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The Agile Within
Providing agile insights into human values and behaviors through genuine connections.
The Agile Within
How Vertical Facilitation Transformed a Reluctant Agile Coach with Amy Lane
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Unlock the secrets of vertical facilitation with Agile Coach, Trainer, and Transformation Strategist, Amy Lane, who shares her transformative journey from a hesitant coach to a proponent of this innovative approach. Discover how vertical facilitation transcends traditional coaching, allowing teams to deeply understand dynamics and emotions. Amy introduces the "five windows of attention," a tool that guides groups toward authentic growth. Listen as Amy's personal experiences, such as improving daily stand-ups, illustrate the power of addressing team interactions and fostering organic development.
Presence and active listening take center stage as we explore the profound impact of being truly attentive in today's digitally distracted world. Amy discusses intentional aspects of vertical facilitation, like creating a safe social container and using "heat experiences" to push teams toward growth. Learn about strategies like "unzipping" to tackle conflict avoidance and foster honest communication. This episode is your gateway to enhancing facilitation skills and embracing feedback as a gift for personal and professional evolution.
Discover Vertical Facilitation:
https://www.verticalfacilitator.com/
Connect with Amy:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/agileamy/
Follow us on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-agile-within
Welcome to the Agile Within. I am your host, mark Metz. My mission for this podcast is to provide Agile insights into human values and behaviors through genuine connections. My guests and I will share real-life stories from our Agile journeys, triumphs, blunders and everything in between, as well as the lessons that we have learned. So get pumped, get rocking. The Agile Within starts now.
Speaker 1Before we dive into today's episode, I'd like to take a moment to thank our sponsor, impact Agility. Impact Agility specializes in training and coaching through scrumorg and proconbonorg, empowering teams with cutting-edge tools and techniques. Their classes are designed to deliver actionable insights, whether you're a scrum master, agile coach, delivery manager or organizational leader. Whether you're a scrum master, agile coach, delivery manager or organizational leader, at the helm is president and founder Matt Domenici, who has guided over 50 organizations toward professional agility. With his hands-on experience, matt helps teams and organizations take ownership of their processes and outcomes, unlocking their full potential To explore free learning resources, check out their training schedule or book a free consultation. Visit impactagilityco Once again. That's impactagilityco, well. Welcome back everybody. This is Mark Metz, your host for the Agile Within. I have an absolutely fantastic guest today and I've been extremely excited to have her, and her name is Amy Lane. Amy, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2Thanks, mark, I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 1Seattle, Washington. If I were coming to Seattle for a day, I've actually never been there. My wife and I have the Northwest on our bucket list. What's one thing that you would say that I couldn't miss doing if I were coming to Seattle?
Speaker 2Mark, there's so many great things, but one thing I think is new that you might not have heard about is Seattle recently took down a highway that was in front of the waterfront, and so now there's this beautiful walking park and you can hit up the aquarium, you can hit up Pike Market, you can do all these things sort of at once by taking that little walking trail, and it's gorgeous right there along the Puget Sound.
Speaker 1Oh, that sounds awesome, dog walking, biking, all that.
Speaker 2Absolutely, and it just really has brought the city to you know, a more accessible place where you can really enjoy the aspects of the city and the history, but also the beautiful waterfront scenery and the mountains in the background. It's really phenomenal.
Speaker 1Awesome. I'm assuming you can see Mount Rainier.
Speaker 2Yes, if you're lucky Some days you know Rainier's hiding. But if you're lucky, you'll see it.
Speaker 1Amy is a very experienced Agile coach and a trainer, and the title for today's episode is called how Vertical Facilitation Transformed a Reluctant Agile Coach. So vertical facilitation what's that all about, Amy?
Speaker 2Yeah, so vertical facilitation is really about creating conditions where people and teams can transform how they understand and make sense of their world. So we're really helping them grow sort of these inner capabilities and mindsets.
Speaker 1That sounds interesting. Amy, Can you give us an example to help understand that a little more and unpack that?
