The video has captions.
In this video I talk about the joy of watching my teams have breakthroughs, and also starting (kind of) my additional Chapter Lead responsibilities.
Category: My own stories
Bouldering!
I have a friend who recently described me as her ‘partner in crime’. And I can’t disagree. She is mainly the ideas person, I am almost always happy to give things a try. In some cases, such as our upcoming trip to Queenstown, NZ, we exchange adventures. In the Queenstown example I have agreed to go river surfing with her, and she will come on a bungee swing with me.
Bouldering was Cilla’s idea. Her sons had taken her and she thought I would like it. We put some of her sons chalk into a freezer bag and went along. Waivers were signed, shoes were hired and we went upstairs to the ‘bouldering’ section.
For those (like me 3 weeks ago) who are not familiar with bouldering you climb indoor walls like the image above, they are around 5 metres high, with no harness but large soft cushions below. The walls are covered in different climbs arranged by colour and numbered (mostly) as per difficulty. Difficulty ranges from 1 – 10 and most walls lean inwards with some having overhangs to get around. The idea is that you stick to a colour for that particular climb, though for beginners it is fine to mix and match.
On my first attempt I was very timid. I climbed a lot but didn’t go very high. And discovered two things: bouldering is fabulous fun, and bouldering is an amazing workout that sneaks up on you while you are having fun and challenging yourself! I could not lift my arms without great effort for a few days afterwards!
I never considered myself scared of heights, but apparently when I am the thing keeping me clinging to a wall that changes. Being even a few metres up I can freeze if I think too hard about where I am. As my arms get stronger, my confidence is growing. I think my confidence is what is stopping me more than my skill, but they will grow together.
I have now been 4 times, another friend has joined us (and her daughter wants to come too). I even went on my own. I can now get to the very top of the wall on a level 1, my goal for tomorrow night is to do that on multiple climbs.
I have a second goal too: after watching my niece and nephew on the automatic ropes I want to try that! So Tuesday will see me putting on a harness and climbing much higher for the joy of ‘floating’ back down afterwards. I will let you know how that feels 🙂
Fiona’s coaching vlog #9
This vlog includes my thoughts on how I feel about coaching 4 months in, some tactics with my teams and a confession – am I an agile purist?
Curvy Style
Words by me (Fiona)
I have had mixed results with stylists. For many years I have envied those with a definitive style – be it retro or Goth or anything at all really! My style has tended to be comfortable clothes that ‘flatter’ me. Mainly jeans!
My first styling session was with a woman who was able to help me find flattering clothes. I purchased 5 tops with her in a 1 hour session in Myer. Sadly I was so excited by the fact that the tops looked good on me that I forgot to decide if I actually liked them! I returned 4 of the tops the next day.Â
Many years later I met a lovely stylist at a 2 day course about presence, influence and finding your voice. She said wonderful things about me and how to dress to better flatter my shape. I set up a session with her about 6 months later. We did a full wardrobe review and then a shopping session to fill specific gaps in my collection. I had a wonderful time and added a lot to my wardrobe. But diets were mentioned more than once. And the shops we went into I was wearing the biggest size they had. I had great clothes, but I didn’t feel wonderful. I also had a new set of ‘rules’ to follow when I dressed. No white shirts (too much white across my body to be flattering), for example.
Fast forward to 2019, and at the SheEO summit I met Blaise from Hear us Roar. HuR is an online clothing store featuring plus size designers. My heart sang, and then sank. I am terrible at online clothes shopping. Most plus size models are tall, and I am at the shorter end of average height. Things rarely looked the same on me! Then Blaise gave me a ray of hope… they were looking at doing a pop up styling shop in Melbourne!!
I think I only asked once (maybe twice?) if they were still planning the pop up store… and I was reassured it was still a possibility.
My excitement when I saw the dates on Instagram was enormous! I immediately asked to be signed up.
Finally the day arrived, I was filled with anticipation, mixed with dread… what if I didn’t like anything? What if it didn’t look good on me? What if the stylist and I had different taste?
And, just imagine, what if I loved what they showed me.
I set two budgets – sensible and stretch.
The hour of trying on clothes with Karina was joyous. Not only were there clothes I liked, and liked on me, there were so many that I was able to be picky! Not once were the words flattering or minimising used. I was not dressing to look smaller; I was dressing the look (and feel) fabulous.Â
The end of an hour saw me sorting my haul into 3 categories: definitely, maybe and sadly no. Karina priced the definitely pile while I wandered, ate cheese, drank wine and looked again at the maybe pile. Feeling like a million dollars. Which was definitely not my budget!
The good news came back – I was within my stretch budget (just!). The bad news was I had decided there were two items on the maybe pile I could not live without… I may have stretched my stretch budget a tiny bit… but what price can you put on feeling stylish, and not small in any way?
