Agile People Leadership Certification

Agile People Leadership (ICP-LEA) [12 Online Sessions]

Today the most progressive companies have changed the formal management role to a more servant leadership role, realizing that people are most productive, creative and happy when they have personal control over their own lives and the ability to be leaders of their destiny, private or work-related. In these organizations, everybody is expected to be a leader, so there is paradoxical, a lot more leadership there.

This training leads to an ICAgile Certification in Leading in Agility (ICP-LEA) - read more under FAQ below

Although the changed view on leaders and of the formal manager role is far from mainstream today, many organizations are experimenting with alternative structures, replacing budgets with forecasts and dynamic resource allocation, to create the best possible value. The role of managers is changing rapidly and also, the role of HR is under tremendous change, from focusing mainly on policies and processes to understanding that the future for HR lies in creating conditions for people to perform and be happy. By removing impediments, we can instead maximize engagement and employee satisfaction that will fuel speed and adaptability in a common, strategicction.

The question is, where do managers and HR go from here? What will become of them, when everybody seems to be able to lead themselves? Will, they slowly become obsolete when information and knowledge are transparent for everybody and power is not anymore in the hands of a few "talents" who were promoted because they were seen as "HIPOs" in a world where people were judged in a yearly performance review? Or is there an alternative future role that would be the natural step when leaving the process-oriented and transactional leadership style in favor of ways of working more suitable for a complex reality?

Regardless if you are an agile coach, a line manager or an HR professional, you need to understand how people strategy and people operations need to change when working in a company embracing the agile value structure. 

During the Agile People Leadership training we cover 3 perspectives:

Individual perspective (YOU) Knowing yourself and why you do what you do.

• The Reiss Motivation Profile (RMP) shows your basic needs and motives, and contributes to a better understanding of yourself and your leadership, and why you do what you do…
• Helping others finding their perfect place in the organization taking their personality and situation into account

Team perspective  (WE IN OUR TEAM)

• How to increase the pace from immature to mature high-performing teams, using skills for communication and conflict resolution
• How to grow and develop teams to be independent and empowered to make their own decisions, for example about  their contribution to the organization's goals or their salaries

Organizational perspective (ALL OF US)

• How to balance an agile culture with an agile structure, providing enough support for emerging strategies where all people are involved in setting thection (via OKRs or other kinds of relative targets)
• How to work to change behaviors – accomplishing an agile mindset and culture through removing limiting structures (budgets linked to fixed performance targets and rewards)
• Create a Learning organization where it's ok to make mistakes and learn from them (requires a platform of Psychological Safety)

Workshop program

The program is made up of 12 topics that we will cover over 12 intensive online sessions (Zoom) on Monday and Friday mornings - beginning November 16 and ending on December 4 2020. Session 1: 08:00 - 09:30 / break / session 2: 10:30 - 12:00

Date   Topics

16-10  Agile People Fundamentals 1 + 2

20-10  Agile People Fundamentals 3 + 4

23-10 Agile People Fundamentals 5 + Agile People Leadership 6

27-10 Agile People Leadership 7 + 8

30-10  Agile People Leadership 9 + 10

04-12 Agile People Leadership 11 + 12

Workshop program Session 1-5: Agile People Fundamentals

Session 1:  Introduction to Agile People and important principles/tools: The foundation of Agile Peoples's mindset is about the principles, values, methods, and tools that we need to start using to release competence and innovation - and what we stop doing. Your own challenges are discussed. Certification assignment and presentations.

Session 2: Psychological safety as a foundation for a learning organization: The importance of an approach that is pervaded by security and confidence to increase profitability and innovation - to increase creativity through a culture where it is ok to fail and try again. We play "The Psychological Safety Game" to facilitate dialogue about difficult topics.

Session 3:  Emerging strategies, structures and goals: Emerging strategies instead of long-term planning, new ways of working with strategy, budgets, goals, performance processes and rewards. Using value stream mapping to optimize flows in a system instead of working with resource optimization and sub-optimization of departments. Mindset Slider exercise. WoWs to be used: Beyond Budgeting, OKRs, Impact Mapping, VSM, etc.

Session 4: Building conditions for agile culture: Creating conditions for a fantastic culture where people can perform at their optimal level with a sense of being supported and secure. The gap between structures and culture/values. Structure - Culture Misfit Role Play. The importance of country culture for an Agile transformation.

Session 5: The learning Organization as Strategy and the future role of HR and managers: Boundary Spanning and the Buddy System to increase cross-border collaboration and increase the opportunity to create a fantastic organization together. Tips and examples for the change journey and how HR and managers need to change their own role to support it.