Speaker 2Sure, sure. So imagine if you are working with a team that's kind of struggling with a daily stand-up or a daily scrum. Maybe it's feeling more like status reporting, because we see that a lot on agile teams. So instead of just teaching the teams about best practices during daily scrum, you might use something that helps the team see what's going on. So perhaps I might say I'm observing that most people are looking and reporting to Sarah during the daily scrum. What do others notice about this? So instead of saying hey, listen everyone, this is not a status report, it is helping them understand and make sense of sort of this dynamic and the systemic elements.
Speaker 1That's really interesting, because nobody likes to be talked down to, nobody likes to feel like they're treated like a third grader, so to speak. Sounds like it bubbles up. Yeah, absolutely Really the concern of what you're trying to yep.
Speaker 2Yeah, for sure. So when you think about it, oftentimes you know people are trying to teach practices and this helps us become aware of how our interactions and how we're feeling really impacts whatever we're doing. So in any group situation, it really helps us pay attention to all of that any group situation.
Speaker 1It really helps us pay attention to all of that. So I want to ask you now. The title for the episode is how it Transformed a Reluctant Agile Coach. So tell me. I'm curious to know about this reluctant agile coach that you speak of, amy.
Speaker 2Well, Mark, you and I met in a coaching program.
Speaker 1We did.
Speaker 2Yeah, a while ago, and for me none of the coaching programs that I pursued really felt natural for me and I struggled with that, and so I think that's where the reluctance comes from.
Speaker 2Traditional coaching felt very prescriptive, like all of these frameworks and competencies and all of this stuff that I was trying to keep track of in my head competencies and all of this stuff that I was trying to keep track of in my head, whereas vertical facilitation resonated because it's about kind of shaping these conditions for growth rather than following a specific coaching model. To me it felt more organic, almost more responsive, like okay, what do I see that's happening here? And with vertical facilitation we use kind of we have like a secret dashboard and we call these the five windows of attention. And with vertical facilitation we use kind of we have like a secret dashboard and we call these the five windows of attention, and we're paying attention to these five windows of attention in vertical facilitation in order to help us kind of shift and guide the group in a way that creates that organic growth. I'll bet you want to know what those five windows of attention are.
Speaker 1Absolutely can't wait. I'm at the edge of my seat.
Speaker 2Yeah Well, so when we think about it, if we have a group of people, the five windows of attention are obviously you as a facilitator. What's going on with you? Are you waiting for a package to get delivered? Did you have a bad morning? So how you show up and your presence could impact the group. So that's one of our five windows. We also have the individuals. Are each individual feeling open or maybe are they stuck in what they're doing?
Speaker 2We also have the field and this is one of my favorites because, mark, I don't know if you and I have talked about I sort of have a background in theater as well as agile coaching. So I often think about sort of that field, the vibe, the tone, the mood, what's going on, and I'll often say know your audience in that way, but in this case, know the group that you're working with. How are they feeling? You know what's the vibe happening. So you want to pay attention to that. You want to pay attention to that.
Speaker 2You want to pay attention to group dynamics or the interrelation of the group. Do we have a leader in the room and then a bunch of people that feel like they can't speak freely? Maybe they don't have the safety, to say what they really think or to bring up issues. So that's our interrelation. And then we have content. Are we just so focused on the content, whether it's a slide, whether it's a concept, are we just 100% focused on the content, that we are losing sight of all these other elements that make up those five windows of attention? So let me recap for you All right, those five windows of attention are our individuals, the field, the interrelation, the content and then ourself.
Speaker 1What's interesting to me about that in observations I've had, is the different angles you get when you talk to an individual, versus you're talking to an individual within a group. Because, like you say, there are some dynamics of a group and while some person, if you talk to them one-on-one, they almost have one persona, but then when they join a group, those dynamics are totally different. And what's really fascinating is all right, we're going to introduce one more person into this team or this group. It's almost like there's a total different dynamic, or you remove somebody from that group.