Coaching Vlog #7
Today’s video blog includes 3 new teams, a launch, 3 badges and a visit from my cat Missy!
My coaching Vlog #6
A friendship worth tattooing
A couple of years ago I had a bright idea – myself and 4 women who had been best friends for over 30 years should get matching friendship symbol tattoos to celebrate that fact.
Then I changed my mind.
Then I changed it back.
There is a back story…
In my 20s I was in Africa and got henna drawings on my hand and foot. I really, really loved them, but they were of course temporary. I mourned their fading.
I strongly considered getting a foot tattoo as a result, but the practical (sometimes slightly boring and conservative) side of me kept rearing its head.
You see, I had worked as a radiation therapist at a cancer hospital and that meant I interacted with many older people, some of whom had tattoos. There were not many tattoos on 80 year olds that still looked great.
And what if I regretted it? Unlike most things I was willing to try, a tattoo was permanent (laser tattoo removal was not a thing I was aware of).
Then there was the tattoo artist who told me that the foot was the most painful place to get tattooed.
So I didn’t do it.
As time went on, more and more friends and family got tattoos. Some I loved, some not so much. I felt a mix of envy and regret, but didn’t join their ranks.
Then I had a conversation with someone about tattoos that had special meaning. An example was a friend who had her scar from breast cancer tattooed into a beautiful image.
Which got me thinking…
What if my friends and I got a tattoo to celebrate our amazing friendship, still strong almost 30 years after we left high school? Wouldn’t that be a wonderful celebration?
So in a moment of madness I asked on Facebook messenger what they thought of the idea.
I immediately changed my mind, and deleted the message. Within seconds. But it turns out that only deletes it from your screen, not theirs!
4 really enthusiastic agreements came back to me. Oh oh.
I explained that I was unsure and they gave me time to think about it.
I researched, as is my tendency, and I found a gorgeous symbol, and my inside right ankle seemed to call out for some artwork.
Justifications came to mind – my skin was not pristine. It has scars, many moles and freckles, blemishes and wrinkles. A tattoo was not marring a perfect canvas. I was in my mid (maybe even late!) 40’s, old enough to do what I wanted without worrying about my sister realising I was not 100% a goody-two-shoes.
So I said yes. And we booked in to get it done a week later.
Each day of that week I woke up with a different feeling about the coming tattoo. Excitement one day. Horror the next. I actually had a nightmare about it (needles, blood, and regrets were all involved). Then I would be really excited again.
My friends laughed each morning wondering if I was going ahead that day or not!
Along came the Friday evening. A quick drink in the pub first (only one!). Then off to the tattooist, a lovely man who was very reassuring.
My friends made me go first – in case I backed out!
The tattoo artist and I spent time selecting the right place and size for the image. Higher than I had pictured, but perfectly positioned.
I sat in the chair, at this stage more excited than scared, though worried slightly about the pain.
And it began!
It turns out a tattoo hurts less than I thought it would! And my ankle really did need a friendship symbol on it. It just looks perfect to me.
My friends went next, 3 on top of their feet and one on her chest.
I don’t think they regret it either.
It has been a few years now, and I have no regrets. And, don’t tell my mum, but I have started thinking my left foot might need a bit of artwork…
Coaching Journey Vlog #5
Good morning, it’s Friday again. And you may have noticed that I’m in a different location today. I am about to start day two of my coaching training at Telstra. So yesterday was lots of learning and a bit of practice, today will be lots of practice. So we’ve learned about Johari windows, about the grow model, about various other coaching techniques such as open ended questions. That’s one of the things I struggle with the most, I think. So it’s been a really good day yesterday, I’m looking forward to today, as a follow up. The last week, I have started coaching the team, and I think I’ve added some value. I will see in the long term I guess, if I actually have, and
it’s been a very fun week.
I think in my I’ve, yeah, I’ve had to really process where I’m at, the nerves of taking on my team. The confidence, you know, am I actually adding value. It was good to get into it, I do feel like, you know, maybe in a small way, I’ve added some value this week. And hopefully over the coming weeks, I’ll be able to add more. We’ve done a team charter, which has been interesting, because not all the team was able to attend the meetings. So we’ve done the team charter in two sessions so far. The first one being the brainstorming session for the various sections of the team charter, the second one, and then we kept that open for a week. The second one was the voting for which of those ideas they wanted to put through to the actual team charter. And again, because of people not able to attend the meeting, we’ve left that open for a week. And the idea being that next Wednesday, we will actually finalize the team charter and get everyone to agree to it. So I’ve actually now moved the time of that meeting so that hopefully more people will be able to attend it. That it’s been interesting. I’ve not done a team charter in three sessions before, but it seems to be working and the people who didn’t attend, were quite happy to have the opportunity and also to do that offline. So that worked out well for us, I think.
