They encourage the team members to accomplish the result by collaborating with them.

Communicate and stakeholder management: Leaders who drive the result, constantly communicate their expectations clearly and clarify if there is any ambiguity in the message. 

Motivate: These leaders realize the need of their people. These leaders connect and engage with their people so that these team members extend beyond their defined boundaries to accomplish the goal.

Taking care of the individuals: These leaders take care closely about their employees. Their well-being everything whatever it is require to achieve that. Leaders recognize the strength and weaknesses of all the team members and work based on that. 

Vulnerable: Leaders are vulnerable to all the team members in a process leaders establish a trusting relationship with other team members. Leaders accept they mistake and confirm that they do not know everything. With the team members they learn together.

“Be spectacularly great at what you do. Wear your passion on your sleeve and hold your heart in the palm of your hand. And work hard. Really hard.” – Robin Sharma

When we have all these setups and ensure every progress as expected the result will come.

Developing Strategic Leadership skills?

A 2015 PwC study of 6,000 senior executives, conducted employing a research methodology developed by David Rooke of Harthill Consulting and William Torbert of Boston University, reported just how ubiquitous this shortfall is: Only 8 percent of the respondents turned out to be strategic leaders or those effective at leading transformations.

Business leaders today are under immense pressure to deliver stronger results in an increasingly complex, globalized environment.

Strategic leadership deals with to a manager’s potential to convey a strategic vision for the organization, or a part of the organization, and to motivate and persuade others to bring in that vision.

What are the few characteristics we can demand from strategic leaders? if do not encounter, we can coach them to cultivate these skills. 

Strategic leaders require to choose risks to pick up the direction which nobody has usually traveled there. Any new innovative product and service expansion is full of risk and leader should be capable to practice the same.

Strategic leaders are competent to motivate the team members easily to advance to the direction of the unknown. It is evident in ambiguous circumstances employee motivation could be down, leaders require to know the art of motivating employees.

Communication: Capability to convey the organization’s strategic goals and inspiring employees to perform towards the goals. This is the finest approach to reach the individuals so that they can provide 120% of their commitment. Strategic leaders influence the heart and minds of individuals.

Commitment: To successfully carry out the company’s goals while also tracking the personal advancement of employees is an art that is vital to the job role of a strategic leader.

Business knowledge: Generate a thirst for learning the external and internal business environment and keeping perspective on what genuinely matters. leaders need to know the companies core business, key consumers and how the money generates, which industry company is dominating, etc. A good strategic leaders study all these considerations and come out with the plan periodically.

Passionate and committed: Strategic leaders walk the talk, they go first; they demonstrate that they choose to impact the world. As the need for advancement grows, they have to be committed to showing the progress. It inspires others also to be committed. These leaders are contagious in the organization to think big and drive for fresh changes.

Innovative: Strategic leaders have to be innovative, as most of the time, leaders are investigating something for the first time. They require to come out with a unique way of working out something. They extended the same energy to other team members.

Social skills: Strategic leaders must be friendly and social. They require to interact with diverse types of team members around the world to establish an appropriate picture of the future.

Collaborative: Strategic leaders need support from other team members to accomplish their mission. They partner with others to figure out a universal problem. As a leader, they establish a shared goal among many team members for dealing with the universal problem.

Empathetic: Strategic leaders have to be emphatic, In the digital world, if we do not know what a customer is experiencing challenges, it will be problematic to develop a solution for the problem. Leaders use empathy and try to understand the team’s problems by walking in their shoes and seeing things from the team’s perspective.

Vigilant: Strategic leadership skills, in comparison, are constantly vigilant, developing their capabilities too by monitoring the areas of development and adjustment. The leader needs to talk to the clients, providers, and other partners to comprehend their difficulties. Conduct researching the marketplace and business simulations to comprehend competitors’ viewpoints, calculate their possible responses to new initiatives or items, and consider potential promotions. Look at a fast-growing competition and consider actions it has taken that can challenge the organization. List the client's organization are missing lately and try to understand why. Attend conventions and actions in other industries or features.

Welcome new challenges: All the strategic leaders are having a growth mindset, else they will not be able to sustain as strategic leaders, they need to recognize the new challenges hurled by the emergent market. They continually upgrade themselves and ready for upcoming challenges. Knowledge and skills are continually upgrading by them. They recognize they are not perfect, always so they choose the help of others and willing to accept other proposals.

They dream big: Strategic leaders can paint the picture, construct the picture quickly in their mind and build tomorrow’s organization with that picture. So they constantly visualize what is upcoming and they connect the dots from today towards tomorrow.

Global mindsets: Strategic leaders are global leaders, they connect and exercise talent from anywhere in the world. They set up the product in one corner of the world, assemble in one corner and sell to another corner of the world. To create such an extensive plan and associate and encourage all the team members globally.

Fail fast culture: Strategic leaders ensure individuals experiments and fail fast so that we can educate new learning into our main system. As a strategic initiative, the team is performing something for the first time. So there will be surprises. Leaders allow this to happen in an ambiguous environment.

System thinker: Strategic leaders are systems thinkers, they do not just focus on the parts only, they think big picture, how these parts in a system are interactive with each other and what is altered due to the interaction and feedback.

Note down some of the characteristics from the best strategic leaders with whom you have worked. Let us learn from all of them.

Applying Neuroscience Principles for our practice?

