We have opportunities to coach people all the time. Much of what we see as coaching is actually undercover training. Real coaching is richer—offering support while explaining options. In this interactive session, Johanna Rothman invites you to explore how to coach, regardless of your position in the organization. Teaching is just one option for coaching. You have many other options, depending on your coaching stance. You may select a counselor’s stance if you are managing up or a partner’s stance if you are a peer. You might even select a reflective observer’s stance or a technical advisor’s stance, depending on the situation. We will explore what to do when you see opportunities for coaching but you haven’t been asked to coach. Bring your coaching concerns, whether you are coaching onsite, or coaching at a distance, coaching one-on-one, or coaching teams. Let’s learn and build our coaching skills together.
Johanna Rothman
Known as the “Pragmatic Manager,”Johanna Rothman helps organizational leaders identify problems and risks in their product development and recognize potential “gotchas,” seize opportunities, and remove impediments. Johanna is the technical editor for agileconnection.com and is author of Manage Your Job Search, Hiring Geeks That Fit, Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects, the 2008 Jolt Productivity award-winning Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management, and Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management. She is currently writing a book about agile program management. In addition, Johanna writes columns for Stickyminds.com and projectmanagment.com, and blogs on jrothman.com, and createadaptablelife.com.
How often have you been in a situation where you could see the solution and yet did not have the authority to make a change? You tried persuasion; you tried selling your ideas; you might have even tried friendly manipulation to get your way. And nothing worked. Here’s a new plan. We can learn to develop and use personal power and influence to effect positive changes in our companies. Johanna Rothman describes how we can be specific about the result we want, look for what’s in it for everyone, and consider short- and long-term options to foster change while acting congruently and authentically. Although it’s not easy to do, with preparation and persistence you can transform yourself into a person with personal influence. When you’re influential, you build your power and, by extension, your informal authority in the organization. Join Johanna to examine what engenders personal power, how it might be affected by your company’s culture, and how you can become more influential in any organization.
We’ve all heard test management myths such as: “Utilize everyone, all the time”, “Don’t let people come to you without solutions to problems,” “Training time is useless,” and my all-time favorite “Work smarter.” Are you supposed to believe them? Much of what you may have heard about management is myth—based not on evidence, but on something from the Industrial Revolution, or something that someone else read in a book that does not fit your context. And it may be wrong—dead wrong. As with many myths, they do contain a tiny nugget of truth. If you would like to learn what to do instead, to avoid the gridlock of 100 percent utilization, to help people develop solutions when they are stuck, to effectively utilize training and which kinds, to work more effectively—the kinds of management that works for knowledge workers—join Johanna in exposing test management myths.