Speaker 2Absolutely. And don't we coach our teams that say, hey, listen, we need to create a new working agreement when our team members change. Right, because it is, the dynamic has completely changed. You're impacting the system by adding or removing or adjusting. And so back to that question about reluctant coaching. You know, when I think about sort of the traditional coaching, even with teams, it was still kind of individualistic. You're working with people one-on-one and, like you just said, mark, somebody's opinion or what they say one-on-one, might shift when they're with the group, and it's not that they're not being honest or that they've changed their mind, it's just that all of these elements are working to change how they might react or be able to interact with the group.
Speaker 1I would even argue that you have one-on-one interactions and maybe you have, let's say, a triad where you have two people from the team interacting with you. They almost have their own dynamic and those two can actually change and morph when they join a larger group. Would you agree?
Speaker 2Absolutely.
Speaker 2And I would say, mark, that you and I might have even experienced that in a program that we were in, where we had we were working in a group and the dynamics, I think, were a little bit difficult, and you know, I think that we experienced this before.
Speaker 2I, you know, found out about vertical facilitation and it was just interesting now to put the lens on and look back and say, oh, wow, okay, so this is probably what was happening there. As a vertical facilitator, you really do have a different lens, so you might think you're developing these muscles almost of being able to note and sense all of these things at once, and that can be really exhausting at first, but once you start doing it, you almost can't stop. As I've gone through this vertical facilitation program, I've often said that it's almost like a shadow, and not in a negative way. It's like a sunny day and your shadow's following you everywhere you go. And with vertical facilitation, once you start in this practice, that shadow is just kind of there reminding you of all these other elements that you might consider when you're interacting.
Speaker 1So, as you're using this approach, help me understand here, amy. Are you writing these things down for these five different windows of attention, to be able to monitor those? I'll just go ahead and say it's hard enough for me to get one thing right, much less five Right.
Enhancing Presence in Vertical Facilitation
Speaker 2I would say that these are tools that you can weave in and out depending on your style, depending on the situation. So, whether you're with a group in person or if you're on a group, say, video meeting, you might have more or less ability. What happens when you're on a group like, let's say, a video meeting, and three-fourths of the people aren't on camera? So you really need to kind of build those muscles in this practice so that you can pick up on those clues. And one of the other important things in vertical facilitation is your own presence, right, how you show up. Developing your own presence can really be something powerful, and this is something that I always had an awareness of, but I didn't know how it was really impacting others. My presence, whether it was in person or through the miracle of technology, my presence, how it can really impact people. And through this work I've learned how to improve that presence, and not only that presence, but also the ability to be present.
Speaker 2So we always talk about active listening, and this is a lot of what we're doing in vertical facilitation as well. It's listening, looking, sensing, all of these things brought together. So it is a lot, but once you start to do it, you can't stop. It's kind looking, sensing all of these things brought together. So it is a lot, but once you start to do it, you can't stop. It's kind of like eating potato chips, mark. Oh wait, I have another idea, right.
Speaker 1One of the aspects that I particularly like is that, yes, at first thought I'm thinking, wow, this is overwhelming to try to keep all five of these aspects, but what it does is I've got to be paying attention, so I can't, I cannot be multitasking if I'm going to maintain these five different windows of attention and be able to understand the nuanced situations that happen, because these aren't going to be obvious. Sometimes, like you said, cameras are off. You have to pick up on other clues.
Speaker 2Absolutely, and that's really hard in this day and age, right, because there are so many things, so many screens and so many things that are drawing our attention. So the ability to really pay attention and to be present, deeply present in the moment is something that really will help you in this work. I think one of the ways that we can really get started doing this work is noticing how much we are paying attention and sort of observing. And no, you don't have to write down all the windows of attention and if you were following each one or not, but one good way is to sort of jot down when you've had an interaction, kind of where you were coming from, how you felt, what you thought was happening, and begin to sense these patterns in yourself and in your own responses so that it's easier for you to recognize them when you see them coming up with groups.
Speaker 1Okay, so we've talked about the five windows of attention. What are the other parts of vertical facilitation, Amy?