Why we all require to figure out the Neuroscience Principles to develop into stronger change leaders and agents for transformation?

Once we know how the brain performs, chances are significant that we will obtain the maximum benefit from these formulated principles.

Across approximately seven million years, the human brain has tripled in size, with most of this growth occurring in the past two million years.

40,000 years ago was the turning point in human creativity, when modern Homo sapiens arrived in Europe.

Science demonstrates that genetically, the human brain has not changed much in 40 000 years, which means that our ‘cavemen’-brains are battling to accord with the tremendous and continually changing challenges and challenges of the 21st Century workplace.

Skulls from 40,000 years ago show no change in brain size and are extraordinarily unlikely to show a genetic change in the brain’s functioning. So we are the same human brain that our forefathers managed to operate.

The latest neuroscience discoveries encouraged to establish principles that can stimulate us to react to challenges more adequately, perform more energetically, and subsequently obtain stronger results.

The individual brain is extremely flexible from the moment we are born until we are fully into old age.

The brain is set up for change, it usually resists changes. The brain chooses to remain with what is comfortable and has a built-in fear of the unknown which we must surmount.

For humans, change is an option – a decision we make. Decisions, from the brain’s perspective, involve weighing risks and making a comparison of the expected rewards–what we will obtain–and the negatives–what we might lose. Only if the anticipated rewards are significant enough and the risks are modest enough are individuals motivated to change.

Minimize danger and maximize reward. The brain determines whether a condition is safe or threatening. The brain is put into a state of threat, our ability to think and function is compromised. Exerting too much control or micromanagement can force our brains into threat situations.

Our brain has two operational systems: conscious and subconscious. And, surprise, most of its operations function at the level of the subconscious.

The act of paying attention creates chemical and physical changes in the brain. Anything we pay attend brain absorb better.

Our expectations, whether conscious or submerged in our deeper brain centers, can perform such a substantial role in perception has significant ramifications. 

Large-scale behavior change calls for a large-scale change in mental maps. This, in turn, demands some kind of event or experience that obliges people to inspire themselves, in effect, to change their attitudes and expectations more swiftly and completely than they typically would.

Habits happen automatically, and that can be extremely beneficial. But they happen largely without our consciousness. So, anything alters our routine or habits it creates stress to the brain!

Our brains are built to process information sequentially rather than simultaneously. Also, switching tasks constantly leads to increased brain fatigue, resulting in weak quality of results and on average much longer time to accomplish a particular task.

The neuroscientifically grounded SCARF© model provides a basis to reduce threats and maximize the reward of business conditions. It encompasses five elements that have implications on individual motivation and which every leader should employ to establish a positive environment for their teams. The SCARF model stands for:

1. Status. Getting a good status and relative position towards others.

2. Certainty. Feeling certain about future events.

3. Autonomy. Feeling to be in control of the situation.

4. Relatedness. Belonging to a social group.

5. Fairness. The subjective feeling of equal/fair treatment,

Neuroscience shows that a certain level of stress is absolutely essential for any form of performance. Only if high levels of stress are prevailing over a longer period of time, they will contribute to negative effects. Everybody has a definite threshold of stress required to perform at a peak level. However, when exceeding this point, performance will dramatically decline, leading to fatigue and ultimately panic.

The brain works better when learning experiences are entertaining and in the social surrounding, So as an individual we should not explain what to be done, we require to show the team members and allow them to identify themselves on their own

A 2014 study in the Journal of Neuroscience reveals that musical education “improve nervous system function by focusing attention on meaningful acoustic cues, and these improvements cascade to language and cognitive skills.” Better communicator, Learn to play a musical instrument!!

According to studies at the York University and University of Toronto, “individuals who often read fiction appear to be better able to understand other people, empathize with them and view the world from their perspective.” Reading good literature certainly can make us a better individual.

Three principles of neuroscience have significant importance for Learning professionals:

• Attention
• Memory
• Exploration

Neuroscience demonstrates that individuals don’t pay attention to boring situations. Neuroscience demonstrates that individuals forget most of what they are taught. When we are energized and inspired, we will explore more about the unknown, the better discover the unknown on our-self, we will able to learn better.

Emotion helps motivate learners and embed things in long-term memory. 

Storytelling is a better way to bond with people. Social storytelling harnesses the natural social drive to ask questions like “How will this make me look?” and “What are other people doing?” 

Please read more about these and see how are you currently applying all these findings.

How great your adaptability skill is?

Charles Darwin’s remarks still very much proper, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, it is the one that is most adaptable to change.” The ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, proposed the idea of change as a constant aspect of life. His doctrine of change is summed up with this famous saying: “Life is Flux.”

He meant that everything is and always will be changing. The only constant in life is the changes.We have to be adaptive in this changing world. Adaptability is a skill that takes practice and commitment. Below skills, if we constantly polish, the chances are that we will be adaptive to any environment, will be high.

Capability to learn from others. We will not know everything. We should be prepared to understand the art of building relationships with others and learn from the knowledge of others. 

Optimistic attitude: Every circumstance will provide us an opportunity to learn and move on, Be it negative situations or accomplished mission. 

Curious: Once our curiosity muscle expands and thoroughly established, we will be able to figure out what next to be done. Curious individuals are always are in discovery mode to find out what next to be done. 

Change the ways of working: If something is not functioning, seek to alter the manner. Willingness should be there to alter the thinking and investigate something different instead. 

