The High Performance Tree

Agile coaches activate the teams they coach to take up their deliberate and joyful pursuit of high performance. How? One way is to offer a framework, language and metaphor they can use to chart their own path to high performance. This video shows how Lyssa Adkins, coach of agile coaches, does this. The Coaching Agile Teams, by Lyssa, has a whole chapter about setting agile teams on their journey toward high performance.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• agile
• coaching agile teams
• scrum
• ScrumMaster
• high performance
• high performance tree

[lyssaadkins]

Any metaphor will work. Some people use the foundation of a building (what's cornerstone? what are the pillars/footings? what's the bedrock?). Others, like companies involved in the auto industry, use the metaphor of a car. What we're trying to do here is a few things: give the team a shared language about high performance and a metaphor they can use to be creative when they talk about it AND explicit permission that talking about this is not only OK, it's expected and normal.

[MikePearce]

Thanks for the video Lyssa, I've read the book and have used the tree, this video helps clarify some important things for me.

I've wondered, however, i there is another metaphor that can be used to express these roots, traits and fruits that isn't a tree? Teams comprised of English people, often have trouble with the tree, it's deemed as a bit 'hippy', so I've wracked my brains trying to come up with some idea to use the tree, but as something else, maybe a robot, or similar. Any ideas anyone?

[jeantabaka]

This is such an amazing video. So straightforward about the values and team fundamentals. Thank you Lyssa for this!

[bheufelder]

Thanks Lyssa for your work, for sharing this metaphor, for giving me new impulses.