Agile Is a Verb, Not a Label

Agile Is a Verb, Not a Label: Tonya McCaulley-Slater on Coaching Transformation Without the Jargon

The Meridian Point with Kumar Dattatreyan

Listen to this one

Tonya McCaulley-Slater runs agile transformations for a living. She just won't say the word "agile" out loud. Not at first. Not until the results earn it.

Sounds backwards. It works. She walks into an organization, runs the demos, tracks the impediments, prioritizes the portfolio, and never teaches a soul what a sprint is. People buy in. Then they ask what this thing is called. That's when she tells them.

Here's the part that stuck with me. She sits across from a leadership team that swears they tried agile and hated it. So she draws the whole framework on a blank piece of paper with every label stripped off. They look at it and say they love it. Same framework. Same everything. The only thing she took out was the word.

We get into why the jargon is the thing killing your transformation. We get into Fannie Mae, where new leadership decided agile was a bad word and cut the whole thing. And then we get into her other job, the one you won't see coming. She coaches pro golfers on mental performance. The tool she uses on the first tee is the same one she hands a burned-out leader between meetings. You'll want to steal it before the episode ends.

Why you'll want to hear it

• The word is the wall. People don't resist agile. They resist a word they can't picture. Tonya shows you what to say instead.
• The blank-paper test. Watch a rejected framework become a loved one with nothing changed but the label.
• The Fannie Mae autopsy. What happens to years of transformation work when leadership never bought the why.
• Why your training isn't sticking. People keep about ten percent of a two-day certification. She explains what actually teaches.
• Agile is a sport. The overlap between coaching an athlete and coaching a developer is tighter than you think.
• The Three R's. Recognize, release, reset. One tool for the first tee and the Monday standup both.
• The trigger for burned-out leaders. A single breathing pattern she gives every leader running on empty.

About Tonya McCaulley-Slater

Tonya is a Certified SAFe Program Consultant, a mental performance coach and the founder of MindDrive Performance. She spent fourteen years at Nationwide, then walked away to coach transformation full time at Cisco, Eli Lilly, JB Hunt and Fannie Mae. She is running an enterprise agile transformation at St. Thomas University now, all of it on the down low. She has a psychology undergrad and is finishing a master's in industrial-organizational psychology. She ran college track, played semi-pro soccer into her forties and now golfs. She is a certified mindfulness coach who works with university and pro athletes as well as leaders.

In her words

"The very first value of the Agile Manifesto is about people. And there's a reason for that. People make everything else work." — Tonya McCaulley-Slater

"I draw the framework out on a piece of paper with no labels and explain it. And they say, oh yeah, we love that. It's the same exact framework they said they didn't want." — Tonya McCaulley-Slater

"Anytime leadership changes, you have to get them to buy into the why so they understand the how. Otherwise they will dismantle the how, because they don't understand it." — Tonya McCaulley-Slater

"I can go into an organization and snap a process around them in six months. The question is, will the people do it? Will the culture support it?" — Tonya McCaulley-Slater

"The first ceremony I go to is the retrospective, because I can tell if they're a team just by attending their first one." — Tonya McCaulley-Slater

"You get ten seconds to wallow in your grief. Then we reset and make an intentional action toward the next step." — Tonya McCaulley-Slater

What comes up

• The Agile Manifesto, first value: individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Lean Portfolio Management (LPM)
• The Tuckman model of team development: forming, storming, norming, performing
• Training from the Back of the Room by Sharon Bowman
• Event plus Response equals Outcome (E + R = O)
• The Three R's: recognize, release, reset, with a physical trigger for the release
• Box breathing: inhale four, hold four, exhale four or six, longer exhale to relax deeper
• The Disruptor Method, Agile Meridian's approach to stripping the jargon and doing the work

Subscribe and follow

New here? Subscribe to The Meridian Point on YouTube and follow on LinkedIn. We go live every two weeks with the people reshaping how work gets done, then post the audio to Apple Podcasts and Spotify. If you build teams, lead change or coach people, this is your room.

• Host: Kumar Dattatreyan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coachkdat
• Agile Meridian: https://www.agilemeridian.com

Connect with Tonya McCaulley-Slater

Tonya coaches leaders and elite athletes on mental performance through MindDrive Performance. Reach out and keep the conversation going on agile, transformation and performance psychology.