Summarize and following up on our own challenges and the next step.

Workshop program Session 6-12: Agile People Leadership

Session 6: Why Agile Leadership: The impact of big trends and the VUCA world and the drawbacks of the waterfall method for development of new products. Problems with the way we still manage and lead and the better way. Theory X and Y view of leadership - examples.

Session 7: Types of leadership: A walkthrough of Leadership history and how it has developed until today.

Session 8: What is Agile Leadership? Examples of frameworks and cases. 9 leadership principles and the gardener metaphor. How performance can be supported with alternative ways of working. Leadership Maturity exercise.

Session 9: Knowing and leading yourself: Emotional intelligence, mental models and mindful leadership. The organization as a social construct and interpersonal mush vs. interpersonal clarity. How we are biased: 4 examples of biases that we all hold and the antidote. The 4 selves of a leader with a self-assessment.

Session 10: Conflict resolution: Basic conflict theory and finding the right balance between harmony and creative conflict in a team or organization.

Session 11: Effective Communication: How do we make sure that what we communicate get the intended result and that we are clear on how to communicate the right stuff in a way that would make sense for people, regardless of cognitive differences?

Session 12: Boundary Spanning - working cross-functionally and spanning boundaries of different kinds, inside and outside the organization and between topics, areas and diverse people. Buddy System exercise.

Conclusion and next steps: Retrospective (ALL) and KUDOs

This highly interactive course will give you the tools and roadmap on how to grow in your Agile People skills - from building your capacity and skill in self-leadership, how to lead others at all levels in the organization and ultimately how to support and enable others to lead at all levels.

You will also be welcomed into the Agile People network.. a global network of agile professionals collaborating to promote and help modern organizations towards increased Business Agility.

Target audience

Agile coaches, consultants, HR managers, HR Business Partners, HR professionals, line managers, operational & business managers and consulting managers in both the private and public sectors.

Course leader

Manfred van Veghel, has 30 years of training and consultancy experience from large Dutch and international companies for Agile, HR, Leadership and Organization. He is the founder of the Agile Caribbean Meetup Group and has a global network of Agile People.

As a consultant he has worked with Agile since 2001 at ABN AMRO (DSDM) with several frameworks, Agile Project Management, DevOps, Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, Agile HR, Lean Leadership & Kaizen, from the Healthcare sector to ICT and governmental organizations in Europe, US and on different Caribbean islands.

He was involved as Agile Coach for the Agile HR transition of ING HR from 2015 - 2017, one of the biggest Agile HR transitions of its kind. Currently he involved in Agile Transitions in the Caribbean.

Online Delivery

We are working with Zoom for presentations and team exercises, Trello for keeping track of the agenda items and exercises and Slack for communication between the sessions. There will be some work to be done after every session, so add about 5 hours more every week. Course literature and material will be sent to your location and distributed digitally. 

During the period, you take part in 1,5-hour sessions. Totally 12 sessions - six options, depending on where you are in the world. The date and time are the of every session. Please add what Option you choose when you sign up.

FAQDo I need any pre-competence?

You don't need any pre-competence of agile to attend the online course. We are tailoring the course for the participants and your level.

How does the process look for this training?

The training is a copy of the physical training but we will use online tools instead of face-to-face meetings. You will need a good internet connection and an undisturbed workplace where you can have a quiet background. We will work in break-out sessions in Zoom and use Slack för communication between the instructor-led sessions, which will happen every week between 15-17 Central European Time.

All material will be shared via a Trello board and a Google drive. We will let you know everything about practicalities during the first session.

Are thes scheduled on specific days at specific times?

Yes,s will be scheduled on specific days and times. See above what applies to this course.

After training completion, what is the process to become ICAgile Certified? 

The process of certification is that you need to finalize the certification assignment, which is to describe how you would turn around HR and leadership in a company that has gone bankrupt due to not being agile enough (real case, a Swedish fashion company). When the assignment is finalized (approved with feedback from us), we will make your certificate download available from ICAgile via a link.

Events cancellation policy

If you should have to cancel your registration, notification in writing should be sent to info@agilepeople.com. Please make sure you state the name of the conference/event in the subject line of your email.

- A refund of 85% will be given for cancellations received 60 days before the start of the event

- A refund of 50% will be given for cancellations received between 59 days before 31 days to the start of the event

- A refund of 25% will be given for cancellations received between 30 days before 14 days to the start of the event

- No refund will be issued for cancellations received within 14 days of the event.You are allowed to send a colleague.