Coaching Agile Teams


Book Description

The Provocative and Practical Guide to Coaching Agile Teams As an agile coach, you can help project teams become outstanding at agile, creating products that make them proud and helping organizations reap the powerful benefits of teams that deliver both innovation and excellence. More and more frequently, ScrumMasters and project managers are being asked to coach agile teams. But it’s a challenging role. It requires new skills—as well as a subtle understanding of when to step in and when to step back. Migrating from “command and control” to agile coaching requires a whole new mind-set. In Coaching Agile Teams, Lyssa Adkins gives agile coaches the insights they need to adopt this new mind-set and to guide teams to extraordinary performance in a re-energized work environment. You’ll gain a deep view into the role of the agile coach, discover what works and what doesn’t, and learn how to adapt powerful skills from many allied disciplines, including the fields of professional coaching and mentoring. Coverage includes Understanding what it takes to be a great agile coach Mastering all of the agile coach’s roles: teacher, mentor, problem solver, conflict navigator, and performance coach Creating an environment where self-organized, high-performance teams can emerge Coaching teams past cooperation and into full collaboration Evolving your leadership style as your team grows and changes Staying actively engaged without dominating your team and stunting its growth Recognizing failure, recovery, and success modes in your coaching Getting the most out of your own personal agile coaching journey Whether you’re an agile coach, leader, trainer, mentor, facilitator, ScrumMaster, project manager, product owner, or team member, this book will help you become skilled at helping others become truly great. What could possibly be more rewarding?




HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict (HBR Guide Series)


Book Description

Learn to assess the situation, manage your emotions, and move on. While some of us enjoy a lively debate with colleagues and others prefer to suppress our feelings over disagreements, we all struggle with conflict at work. Every day we navigate an office full of competing interests, clashing personalities, limited time and resources, and fragile egos. Sure, we share the same overarching goals as our colleagues, but we don't always agree on how to achieve them. We work differently. We rub each other the wrong way. We jockey for position. How can you deal with conflict at work in a way that is both professional and productive--where it improves both your work and your relationships? You start by understanding whether you generally seek or avoid conflict, identifying the most frequent reasons for disagreement, and knowing what approaches work for what scenarios. Then, if you decide to address a particular conflict, you use that information to plan and conduct a productive conversation. The HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict will give you the advice you need to: Understand the most common sources of conflict Explore your options for addressing a disagreement Recognize whether you--and your counterpart--typically seek or avoid conflict Prepare for and engage in a difficult conversation Manage your and your counterpart's emotions Develop a resolution together Know when to walk away Arm yourself with the advice you need to succeed on the job, with the most trusted brand in business. Packed with how-to essentials from leading experts, the HBR Guides provide smart answers to your most pressing work challenges.




Making Conflict Work


Book Description

“An excellent workbook-like guide” to the nuts and bolts of professional conflict and the strategies you need to make conflict work for you (Booklist, starred review). Every workplace is a minefield of conflict, and all office tension is shaped by power. Making Conflict Work teaches you to identify the nature of a conflict, determine your power position relative to anyone opposing you, and use the best strategy for achieving your goals. These strategies are equally effective for executives, managers and their direct reports, consultants, and attorneys—anyone who has ever had a disagreement with someone in their organization. Packed with helpful self-assessment exercises and action plans, this book gives you the tools you need to achieve greater satisfaction and success. “A genuine winner.” —Robert B. Cialdini, author of Influence “This book is a necessity . . . Read it.” —Leymah Gbowee, 2011 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Liberian peace activist “Innovative and practical.” —Lawrence Susskind, Program on Negotiation cofounder “Navigating conflict effectively is an essential component of leadership. Making Conflict Work illustrates when to compromise and when to continue driving forward.” —Hon. David N. Dinkins, 106th mayor of the City of New York “An excellent workbook-like guide.” —Booklist, starred review




The Big Book of Conflict Resolution Games: Quick, Effective Activities to Improve Communication, Trust and Collaboration


Book Description

Make workplace conflict resolution a game that EVERYBODY wins! Recent studies show that typical managers devote more than a quarter of their time to resolving coworker disputes. The Big Book of Conflict-Resolution Games offers a wealth of activities and exercises for groups of any size that let you manage your business (instead of managing personalities). Part of the acclaimed, bestselling Big Books series, this guide offers step-by-step directions and customizable tools that empower you to heal rifts arising from ineffective communication, cultural/personality clashes, and other specific problem areas—before they affect your organization's bottom line. Let The Big Book of Conflict-Resolution Games help you to: Build trust Foster morale Improve processes Overcome diversity issues And more Dozens of physical and verbal activities help create a safe environment for teams to explore several common forms of conflict—and their resolution. Inexpensive, easy-to-implement, and proved effective at Fortune 500 corporations and mom-and-pop businesses alike, the exercises in The Big Book of Conflict-Resolution Games delivers everything you need to make your workplace more efficient, effective, and engaged.




