Trainer: Matt Smith

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Location:The Market Theatre, 1428 Post Aly, Seattle, WA [directions]
Date:21 March 2006
Time:10am - 5pm
Cost:US $180.00 per person (pay by check/cash on arrival)
Enrollment:info@agilethinking.net

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The skill of team facilitation is complex, multi-faceted, and sometimes paradoxical. Facilitators need to create environments that are both safe and challenging, both structured and flexible. A good facilitator should be able to respect organization and embrace chaos, be part of the group, yet remain separate from the group, be able to plot a steady course and be willing to stray from it. Facilitators need to be present; they need to be dynamic; they need compassion and empathy - and they need to be agile.

This is a tall order, and it is often easy and comforting to slip into safe, formulaic ways of working. To do so is to miss many important opportunities for growth (including, or perhaps especially, the facilitator's own growth).

There are many skills that contribute to the facilitators toolkit. One that has been found to be especially useful by many is that of theatrical improvisation (improv). Improv has the potential to raise a facilitator's self-awareness, and to provide the skills necessary to continually 'think on one's feet'. But it goes deeper than that, and crosses over into the coaching arena. An Agile team coach skilled in the art of improv can develop many of the exercises for his or her own team, creating exciting growth opportunities, and providing new ways of looking at old problems.

Improv is very much a conscious, kinesthetic application of complexity theory to the creative process. The exercises illuminate the things individuals may do to halt the creative process and forward motion of the team. They offer new, simple methods of basic communication that help to overcome these behaviors, and keep the future limitless. The exercises heighten a person's sense of "permission" to be absolutely available to the project and the group. And they provide a template for moving a project relentlessly forward in increments small and thorough enough to bring the whole group along.

About the Trainer

Matt Smith has explored Agile principles and values with Kert Peterson and studied Scrum with Ken Schwaber. After the two day CSM course he wrote: "What I heard at the course is that resistance to change is often rooted in the perceived reality of 'how things really work around here', and an inability to surrender an over-identification with one's core competencies. Since this resistance is supported by our strongest demons, it is no given that direct confrontation will shake it. This is how improv training might help. It's a metaphor for work, so less direct. It moves the battle to a neutral site where demons can be distracted and common sense can more easily emerge. [...] Improvisers learn to replace self-centered communication strategies with "other-centered" systems."

You can learn more about Matt Smith and his work at matt-smith.net.

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