Facilitation and Coaching Accelerator
Content
We can easily fall into a trap of believing that the only way to provide value to a team is to problem solve for them. It gets right at the heart of how we traditionally feel we add value in a conversation. It can also be greatly influenced by the culture in the organization and how people are rewarded.
The Agile Team Facilitation course is the first step towards achieving the coveted expert level in ICAgile’s Agile Coaching track (ICP-ATF certification). Leading teams to higher levels of maturity requires the ability to plan and conduct effective team meetings to ensure the team is working collaboratively. In an Agile environment, the team depends on the facilitation skills of the Agile Team Facilitator to lead the team to higher levels of performance. A facilitator is someone who helps a group identify common objectives and then offers group processes to achieve defined outcomes while maintaining neutrality. A skilled facilitator consciously embodies self-awareness, self-management, and bias management, while conveying openness and enthusiasm.
Marsha coaches leaders and teams, who want to work in a more agile manner and lead change in their organization. Her coach training is from Coaches Training Institute and Center for Right Relationships. Another strategy is to partner with another facilitator, not on your team, to co-design and co-lead the session. It’s a great way to learn facilitation and have someone who can see places where you might have slipped out of neutrality. Because this person is often part of the team, in some way, they likely have an opinion about what the team is doing. One of the best ways to achieve this is for a facilitator to maintain neutrality by owning the process, of the meeting and let the participants own the content or topic.
But, their primary work is to create conditions such that group processes take place with ease. They ensure that the original objective of having the meeting is met. This is the first stage of facilitation, when the agile team facilitator, with the help of brainstorming exercises, encourages participants to brainstorm as many ideas as they can.
You should encourage the team to bring creativity and innovations in the workplace to reduce the layer of approval and control and it thereby highly motivates the team. When it comes to the Agile team facilitator responsibilities, the very first responsibility is to guide the Agile team throughout the process with good execution right from beginning to end. However, the guidance is to be given to the team carefully through every step. When it comes to the roles of the facilitator, he/she first meet the manager, sets the agenda, organizes rules, and then commences the discussion. However, they also participate in the discussion actively wherever required his/her viewpoints to complete the project successfully. They agree with the good opinions and disagree with wrong comments at the same time.
Lead teams towards greater efficiency and achieve tangible results
Below, we shall briefly understand what these roles and responsibilities are. What technique you use depends on your goals, so think like agile team facilitator and set goals, choose your practice, and prepare for your meeting! You’ll see how using agile facilitation techniques helps your team communicate and collaborate for an even better Agile experience.
Share experiences, tips, and other insightful knowledge with a community of Agile practitioners. The ICP-ATF is one of two knowledge-based certifications on the Agile Coaching Track. At The Agile Thinkers Academy we have extensive knowledge and experience of working with all the major challenges of today’s organizations. We love to hear more about you, your company or team and learn how to adapt our services to your specific needs. Two weeks before the start of the course you will receive your workbook.
If this is your first class with an ICAgile Member Organization, you’ll receive an email with a link to create your ICAgile.com profile within ten business days of completing your class. Sign in to your new account and complete your post-class survey. After you submit your survey, we’ll issue and send your certification to your email address as a shareable PDF. A copy of your certification will also be available for download at any time from your My Certifications page. Enterprise Agile Coaching Develop enterprise coaching capabilities that enable business agility.
Starting the Practice:
A facilitator should be skilled in asking questions that are open-ended and encourage discussion. These teaching methods have been strategically combined to foster an optimal learning environment. Our programs leverage a range of highly dynamic teaching methodologies, including cohort assignments, class lectures, exercises and case studies, all aimed at improving your skills as an agent of change.
This course is intended for experienced agile practitioners who would like to develop their skills and knowledge to effectively facilitate the values, principles, practices and techniques in an agile team. This Agile certification is perfect for Agile team leaders or aspiring leads agile team facilitation basic rules with a desire to learn and practice Agile facilitation and Agile team coaching. Relevant roles include, but are not limited to Project Managers, Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, Product Owners and Product Managers. The Agile Team Facilitator role is broader than conducting meetings.
The class on 29 May-3 June 2023 will be led by
The Certificate doesn’t mention if you followed an online or in-class course. Even online, our courses are highly immersive, which means that you will not see many PowerPoint presentations. You are put to work immediately and start learning by doing and experimenting with the tools explained and modeled by your peers and your ICAgile Accredited trainer. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Facilitation cannot be taught in a traditional classroom setting alone. It is a practice that is best learned through doing and learning.