Other than that, I am ready for the weekend. But I’m also looking forward to a day of lots of practice of coaching. Where I get to be a coach, a coachee and an observer in apparently three rounds of three, so nine, nine coaching sessions, where I’ll be playing one of those roles. So that should be a fun day. And I should learn a lot and get lots of practice.
I’m also considering doing a formal coaching certification. So I’m not sure what that looks like yet, but I’m going to talk to a couple of people in the team who have done that to find out what my options are. So coaching is really resonating with me. So that’s a good thing. Talk to you next week. Thanks
Coaching Vlog #4 – a bit exhausted!
A bit weary – but had an amazing week.
There are pauses, I think you will cope though 🙂
Transcript to follow
Good morning. It’s been a big week for me.
A lot has happened, lots of good things. It’s been a really awesome week. So as far as coaching goes, I ran my team charter on Wednesday. And that went really well. We actually did it in two parts. So we did the part where people have brainstormed, and on next week will actually go through and vote and come up with the actual final team charter. So that was a great exercise.
And, well, as of today, I’m officially coaching the team, with the support of the person handing over from me, which is really exciting as well, and a little bit scary, but not too scary, because I, I do know what I’m doing.
And on top of that, I have decided to do a mini retro about how the team is feeling about agile, not an agile maturity assessment as the team is only at the end of their second sprint, after all, but making sure that the team is feeling comfortable with all the different ceremonies and things like that. And that also helps me with my coaching backlog, because I’ll know what areas that the team feel least secure about. And I can focus on those as my priority. So I think that should work. Well. I haven’t told the team yet. If they watch this, they’ll find out my thing.
And other than that, I’ve got some things going on. Non coaching related. I’m not sure if I should be sharing these on my video blog? But I am going to be interviewing Moira Were from South Australia. She founded Chooks and is a member of the Order of Australia, she’s pretty amazing woman. I will be putting an invite out for that. Because what I will be doing it as a webinar, which is a first for me. So hopefully that goes really well.
I also spent time at a session yesterday that focused on Human Centered Design for employee … satisfaction, I guess, a lot about their tools. So it’s really great to see Human Centered Design implemented in a different context. So I enjoyed that and met some people that I am going to speak to again because one of the things about attending these sessions is you meet people who have the same passions that you do. And it’s easy to strike up a … connection, which you can then follow up afterwards. So I’m really glad I went to that as well.
I’m not sure what else I have to tell you this week. It has been a huge week. I’m actually a little bit brain… overwhelmed. Does that make sense? So I’m sure I’ve missed stuff but I will be talking to you again next week and so will pick up anything I missed then. Thanks.
Coaching Vlog #3 – assigned to a team!
This week I was assigned to a team.
Also features my cat (sorry!)
Transcript of the video below:
Good morning, and welcome to my third video blog about coaching. It’s been a couple of weeks. And yes, it has been two weeks, not the one that I promised. So apologies for that. The first thing that happened was that I got my second coaching badge, which I’m really pleased about. But more importantly, I ran a SWOT session to get it.
Apologies for the cat bombs.
The SWOT session (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) that I ran for my fellow coaches went really well. And the best part for me was that I got feedback afterwards that a couple of the coaches, at least, really got something out of it and really enjoyed the session. So that felt brilliant, to be honest, that I actually ran a session that people got real value from.
After that, the…
I might leave that in there, I might do that. Let’s see what happens the cat just knocked the camera.
Anyway, what happened a couple of days ago, I had the expectation that I would begin my coaching in a real team around the first of August, and that’s been accelerated. Now, when something happens like that, my initial reaction is nearly always ‘well no, I’m not ready, I had another four weeks, I had another six weeks’. But as I thought about it more, I got more excited. My initial reaction was definitely panic. But as of yesterday, I started shadowing a coach who’s leaving the team at the end of June. And I’ll be taking over, she’s moving to a new team. So she’s not leaving the company, just the team. So after my initial terror, I became more excited about the opportunity, because the best way to learn is to do and also, I think I am mostly ready to do it. There’s still a lot I’m going to learn in the next few weeks before I take over the team. But I I feel like I understand the basics. And I’ve got so much support around me, as I mentioned in previous blogs, that I think that with that support, I’ll be able to really help this team to move through their agile journey. They’re very new. They just started this week, their second sprint. So they’re very new, they have got some people in the team who are familiar with agile, which will help me as well as them. And I’ll be given a really good hand over. So, I will talk to you again probably next week when I’ve got my through my handover, if not at the end of my handover before I start my new journey as the actual coach with this team. So very exciting times.
Again, apologies for the cat bombing. Thank you