Speaker 2So vertical facilitation I think when we've been talking about it so far, it just sounds like oh okay, I'm just kind of going with the flow and I don't think it's that. There is a lot about flow and sensing environments and people's feelings and what's going on, but it's also very intentional. And so in vertical facilitation we have some meta design elements that we want to create for people. We're paying attention to something like the social container as a group. Does the group feel safe? Are they able to interact with each other in a way that really helps strengthen this ability to make meaning, make sense of their organization or what's happening? So one of the things that we might use is something called a heat experience. Now, I'm sure that you have felt the heat experience, mark. It's sometimes when you are just pushed a little bit towards the edge where you feel uncomfortable, but you still feel safe. So by cultivating these heat experiences, by paying attention and understanding what's going on in a group, you can say, hmm, maybe there's a chance right here for me to push a little bit and get a little more out of the group. Help them see what's happening in their system, help them grow a little bit as a group and it's fascinating to watch. And I recently had the opportunity to run a workshop in person with a group where I designed intentional heat experiences for them. You know you're a little nervous. How are they going to react to this? Are they going to refuse? And it was really wonderful.
Speaker 2And I think one of the things about being a vertical facilitator that was different for me than how I view traditional coaching is that, as a vertical facilitator, I am also going to be really deliberate and say you know what I'm going to unzip here and tell you what I'm thinking. I'm going to tell you what I'm seeing, and that's one of our tools as well. We unzip and we say oh, you know, mark and I are having this conversation and it's not going how we expected it. That's okay, let's see what we can do now, right, and it's not that we want to show up and be perfect for everyone. We want to show them that, hey, here's what's going on, here's the dynamic I'm seeing. And this can be beneficial, like we talked about with that example of the daily scrum. Or maybe there's an instance where you have a group that's avoiding conflict. There's an instance where you have a group that's avoiding conflict.
Speaker 1I'm sure we've seen that before right?
Speaker 2No, surely not. So we could use something, we could design an agreement in that social container I mentioned to say hey, let's agree that when we are avoiding conflict, that it's okay to call that out. You know how many times have we used Elmo as a way to say enough, let's move on. When someone's going on and on, I would argue that that is one of our tools that we might use. We're creating an agreement that the group says hey, if I tell you to quit talking, it's okay and don't have your feelings hurt. So, similarly, in vertical facilitation, we're helping name sort of those elephants in the room so that the team can develop and grow in their ability to work together.
Speaker 1There's some energy that just gets created when you just speak the elephant in the room. It's like nobody even wants to make mention of it, right, much less pop the bubble and really have a conversation about it. But once you can show that bravery, maybe on behalf of the other team and, who knows, amy I would think that after a while the team will learn. I don't have to wait for Amy to announce the elephant in the room. It's okay for me to do that. Have you seen that? Absolutely.
Speaker 2Yes, definitely, and it's kind of magical the way that this works.
Speaker 2And there's a phrase I'd like to sort of teach you, mark, if you don't mind, please. Okay, so this is a really powerful phrase that we use in vertical facilitation, and it's simple, it is what I make up. So here's an example I was working with a group of people and you know the outcome wasn't you know what I was hoping for or what I expected to see. And so instead of saying, well, I think this isn't working right, instead of putting it in my perspective that way, I rephrase it and I say what I make up is people still don't feel safe enough to continue with this work. So I'm almost giving them then permission to correct me.
Speaker 2Oh no, amy, we feel safe, but it's X, y or Z that's causing the problem. And this little phrase, what I make up, is so powerful, whether it's face-to-face conversations or in an email, it's this ability to say hey, here's how I'm viewing this, and I'm almost inviting you to tell me that I'm wrong and then to tell me why. And it is so organic and amazing and it works 99.9% of the time. That's my guarantee.
Speaker 1So it sounds to me almost like, if you're familiar with the term a straw man, you're putting something together that is somewhat intentionally wrong, but it's a start. So you're not starting at the ground level and then, once you see it, then you can start saying, no, I want to change this, or I want to change that.