Going beyond the comfort zone: if you remain on the shore for a lengthy time, you will not apt to discover the world, so we have to pick up the risk and delve into the unfamiliar world, that should be the attitude.

Continuous learning: We are a learner and call for an attitude to learn constantly. There is no end of it, but circumstance demands that we require to be consistently on our toe of learning.

Emotional stability: Businesses will not as we expect, so in an unusual situation, emotional balance helps us to steer through the condition, instead of break down, regain new vitality and find out what are the alternative plans. Practice consciously to supervise your emotional state and discipline to administer it.

Set higher purpose and goal: When we have a higher purpose and ambition set for ourselves, those goals drive us, and we perform whatever it is compelled to complete those goals

Creativity: Creativity helps individuals to come out of distinctive ways of approaching situations. Sticking to the same thought most of the occasion will not bring in the expected outcome.

Comfortable with ambiguity: All of us are continuing in an uncertain world. Things will not carry out as we predicted. We have to mentally program ourselves that we are running into the ambiguous territory. So let us keep calm and figure out together with others what is the best measure to surmount these conditions.

Ask various queries: Questions help us to figure out what else can we act differently. Let build this obsession of seeking many questions possible to accommodate ourselves into the unfamiliar world.

Accept multiple perspectives: Let us assemble all the perspective we could access to. Let us not imposed our thoughts on other's perspectives and seek to find the world from other's points of view and understand the whole thing with different perspectives.

Develop a big picture: When we start assembling the parts and frame a big picture, our perspective changes. It is natural to work when we recognize the whole. Let us glance at the communication among these parts to fulfill the whole.

Experimental mindset: We can not know everything upfront. We have to experiment and understand from our experiments. In that manner, we will be able to figure out as an when we progress through the complex system. We require. not have to be worry ahead of time. We will be comfortable and explore as a whole team and gain from it.

Maintain can-do attitude: whatever happened, we can uncover a light in the tunnel, once we have this mindset, we can alter our reality with our response

Create our own network of people: Once we have a support system of team members who are enthusiastic to listen to us, support us, it will be a great help on numerous occasions. We all require reassurance at a specific point in life, so establish that system carefully ahead and encourage each other in that arrangement.

Coaching styles to learn for all the Agile coaches?

Different situations call for a distinctive style of coaching to be applied. We as a coach need to warm up with all the types of techniques to serve our client.

We examine with these styles, which are best accommodated for the typical circumstance. 

Let us train ourselves and prepare ourselves fit. I am certain most of us as a coach knowingly or unknowing using these approaches.

What is Insight Focused therapy(IFT) coaching style?

Insight Focused Therapy is a mindfulness-based, integrative therapeutic modality which collects from the latest salient discoveries in neuroscience research and mindfulness studies.

Insight therapy is the umbrella term applied to illustrate a group of various analysis techniques that have some related characteristics in theory and thought. 

Insight therapy assumes that an individual’s behavior, thoughts, and emotions become disordered because the individual does not figure out what motivates him/her, specifically when a conflict intensifies between the individual’s needs and his drives.

The theory of insight therapy, thus, is that a better understanding of motivation will result in a rise in regulation and an improvement in thought, emotion, and behavior.

The objective of this analysis is to support an individual to identify the reasons and motivations for his behavior, feelings, and thinking.

Insight therapy helps us to identify the reasons for our negative behaviors, thoughts, beliefs, and feelings. The idea is that once we identify that we are the ones containing all of these elements, we will be capable to act the crucial transformations.

This can be employed as a personal development apparatus.

What is a person-centered coaching style?

The psychologist Carl Rogers has promoted person-centered counseling in a manner that can be inspiring for the coach.

The goal of Person-centered therapy is to provide clients with an opportunity to establish an understanding of self where they can understand how their attitudes, feelings, and behavior are being negatively affected.

The starting point of the Rogerian approach to counseling and psychotherapy is best stated by Rogers (1986) himself:

‘It is that the individual has within himself or herself vast resources for self-understanding, for altering his or her self-concept, attitudes and self-directed behavior - and that these resources can be tapped if only a definable climate of facilitative psychological attitudes can be provided’.

The self-concept is a fundamental ingredient of our total experience and influences both our perception of the world and the perception of oneself. For example, a woman who perceives herself as strong may well behave with confidence and come to see her actions as actions performed by someone who is confident.

The client is responsible for improving his or her life, not the therapist/Coach.

The Rogerian client-centered approach puts emphasis on the person coming to form an appropriate understanding of their world and themselves.

Client-centered therapy operates according to three basic principles that reflect the attitude of the Coach to the Coachee:

• The Coach is congruent with the Coachee.
• The Coach provides the Coachee with unconditional positive regard: Rogers believed that for people to grow and fulfill their potential it is important that they are valued as themselves. 
• The Coach shows empathetic understanding to the Coachee: Follow precisely what the Coachee is feeling and to communicate to them that the Coach understands what they are feeling.

Person-centered therapy is built on trust.

What is a problem-focused coaching style?

In the problem-focused approach, the underpinning assumption is that the coachee requires knowledge of the problem in detail in order to increase the understanding needed for objective progression. In this method, the coaching conversation is more focused on the ‘‘asking why’’.

Discover more about the problem. Why the problem has happened,

In Problem-focused coaching session,

Participants expressed a real-life problem, performed the measures, responded to a series of coaching questions constructed to elicit problem-focused and self-reflective thinking, and then concluded the second set of measures exact to the initial lot.