Navigating Conflict


Book Description

Urban schools are often associated with violence, chaos, and youth aggression. But is this reputation really the whole picture? In Navigating Conflict, Calvin Morrill and Michael Musheno challenge the violence-centered conventional wisdom of urban youth studies, revealing instead the social ingenuity with which teens informally and peacefully navigate strife-ridden peer trouble. Taking as their focus a multi-ethnic, high-poverty school in the American southwest, the authors complicate our vision of urban youth, along the way revealing the resilience of students in the face of carceral disciplinary tactics. Grounded in sixteen years of ethnographic fieldwork, Navigating Conflict draws on archival and institutional evidence to locate urban schools in more than a century of local, state, and national change. Morrill and Musheno make the case for schools that work, where negative externalities are buffered and policies are adapted to ever-evolving student populations. They argue that these kinds of schools require meaningful, inclusive student organizations for sustaining social trust and collective peer dignity alongside responsive administrative leadership. Further, students must be given the freedom to associate and move among their peers, all while in the vicinity of watchful, but not intrusive adults. Morrill and Musheno make a compelling case for these foundational conditions, arguing that only through them can schools enable a rich climate for learning, achievement, and social advancement.




High Conflict


Book Description

"In the tradition of bestselling explainers like The Tipping Point, [this] book [is] based on cutting edge science that breaks down the idea of extreme conflict--the kind that paralyzes people and places--and then shows how to escape it"--




Conflicts in Conservation


Book Description

An insightful guide to understanding conflicts over the conservation of biodiversity and groundbreaking strategies to deal with them.




Negotiation and Conflict Management


Book Description

This book presents a series of essays by I. William Zartman outlining the evolution of the key concepts required for the study of negotiation and conflict management, such as formula, ripeness, pre-negotiation, mediation, power, process, intractability, escalation, and order. Responding to a lack of useful conceptualization for the analysis of international negotiation, Zartman has developed an analytical framework and specific concepts that can serve as a basis for both study and practice. Negotiation is analyzed as a process, and is linked to other major themes in political science such as decision, structure, justice and order. This analysis is then applied to negotiations to manage particular types of conflicts and cooperation, including ethnic conflicts, civil wars and regime-building. It also develops typologies and strategies of mediation, dealing with such aspects as leverage, bias, interest, and roles. Written by the leading exponent of negotiation and mediation, Negotiation and Conflict Management will be of great interest to all students of negotiation, mediation and conflict studies in general.




We Need to Talk


Book Description

How we deal with conflict will either grow a relationship or destroy it. Experienced therapist Dr. Linda Mintle expertly leads readers through successful conflict management, resulting in more secure and peaceful relationships. Practical and approachable, We Need to Talk offers real-world advice based on solid research for marriages, parenting, extended family, ex-spouses, blended families, and friendships. Readers will learn to reverse negative relationship patterns, let go of unresolved anger, negotiate expectations, set boundaries, and even stay in relationships with unsolvable conflicts. Self-inventories, questions, and descriptions of personality styles provide hands-on tools for self-recognition and better understanding. Throughout, Dr. Mintle directs readers to their ultimate source of relational transformation: a loving God.




Finding Your Way Through Conflict


Book Description

Learn how to engage in and resolve conflict productively to improve work relationships and create a more equitable community for children. Conflicts are inevitable, often hard to navigate, and can quickly multiply and become unmanageable. And resolving conflict requires self-reflection, understanding, and vulnerability. But knowing how to tackle difficult conversations will strengthen relationships, create a more equitable community, and improve the impact educators have on the young children they work with. The first of its kind, Finding Your Way Through Conflict specifically focuses on conflict in early childhood education settings and gives concrete steps and strategies to help manage and resolve it productively. Authors Chris Amirault, Ph.D., and Christine M. Snyder, M.A., have decades of experience in early childhood education programs and conflict resolution. Built on their expertise and their own experiences, the book’s conflict scenarios are engaging and authentic, empowering educators to get in and out of conflict in a variety of personal, organization, and cultural contexts. Some of these scenarios include: The Discombobulated Team: The children’s artwork you posted in the classroom yesterday is gone. Who took it down—and why? The Intent/Impact Disagreement: You were only trying to help! So why is that parent offended? The Unexpected Disaster: Your team planned every aspect of that difficult parent meeting for days. So why was it such a catastrophe? A free PLC/Book Study Guide is available at freespirit.com/plc.