I did a live at the start of this month after just being absolutely inspired by the Scrum Gathering South Africa in Cape Town event. But that quick little live only gave a glimpse of what I want to reflect on so I’m taking a bit of time to really articulate why I had all the feels.
- A new milestone: I’ve been doing keynotes for several years now. Not frequently but typically a couple each year or two. But this was my first international keynote. The pressure was on. Would my material translate in other countries? Would I do a good job at relating to global challenges? Would I connect with an international audience? I’m grateful to report that this seems to be true. The feedback was outstanding in person and formally afterwards.
- Another leveling up milestone: I did my ending keynote challenge in heels! There is a video on my linkedin page. This was not something I planned. This was something I decided in the moment and went for it. Suddenly my red heels had even more significance as they flew high in the air. I didn’t hold it for long but it was a legit pause and I’ll take that.
- Content: Every session that I attended after my keynote was wonderful. I went to speakers I knew (Bevan Williams, Annelie Coetzee, Dana Pylayeva) that were all trying new material and making me think. I went to speakers I didn’t know (Yas Naidoo-Jooste and Elector Masarakufa) that just blew me away as they both expressed being new to speaking. I am taking photos of great content/data. I’m being inspired by speaking deliveries. I’m being motivated by hard work and challenging thoughts. It was so good that I told the organizers that it had been a long time since I went from one amazing session to the next all day long.
- Organizers: Talk about receiving a welcoming and supportive environment. Anything I needed, boom it happened quickly. These events are never easy. They are time consuming and often you hear the complaints and focus on them, while forgetting to celebrate the good. They demonstrated being able to do both. I loved the energy of this community and based on what I saw with Yas and Elector, they are winning in mentoring people! Thank you all and especially Khwezi Mputa!
- Community: Quality time was spent with people coming from the states…Nicole Smith, Jolene Jangles and Joe Ziadeh – (all of which had stellar sessions) at a wild game reserve. I still think I was way to close to that lion! Dinners with local people that I only get to see every couple of years: Pavel Dabrytski and Antoinette Coetzee. Meeting so many new wonderful people that won’t be getting rid of me any time soon!
- Husband: My husband never comes on these types of work trips. But he came on this one and we were able to explore Cape Town and all of it’s magnificent spots from table mountain, waterfront, to cape point. We packed in the days!
An aha for this week… I’ve struggled to understand the question “how do you sell the value of agile coaching?”. I don’t sell that. That question has never made sense to me. When I was a consultant, I didn’t sell consultant…I sold what I would help them with. Too many agilists speak of their value in terms of how they do something (facilitate, etc) not why or the goal of what they are doing (building teams, delivering value, etc). The value is not how but what…you help people/teams solve complex challenges. That’s valuable. How you do it varies and is not the checkmark, which changes the question.
How do you sell the value of helping people?