1. How long has this been a problem? How did it commence?

2. What are your thoughts about this problem?

3. How are these problem thoughts affecting you?

4. What impact is thinking about this issue having on you?

5. What is the root of this problem?

6. What are the circumstances of this problem?

7. When this problem aggravated?

What is a Solution-focused coaching style?

Solution-focused approaches to coaching emphasize the usefulness of maintaining the coaching conversation concentrated on the ‘‘asking how to solve the problem”

The solution-focused approach postulates that coaches should devote most of the time asking questions that evoke thoughts from the coachee about how to best obtain their objectives, rather than asking ‘‘why’’ questions that explore causality. The underpinning theory here is that one does not require to identify the details of a problem in order to be able to build up solutions and advance towards goal attainment.

Think about an achievable solution to the problem you have just outlined. Now, imagine the solution had somehow ‘‘magically’’ come about. Describe the solution.

• Describe some ways you could start to flow towards building this solution.
• What are your thoughts about this solution?
• How do you react when you have these thoughts?
• What impact is thinking about this solution having on you?
• Focus on solutions, not the problems.
• People already have the capabilities they require to transform.
• Change takes place in modest steps.
• Work to discover the hidden aspects.

The coaching process and coaching activities concentrate on the fix, not the problem.

A positive mindset is demanded and reinforced to re-frame the problem into a solution.

Efforts during the coaching session are a collaboration between the coach and coachee.

A transition in view and behavior is recommended to create a solution.

The process is practical and touches on past successes or solution exclusions.

Vaccine for Coaches!! have you received?

As a coach few of these skills we require to substantially polish to work out our work adequately 

These skills have aided me to navigate many complex circumstances.

The particular challenges are it is not natural to polish all these skills in a few years.

It calls for a deliberate endeavor to exercise, to transform these skills for the betterment of our consignment.

Some of the observation which I have picked up for myself, I am sharing with all.

You might be natural to these skills and already polished these skills with your upbringing.

Whatever be the fact to develop into a stronger coach all these skills require to be refined

What do we work out?

Simply write down all these and constant visits how thoroughly you are polishing all these skills.

Self-confidence Skill:

Wherever I am today with respect to this skill, How can I enhance this? 

• Let us avoid comparing ourselves with Others. 
• Let us take care of our Health. 
• Let us engage in Self-Compassion 
• Let us deal with Self-Doubt. 
• Let us accomplish what we believe to be right. 
• Let us accept risks and continue the extra mile to gain better things. 
• Let us recognize our mistakes and learn from them. 
• Let us employ Positive affirmation. 
• Let us plan and measure our progress. 
• Let us Stand-up for our self 
• Let us Pursue Through the plan. 
• Let us Work More Of That Makes us Happy. 
• Let us surround ourselves with a supportive force. 
• Let us stay away from negativism and draw on the positivity. 
• Let us list our accomplishments and celebrate. 
• Let us Accomplish something creative frequently. 
• Let us confront our limiting beliefs. 
• Let us deal with our fear. 

Positivity Skill:

How do I promote this skill? 

• Let us concentrate on the great features, however insignificant. 
• Let us start the day with a positive affirmation. 
• Let us identify humor in rough conditions. 
• Let us shift failures into lessons. 
• Let us reconstruct negative self-talk into constructive self-talk. 
• Let us concentrate on the present. 
• Let us identify positive partners, mentors, and co-workers. 
• Let us handle rejection. 
• Let us Compliment at least one individual every day. 
• Let us Be passionate. 
• Let us Use Books, Audio and Videos to Overload our Brain with Positivity. 
• Let us Work out gratitude. 

Assertiveness Skill:

How do I promote this skill? 

• Let us value ourselves and our Rights. 
• Let us concentrate on ourself, instead of on our colleague. 
• Let us declare our demands and needs. 
• Let us confess that we can’t manage other people’s behavior. 
• Let us Be Open to Criticism and Compliments. 
• Let us learn to Say “No” 
• Let us understand and welcome the differences. 
• Let us stay calm. 
• Let us Value The Other Person. 
• Let us Have Courage. 
• Let Us Focus on the behavior rather than the individual. 
• Let us Pay attention to nonverbal communication. 
• Let us Be present. 

Examples: 

I thoroughly understand what you’re expressing but I have to disagree. 

This is not a priority for me. I will help out on the next occasion if I have time. 

Adaptability Skill: 

• Let us leave behind our comfort zone. 
• Let us stretch ourself in modest ways. 
• Let us put ourself into Different Environments. 
• Let us Build up a curiosity and ask better questions. 
• Let us take a step back and re-evaluate priorities. 
• Let us Be amenable to make mistakes. Gain from them. 
• Let us Examine and detail out all the changes in our ecosystem. 
• Let us consider mentoring someone else. Let us learn by teaching others. 
• Let us become self-aware. 
• Let us Accept more challenges. 

Goal-Oriented skill: 

• Let us accept Accountability. 
• Let us make decisions and choose actions. 
• Let us Ask the Right Questions. 
• Let us Focus for the stars, reach the moon. 
• Let us Schedule our Actions. 
• Let us Plan the day, months and years. 
• Let us Set specific and measurable responses to accomplish the goal. 
• Let us Anticipate possible challenges ahead. 
• Let us Update all associations involved. 
• Let us use effective communication techniques. 
• Let us analyze our Improvement. 
• Let us compose everything in a notebook. 
• Let us be 100% Committed. 