The Agile Coaching Workshop and our instructors are accredited by the International Consortium for Agile . When you complete this training, you will receive the ICAgile Professional Agile Team Facilitation Certification (ICP-ATF). It’s a culture — a culture of communication and collaboration. Scheduling a custom training event for your team is fast and easy! Experience live expert-led training in person, from your home, office or anywhere with an internet connection. Each line of circles and arrows represents one person’s line of thought as it develops during the discussion.
This course is a fast-paced, deep dive into both the mindset and skills of facilitation in the context of agile practices. Participants will explore both the being and doing of facilitation. Therefore, you should identify the congestion earlier to avoid confrontations among the team members as it could lead to the failure of the project. As a facilitator, you must identify certain risks earlier and prepare to provide them with the right suggestions. Do not think or behave like a senior leader as they are the ones who explain to the team in what way they should work. Rather, it would be better to create an atmosphere where an open discussion can be encouraged to share diverse ideas among the team members.
My First Time as a Facilitator
That’s where our Agile Team Facilitation program comes in. This program will also help you learn about your role in building capability across the wider team. A facilitator should encourage all team members to actively engage and contribute in meetings, according to participants’ individual comfort levels. This includes creating a safe and comfortable atmosphere in which group members are willing to share their feelings and opinions.
In this way, facilitation skills help the vision of agile-done-well come true. A lot of people in agile teams may explain things in a very technical way. Due to this, they would neglect elaborating https://globalcloudteam.com/ on the ideas they have in mind so that everyone in the team can understand them. The facilitator is the one who should make sure that every insight is clear to all in the meeting.
For this reason, the need for teams that have all the required skills is growing and the difficulty of software is also growing. It depends on the complexity and the importance of the meeting, overall. There are times & places where you can do both, hold both roles.
Methods of facilitation are used to help people to get, keep, and apply their skills. The goal of the facilitator is to create an environment where everyone helps others to achieve common results. Agile team facilitation is the art of making discussions in the group. The task of the specialist in facilitation is to plan and organize a process of communication between colleagues. According to this approach, not only the facilitator is responsible for it.
- My fears were about wanting to be prepared, wanting the meeting to go well, wanting to provide value, wanting to show my expertise.
- This way, teams can come up with their own ideas instead of expecting to be told what to do.
- Scheduling a custom training event for your team is fast and easy!
- If the facilitator takes either one or the other side, then the environment is no longer safe for all to speak.
- Get hands-on practice and feedback in designing and facilitating sessions.
- Great skills of facilitation include a lot of methods of problem-solving.
- Narrow down the agenda of the meeting to only those items which are most important.
Anyone who strives to lead teams towards greater efficiency and achieve tangible results will benefit from the essential leadership skills of team facilitation. Facilitation is a cornerstone skill for successfully leading agile teams. As much of the work in agile teams occurs through face-to-face communication and involves collaboration in nearly all decisions, the ability to facilitate discussion is paramount to success.
Who benefits from this certification?
This is also the principle that most everyone will say to me at the end of a three-day course ‘I never realized how important or valuable it is to be a neutral facilitator – but I totally get it now’. You may not be entirely sure you can maintain neutrality in your group. But given the payoff of improved group trust, that shouldn’t stop you from trying it out. Asking questions and trusting the group to provide their answers. You’re also watching for hidden dynamics in the group and you’re more focused on inquiring, staying with curiosity and inviting participants to dig deeper for more and better of themselves.
WHY ATTEND THIS CLASS
Our virtual classes require you to have access to a computer with an up-to-date web browser, video camera, headset and microphone. Engaging, purposeful, fun and get desired results every time. Marsha Acker is the founder of TeamCatapult and the author of The Art & Science of Facilitation.
They were curated by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless, experts in the field. Building more autonomy, mastery, and purpose will make your workforce be more productive and effective. If we go deeper, we can trace the relationship between motivation and self-management theory — shared goals, accountability, and boundaries. How can you be a good facilitator if you don’t yet have these skills? People aren’t born with them; you can learn them with time and commitment. The ICP-ATF certificate issued after the program is exactly the same as the one you would receive after an in-class course.
Learn how to guide and facilitate growth in Agile Teams
Explore how to design an outcome-oriented facilitated session that is collaborative and meets desired outcomes. Understand the role of facilitators and how it differs from other methods of running meetings. Wherever he/she finds the gaps, they just fill the gaps by sharing ideas to create an environment open and safe.
He/She aims to assist the whole Agile team in increasing the productivity of the team. However, the facilitator should possess the technical proficiency to guide the team in the right way. As the Agile Facilitator also participates in the discussion, the session becomes very detailed. The Agile Facilitator participation is crucial to make the team understand the Agile dynamics essential for the project. A facilitator with a high-level of understanding of the subject matter makes the Agile facilitator much more effective and trustworthy for the participants. Therefore, it is necessary to have the right skills to be an effective facilitator of an Agile environment.