Speaker 2I would say that you want to be authentic, right, you don't want to just, you know, make up wild things. But you might just say you know, what I make up here is that, mark, you're not talking because you don't feel comfortable in this space, or whatever the case might be, and you might say, no, I'm just tired and I don't feel like talking. You want to balance that. You don't want to make it be almost like I'm leading the audience here, I'm leading the group. You want to say you know, what I'm making up here is X and it almost invites. You know, we talk a lot about inflicting versus inviting, you know, in agile coaching, so it almost invites people to correct or to explain more what's happening or how they see the dynamic, and it's super organic and it's really amazing.
Speaker 1Do you call it, we move.
Speaker 2We move. What I make up is yeah. No, I actually have never used that, that's all right. You've coined a new phrase there, Mark, yeah.
Speaker 1So, amy, I want to go back to one of your earlier points, and you talked about presence, because not presence as in we're coming up on the holiday season, but presence as in being present. How do you cultivate that? How do you multiply that for people to be more present in this age, like you said, of cell phones and smartwatches and notifications coming up to avoid multitasking? Yeah, to be present.
Speaker 2Absolutely so. Presence really starts with a clear stand and understanding why you, the vertical facilitator, are fundamentally committed to this work. Right? So why is it important? Why am I doing this? You really want to explore that, and so in this work in vertical facilitation, which was led by Michael Hammond and Lisa Adkins, it was amazing. We really focused on what our stand was and understanding like, why are we doing this and what do we really? What's the difference we really want to make in the world? And when you have that stand and things start to maybe go off the rails or you're feeling triggered or something happens, being able to remind yourself of what that stand is brings you back to your presence and it enables you to really then guide the group more clearly.
Speaker 2I was recently again in a situation where I was facilitating an activity where we were supposed to have everyone in person sitting at a desk and it was, you know, creative. We were going to draw and sketch. Well, lo and behold, none of them came in person and it turned into people dialed in and they weren't necessarily on camera. So in the past I might have become triggered and stressed out because everything I had planned out was for people that were in person. Now I just have people virtually.
Speaker 1Oh wow. So you had all of this preparation done for an in-person, on-site meeting and then everybody decides to. I'm just going to dial in.
Speaker 2Yeah, and I was fascinated to sort of again look at my own self and I went back to my stance and my stand is that you know, creative I want people to always access their creativity in all things. So creativity is a big, important thread for me and so I was thinking how can we still be creative even though they're online and there in the moment, I was able to pivot, adjust and create that container for that particular group meeting that we were having. That still was creative. That we took cell phone photos of things that we sketched on the screen. I drew stickies that they would have drawn and I listened to what they were saying and said, hey, is that what you're saying? And it still turned into this really productive, amazing, great group outcome that I think that prior to me having done this work, I would have felt a little stuck by.
Speaker 1I can very easily see the temptation of we just need to cancel for today and we'll come back at this at a later time when I have a chance to clear my head so for you to be able to, on the fly, be able to change this format that you had prepared for and have this curveball thrown to you. I think that's absolutely amazing.
Speaker 2Yeah, I was thrilled. And looking back, I really have to credit this work in vertical facilitation for giving me the ideas and the models and the practices to do this work fluidly and fluently.
Speaker 1So, amy, you've really been sinking your teeth into vertical facilitation and it sounds like it's been very successful for you. I'm curious to know what type of exercises have you used for this?
Mastering Vertical Facilitation Skills
Speaker 2Yeah, thanks, mark. So I think one of the things is first, being able to track your awareness, right? Am I paying attention? Being able to track your awareness, right? Am I paying attention?
Speaker 2That is a muscle that you need to grow to really help your sensing capacity, because if you're not paying attention, you're not going to notice what's happening with the group.