Collaboration Skill: 

• Let us be Open-minded. 
• Let us be Long-term thinker. 
• Let us Communicate clearly. 
• Let us acknowledge all perspectives. 
• Let us communicate Precise roles, responsibilities, and goals. 
• Let us give Recognition for all contributors. 
• Let us share our vision and intentions to draw everybody on the same page. 
• Let us Address negativity with empathy. 
• Let us establish a sense of curiosity and passion for perspective. 
• Let us Embrace an experimental attitude. 
• Let us raise Skill of compromise. 
• Let us be Reliable. 
• Let us form a Team player attitude. 
• Let us construct Diversity. 
• Let us be candid for dialogue. 
• Let us be Trustworthy. 

Influencing skill: 

• Let us Establish connections. 
• Let us listen before we seek to persuade. 
• Let us Build up expertise. 
• Let us give individuals what they demand. 
• Let us establish & keep a foundation of Trust. 
• Let us Be genuinely interested in other people. 
• Let us smile and show friendliness. 
• Let us remember people’s names. 
• Let us Be an exceptional listener and promote others to talk about themselves. 
• Let us talk in terms of the other person’s interests. 
• Let us make the other person feel important. 
• Let us “Mirror” The Person. 
• Let us do a lot of Research. 

Interpersonal Skill: 

• Let us Pursue a positive outlook. 
• Let us Control our emotions. 
• Let us Acknowledge others’ expertise. 
• Let us Discover one good trait in every co-worker 
• Let us Practice active listening. 
• Let us Practice empathy. 
• Let us Commence accepting responsibilities. 
• Let us stop Complaining. 
• Let us Turn into a bit better appreciative. 
• Let us Turn into being observant of our body language. 
• Let us respect others’ thoughts and opinions. 
• Let us Manage conflict. 

I am positive that as a coach, all of us are already benefiting from these skills largely else success would be greatly tough in our profession.

A Day of an Agile coach

I am an agile coach, How my day looks like? 

My primary task is to entail implementing the Agile process, principles, and practices across all levels and departments in an organization. 

As an Agile Coach, I must apply techniques that enhance collaboration, predictability, transparency and improve a culture of experimentation and innovation. 

In order to accomplish this, the Agile Coach must also incorporate the Agile principles and lead by example.

Wait, I have been an agile coach for the last 7 years, and there are a plenty of developments in my days during my years and type of engagement. Most of the days are more or less the same with variation, with engagement. 

The tasks are distributed and deliberately plan to accomplish the overall objective.

Always there is a time crunch!!

When I was a Team level Agile coach:

• When I was a team level coach, I had 3-4 teams to coach for Agile Transformation. My day used to spread with numerous activities like below.
• What I used to coach, I used to ensure, Agile mindset and agile ways of being embraced by the team members.
• What was the typical engagement cycle time? it was for 7-9 members scrum teams; it was 6-9 months engagement.

What did I use to do?

Since morning, I would be in discussion with all the 4-5 teams.

• I used to prepare a plan on which team to approach, on which day in a week and how long(1-2 hrs max).
• I used to coach on all aspects of Scrum, Lean, and Kanban practices.
• I used to engage in all their events ( In rotation to deal with all the team members)
• I used to take based on the need for numerous training for the team.
• I used to speak one to one with SM or PO or Leaders.
• I used to work with SM on Tools they were using to mentor them on tool usages and how to interpret the data for advancement.
• I used to facilitate initially many scrum events and ensure, I let them drive those after a particular month.
• I used to connect team members among these 4-5 teams where I was engaged for lesson learned sharing
• Most of my days I used to figure out about these teams( Coaching journal preparation for reflection), each individual, their behavior exchange, etc.
• I used to present team progress in numerous executive meetings and report about the hurdles and requests for aid.
• I used to connect with the business for the Business team members coaching. 
• I used to Assess the Scrum Maturity of the team and organization and coaching to higher levels of maturity.

More or less every day, this is the routine for several months for an Team coach. 

Challenges:

• Devoting time to all the teams.
• The numerous types of individuals and various levels of maturity to handle at the same time.
• Leaders expect the miracle to appear at the fastest timeline

When I was an enterprise coach my days looks a bit different. 

When I was a more on enterprise coach, I managed to have only 1-2 teams to coach.

How was the routine day looks like?

• Team coaching was like a usual mentioned above, around 20-30% of the time in a day based on the other engagement.
• The nature of the teams was unique, we used to pick up most of the teams where teams are dealing with high ambiguity and complication.
• 40-60% of the time, I used to look beyond team coaching in a day for diverse organizational agile transformation activities.

What are those?

• I used to engage for report preparation for Agile transformation for the business line/department, which I was answerable for. We used to prepare and present the Agile transformation progress report to senior executives. Define, publish and educate the organization on key metrics that show the progress of the transformation effort.
• I used to attend weekly stand-ups with business leaders for the business line where I was answerable for the business line agile transformation and communicate to the other team level coaches about the development and challenges.
• I used to work for Scaling agile if there are any needs. This calls for an abundance of time for conversation, collaboration for multiple teams. If such an obligation appears, most of the time of the days work there.
• I used to participate in several Training curriculum preparations. We used to prepare the game for the workshop. We used to strengthen the training agenda for 1 day or 2 days’ duration. With other coaches, we used to dry run that curriculum and execute those training.
• I used to engage for Community contribution example scrum master community and PO community. We used to design and examined with the community members what should be the theme and conversation topics.
• I used to arrange for a coaching clinic and coaching dojo for mid-managers. We used to reviewed and chalk out a plan for how the drive will be and what will be the outcome.
• I was a coaching community member, debate about the organizational impediments and what can be worked out to eliminate those. Each business line coaches used to serve each other by contributing to each other’s area.
• If there is a foreign visit, we used to prepare the agenda and present the topics and learn from each other. Every quarter there is a coach exchange from each alternative location to understand cultural exchange and learning.
• We used to spend some time for ourselves as a coach in the book club, coaching kata session.
• Organizational assets creation e.g checklist,template,models etc
• We used to prepare for Agile day in the organization; it takes several months of preparation to drive for the agile day.

We were invariably busy all the time!

More or less every day, these are the routine tasks for every year for an Enterprise Agile coach. Once I look at my Monday to Friday calendar, one of the other tasks from the above will reflect.

Challenges:

• Making time for all these organization initiatives.
• Managing ad-hoc request for help from strangers!
• Department level hurdles removal which appeals for structural modifications, silos ways of functioning, dealing with org resistance.
• Collaboration with numerous stakeholders and escalations.
• Our own motivation!

Learning from Grit Leaders!

Duckworth, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and a MacArthur “Genius” professor, devoted years studying what it takes to be successful. In her recent book, “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance,” she explains that talent alone isn’t enough; you also have to have grit — a mental toughness that helps you persevere even in the face of obstacles.

“grit”? It’s a conversational expression, but it’s also a concept that psychologists have found to be linked to the way that some people continue their effort over time, even when obstacles slow them down.

The qualities Duckworth studies are partly about staying on your path despite setbacks, and resisting distractions: adaptability is good, but if you change your interests so often that nothing gets finished, you’re not really advancing. As she observes, you may need to be flexible, but “you also have to be good at something.” That something needs to be a “long-term passion” to be rewarding; if you find it, your focus will keep you motivated.

She explains that finding with this formula:

TALENT x EFFORT = SKILL

SKILL x EFFORT = ACHIEVEMENT

You won’t succeed in life if you don’t remain on a path you’ve chosen, regardless of how difficult and challenging the road becomes. Most individuals identify it crucial to keep up the hard work and require quick rewards. Long-term goals require time, patience, sacrifices and effort and you need to have the endurance to stay on the path. 

We had a team storytelling session with the leadership team, the theme is to share their life as a movie. They are the hero of the narrative and they need to explain since from their childhood to date. Ups and downs of the journey.

The purpose is to connect with the leadership team members. Understand and establish a deeper relationship among themselves.

Grit is the stubborn refusal to quit. — Jonah Lehrer

In a process, we discovered few of the team members have extraordinarily grit characteristics and they are nurturing those characteristics and continue to promote themselves in the corporate leadership position.

What can we pick up from their adventure?

Some of the team members who have exhibited significant grit in their story. 

Many of the team members shared that they have come from a faraway village, studied extremely hard in a severe situation. They did not have an adequate support system, but still, they have obtained whatever they could gain with limitation, they came to the downtown, tried many approaches to get the finest job. and they continue to demonstrate the same thing as today. They have dreams and persistence for a better life.

If you want to be a leader in an organization, occasionally that means taking calculated risks. You want members on your team who have ideas, won’t back down from a challenge, seek out fresh growth opportunities and produce plans to make it a reality.

They have shared many stories where they have failed many attempts to get selected in the job or various assignments but they bounce back again with fresh vitality. They were not perfect at first attempts, they are not smart at the first attempt, they are not right at first attempt but they keep on trying.

They are the individuals who have tried a distinct avenue to surmount challenges, they have proposed ideas and take action to alter the circumstances. we need staff members who are problem solvers and who are continually seeking for ways that processes can be enhanced. But more than that, we want to find individuals who will act on those ideas. And continue until their success.

They are the team members who are stick to the tasks regardless of the challenges. Staying on task can be demanding and is one of the biggest challenges that some individuals encounter. We need employees who can concentrate on projects for long periods of time and remain engaged throughout the entire process until it’s completed.

Most of these team have experienced from many pains, fear, and grief when I asked a few of them, most of these team members have a tale to tell, how they have experienced tough gift from destiny. Their experiences are rich in events. But today they are standing proudly to share those memories which they are proud of. 

They are committed and optimistic. They realize something beneficial will happen and they will surmount the present condition. They invariably use positive words in their conversation. They look for a ray of hope in crises.

They continue to demonstrate all these characteristics and I am honored to be working with them and learning from them.

Leaders, are you pursuing people properly for the Transformation?

“About twenty percent of the people are against any change.” – Robert F. Kennedy

I encounter many leaders who are extremely efficient at pursuing others for the transformations.

They have the magic and will produce the magic that individuals will buy into it.

I requested a couple of my leader's colleagues to share with me what works with them.

How they pursue others for new change initiatives.

Change is a normal part of our lives, but it’s uncomfortable for the vast majority of people because it makes them feel like they’ve lost control. Do you remember a time when you felt like things were being done to you that you had no control over? That’s how they may feel now. In every way you can, let them know that you can relate to that. – Mary Jo Asmus

There are a few points we need to concentrate on to gain acceptance from the employees, with these approach leaders can certainly pursue the team members for new changes.