Speaker 2Also, that practice of saying what I make up or articulating what you see is happening. For example, when we talked about the daily scrum and hey, I'm noticing that everyone is reporting like a status to Sarah. Why is that happening? Why do we think that's happening? You know, I'm just stating a fact, so doing that can really help. And then also finding ways to get feedback about your impact and I know feedback is an F word for a lot of people. Right, it's scary, you know, feedback is scary because you feel like you're being judged. But when you look at feedback and said as a gift right, which we've all heard that feedback is a gift it really helps you understand how you're coming across, how people are reacting to you, and can really help you improve this practice. I would say think about why you do what you do, so develop your stand, get feedback on how you're showing up and just pay attention and then say the thing out loud. Hey, what I'm noticing is this and with those four exercises, you can really start to hone your vertical facilitation skills.
Speaker 1Could I share with you one of my little superpowers related to presence.
Speaker 2Yes, please.
Speaker 1One of the things that people noticed about me is I was a great note taker and for me it was very helpful to stay engaged and understand the conversation if I forced myself to take notes, because I had to understand it enough to be able to write something that I would remember later. But what that had an effect on me is that you can't see me in this audio podcast right now. But my head was down, I was pinned to the paper and I was trying very hard. I was writing okay, no, scribble that out. No, I need to summarize and put this. And okay, move this section over here so that when I got done I could come back, and it was great for recall. And so then I later had a transformation where I worked where I did digital notes and I very rarely take handwritten notes anymore. It's all digital notes. But if you can imagine how off-putting that can be to have someone sitting there with their face in the keyboard monitor and just voraciously typing away, you really feel disconnected. And that was a way that I was doing a disservice to people. It was for a good cause. I felt like I was doing good when I was doing one-on-one, that I could hand these very high-fidelity notes over, but I wasn't very present.
Speaker 1So at this advent of artificial intelligence also, I've come across some tools that can automate that. So I don't have to feel like, oh, I've got to scribble all this down, I've got to write all this down. I have the freedom to just put 100% of my attention on you right now, Amy, and let the AI take care of taking the notes and it'll actually give me a transcript. It'll give me a summary of multiple different levels of a high-level summary and then a detail-level summary. I don't have to worry that I'm missing something that's important. Maybe that's a clue to somebody out there who's a note taker like me. Make sure that you are being present and you aren't sacrificing your note taking ability and being able to translate this information at the cost of not providing a safe space to someone.
Speaker 2I love that, mark, and I think that that is one of the great uses of AI is something like that where you are able to bring your humanity full front and present and have this tool that's doing this other thing for you and, yes, that's also valuable. But AI can never replace this human-to-human connection by being present.
Speaker 1All right, amy. So I'm like foamy at the mouth now really super interested in vertical facilitation. Where can I go, where can our listeners go, to find out more about this?
Speaker 2Well, I would recommend that you look at Evolve Agility. That's Michael Hammond's website. He is doing all of the work in this space right now and I know that he's running several cohorts of people that are learning vertical facilitation, so I would check out Michael Hammond and he would love to talk about it. He also has written a book, so I think that there's lots of opportunities to learn more.
Speaker 1We'll be sure and put those links in the show notes to make it easy for people to access that. And what about you, Amy? If people want to reach out to you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Speaker 2Well, you can certainly always find me on LinkedIn you can't miss me and I'm happy to chat with folks if they want to learn more about this and hear more about my experiences in vertical facilitation and all the other great agile stuff that I have going on.
Speaker 1So I will just give a personal plug. If you're not following Amy Lane, I would highly suggest doing that. You won't regret it. We'll put a link in the show notes, because I'm pretty sure you're not the only Amy Lane on LinkedIn, so we'll make sure and do that. Amy, thank you so much for coming on the show. Consider you a friend. Thank you so much for your time and being on here. This was very helpful and educational to me.
Speaker 2Thanks, Mark. It's always great to talk to you.
Speaker 1Awesome. All right, everybody. That's going to bring an end to another episode of the Agile Within. We'll see everybody next time. Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Agile Within. If you haven't already, please join our LinkedIn page to stay in touch. Just search for the Agile Within and please spread the word with your friends and colleagues Until next time. This has been your host, mark Metz.