• Changes scare people. So Leaders need to assure the individuals that nothing will affect them significantly due to the changes. 
• Individuals tend to find security, so as a leader we have to assure security to the individuals. 
• Employees do not realize why a unique change is happening, as a leader when we ignore to explain the why part, individuals will not be with us. 
• Individuals do not like uncertainty, so as a leader we have to co-create the outlook with the employees where together we will reduce the uncertainty.
• People do not understand the new changes, so as a leader we have to develop the story which is obvious to understand, we have to paint the picture to the people’s minds. So storytelling plays a key role in communicating about the change. 
• People do not like an upside-down change, so the leaders require to safeguard that changes are incremental, then compliance will be significant. Nobody likes abrupt changes.
• Leaders need to allocate additional effort to connect with each and every member of the group about the recent changes. Each human being is unique. They understand differently. Once all the team members are persuaded, they can take care of the whole team by distributing their understanding with each other. 
• As change is taxing on emotion, people do not be in the appropriate mental setup, as a leader we have to acknowledge this mental turbulence and facilitate the team members to overcome. This is the time when the trial of trust will be immense.
• In the change management process, few individuals will lose control and power, the leaders need to acknowledge these factors and focus on each individual’s pride and other respect factors. Fear will be remarkably high at this moment. As fear hijacks our emotions and rational mind, leaders need to accompany the team members at this moment.
• Leaders need to devote time to build trust in the absence of the trust people will not part of our journey.
• New ways of functioning may contribute to problems and challenges which individuals are not comfortable with, as a leader, we desire to understand these factors and support the team members to deal with the challenges.
• Individuals are stressed up owing to too many recent changes, Individuals will resist when they are under stress. The leader needs to observe these stress and focus on relieving this stress. 
• When individuals are not competent with the new upcoming change to deal with, they will resist, as a leader, we need to understand the skill and competency of the existing team members and bridge those where there is a gap
• Acknowledgment, whenever employees are investigating something new, leaders need to acknowledge the improvement and rewards for the modest achievement, it will provide a positive boost to the team members to do more such small initiatives
• With new structural changes, the individual has to move out of their comfort zone, which is a significant challenge as it breaks the normal routine, leaders need to mentor them to surmount these changes. New colleagues, new managers, the new role of the game, etc Leaders can figure out the initial chaos and help the employees.
• Previous bitter change experience triggers the resistance to employees and they spread the negativity into the system, leaders have to be vigilant about such events. Need to serve by communicating regularly and communicating better.
• Leaders have to exhibit empathy with the employees during the transformation journey 
• Employees like when leaders involve them, involve the for consultation, involve them for co-creation, employees accept more about the new change when they are involved.
• Bad change management execution will spoil the whole change management initiatives

Acceptance will be high when Leaders addresses all the above mention situation. They are able to pursue their employees easily in such a situation.

Change cannot be put on people. The best way to instill change is to do it with them. Create it with them. – Lisa Bodell

Leaders, are you leading in autopilot mode?

Let us first glance into the muscle memory which leaders might have formed in their leadership role. 

Muscle memory is a construct of procedural memory that involves reinforcing a definite motor task into memory through repetition, which has been used equally with motor learning.

Muscle memory is strengthened through repetition over time. I might be a department head for the last 5 years so I know what to be done for my business.

Repetition creates new neural pathways in the brain, which actually becomes hard-wired to perform the performed activity. The brain no longer has to perform hard to make it happen, so the activity feels natural for you. We just do it automatically, without having to think about it.

We are in autopilot mode. Yahooo!!

A current study by Daniel Gilbert (who wrote a great book called Stumbling on Happiness) and Matthew Killingsworth, confirms something we’ve all wondered: most of us are ‘mentally checked out’ a good portion of the time. 

If we are practicing a song on the piano over and over again, the idea is that we will continue to advance. 

“Practice makes perfect” can be an authentic phrase because the more we do something, we build up that procedural memory and our brain can quickly instruct our muscles to carry it out. 

The side effect of the muscle memory is that it doesn’t judge whether we are doing good or bad, however, and so if we practice a song poorly for hours on end we are going to be absolutely efficient at making the same mistakes over and over again. All these instructions are written in our unconscious mind for later retrieval. 

This is not merely poor because we have wasted our time learning to be bad or mediocre at a task and may see all this work as a failure. Unknowingly we are making this a habit. When you repeat mistakes again and again, we build muscle memory with those mistakes which makes them even harder to overcome later.

That makes those mistakes even tougher to overcome later. This is one reason why the saying “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” is generally genuine.

One strong stake is that when we are immature ” when we yet have a most to learn” we have to create a conscious effort to think about what we’re doing. But afterward, after we’ve become more accomplished, considerable of what initially took effort becomes automatic. The great advice is that functioning on autopilot allows us to consume less brain energy on the routine forms of the work.

Ninety-six percent of people in the UK agree to make most decisions on autopilot, according to this research—it has become an epidemic. Our minds are wandering around most of the time.

Our subconscious utilizes muscle memory to automate many types of frequent operations such as: walking, driving, riding a bike, typing on a keyboard, speaking, sport or physical activity. One complication emerges when we start to do things on “autopilot” and we surrender some consciousness about what’s going on around us.

When leaders develop this muscle memory over a stretch of time, they get into the autopilot mode. 

Because Leaders might have seen such instances earlier in their careers, so they know what they have to perform.

But in today’s dynamic world leaders can not work mindlessly in autopilot mode, they have to perform with mindfulness and provide attention to every occurrence.

Leaders reacting to situations with common, predetermined, pre-approved behavior patterns will not perform most of the occasion.

We are residing in an extremely complex world where events are emergent. It is no more the Playing piano or playing golf thousands of times and building muscle memory and get into autopilot mode like daily driving! As a leader, we are handling with diverse complex matters e.g. people.

Much of our behavior is dominated by automatic processes! so while communicating to our subordinate we may get into auto pilot mode and may not be careful. 

What leaders can perform:

• Being Mindful.
• Being connected with the world with data and facts.
• Build a stronger relationship and collaborate.
• Unlearn and learn new ways of working.
• Innovate news ways of building solution and focus on Kaizen( It breaks the autopilot mode)
• Stop and reflect on your day.
• Going beyond the comfort zone.

Look at your autopilot moments and reflect if anything needs to alter.

Guide to build your life Purpose?

All of us are aware of the importance of Purpose driven life.

All the team members I have come across, I share my purpose and enable them to build their own.

If you read the well-known people they live for a purpose.

Let all the team members build their own purpose.

We as a leader build our own purpose.

Every organization, the department has its own purpose.

Now to build our Purpose or refine our purpose, we may use a few questions to be answered and the same can be used when you coach your team members

“Writing or reviewing a mission statement changes you because it forces you to think through your priorities deeply, carefully, and to align your behavior with your beliefs”

~Stephen Covey, ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People’

• What were you passionate about as a youngster?
• What did you find emotionally fulfilling when you were younger?
• If you didn’t have to work, and you weren’t allowed to stay in the house, how would you choose to spend that time?
• What drives you to forget about the nature around you?
• What themes do you admire to study about? 
• What kind of remarks do you have with your dearest associates?
• Are there any topics that you frequently bring up to communicate about? 
• What do you choose to accomplish before you die? 
• If you had a dream, could you create it to take place?
• What Are You willing to Battle for?
• How Are You Going to Save the World?
• What are part of your adventures you feel appreciative of and you choose to replay it repeatedly?
• What are the numerous ways you have been impacting other people’s existence?
• After one or two decades you choose to record your accomplishment, what you will be recording?
• What you will perform free of cost?
• What do you choose to know for?
• What are your dreams and they are shaping you now and will shape tomorrow?
• What activities when you do, and you put always 150%?
• What you choose to die for?
• What encourages you to travel out of your comfort zone?
• When you get resistance, for what reason you present your 100% to bounce back or push back hard?
• Who is your idol, and why do you cherish this individual?
• What are my core values and beliefs?
• If you recognized you were going to die one year from today, what would you do and how would you choose to be remembered?
• What makes you out of bed in the morning and what keeps you up at night? what energizes you?
• If you have all the capital that is required, how you will allocate your time?

At the end of this exercise you will find tremendous energy and you will get an intrinsic drive to do better and bigger. Give it a try and do it more often.

Variety can destroy Variety

Variety is commonly a descriptor of the volume of potential states within a system.

The variety grows exponentially with the magnitude of organizations and major systems, creating massive extents of complexity with regard to its interactions.

Variety is a measure of complexity.

Ashby’s Law:

W. Ross Ashby was a British cyberneticist and psychologist who, during the 1960s, proposed law with regard to levels of variety and regulation within biological systems. In his words:

When the variety or complexity of the environment exceeds the capacity of a system (natural or artificial) the environment will dominate and ultimately destroy that system.

In order to handle accordingly with the diversity of problems the world throws at you, you require to have a repertoire of responses that are (at least) as nuanced as the problems you face.

Requisite Variety: Requisite means basic or recommended. So requisite variety suggests that you require a specific amount of information for some purpose.

Law of requisite variety: If a system is to be stable, the number of states of its control mechanism must be greater than or equal to the number of states in the system being controlled.

For organizations and teams, Ashby’s law effectively means that they must invariably remain more flexible with their approaches to strategy and operation than the levels of structure and complexity within their systems and operating environment. Sometimes this variety is modest, but occasionally it can be enormous, and thus it is up to the organizations, teams, and the leaders within them to gauge the suitability of their present systems for the environment they operate in.

If the systems which regulate don’t have enough (or requisite) variety to contest the complexity of the regulated, then regulation will fail. The system will be out of control.

All these reasons help us to deal with a complex system.

As a leader, we require to figure out the prevailing complexity of the system and assure a variety of mechanism to handle with the complexity.

Organizations have two choices suitable in shaping for requisite variety - Amplification and Attenuation.

Source: Global Risk Insights

Amplification: Amplification is where the team sets up collaboration with diverse agents in its external environment to strengthen its expertise to respond to stimuli. To amplify variety, we need to empower subordinates, hire more experienced employee, Train existing employees, and Collaborate with external agents etc

Attenuation: Reduction of the variety of possible disturbances given to the essential variables.To attenuate variety, we can Standardize communication and Standardize processes etc.

I am sure most of us are engaged in some of the other ways of dealing with such complexity. As a Leader of a complex system, we must know this and apply this for our own development. Sometimes team members will ask why scaling agile has so many events in the system? this will explain to address complex system, we need to have many meaningful events and leaders should facilitate such events for better results.