When you look for inspiration in the Agile Coaching community, the name Gordon Ramsay is probably not the first name to come to mind. He has been known to be belligerent, condescending and downright rude, but underneath this brute facade is a treasure trove of skills and talents that influence change.

In this presentation we will draw insights from his ‘Kitchen Nightmare’ escapades and draw parallels with how much his work aligns with that of an Agile Coach and the goal to successfully drive change and introduce a number of models and techniques that are indispensable in the coaching toolkit.

Here are some tweets and feedback from the talk:

When you look for inspiration in the Agile Coaching community, the name Gordon Ramsay is probably not the first name to come to mind. He has been known to be belligerent, condescending and downright rude, but underneath this brute facade is a treasure trove of skills and talents that influence change.

In this presentation we will draw insights from his ‘Kitchen Nightmare’ escapades and draw parallels with how much his work aligns with that of an Agile Coach and the goal to successfully drive change and introduce a number of models and techniques that are indispensable in the coaching toolkit.

Some pictures:

Here are some tweets and feedback from the talk:

First time to Agile meetup, exceeded expectation, will be back – Steve S

Awesome presentation. Thanks very much Craig! – Emi

This was my first Agile meetup. A great presentation and a well run event. – David Wilkinson

Excellent presentation. Some great reminders! – BronwynSC

This was my first time and it was a great presentation – Arthur

Always a pleasure hearing you speak Craig. I’ll be sharing your slides with the Elabor8 team! – Ryan McKergow

Thanks for a great presentation – Rob Lawes

“Coaching can be a very lonely role, because you’re the one dealing with the dysfunctions,” said Craig Smith, an Agile coach from Brisbane, Australia. For this reason and many others, Craig set out to try to improve the overall coaching experience. Craig was collaborating with a colleague on this one night when he saw an episode of Gordon Ramsay’s “Kitchen Nightmares”. Craig was instantly struck by Gordon’s “coaching” style, and the gears went to work. In his Agile2016 session “Coaching Nightmares: Insights We Can Learn from Gordon Ramsay”, Craig shows snippets of Gordon Ramsay at work in the kitchen and asks participants, “What can we learn from this? As a coach, what would I do?”

One of the big things about Ramsay’s style is that he calls it like it is because he has no stake in the game. However, coaches may resist the urge to do that, maybe because they are tied to the company or are working for a consultancy that would rather they not. But, Craig says, “In order to get people to really change, we need to call it [like it is].”

SolutionsIQ’s Mike Alexander hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA.

When you look for inspiration in the Agile Coaching community, the name Gordon Ramsay is probably not the first name to come to mind. He has been known to be belligerent, condescending and downright rude, but underneath this brute facade is a treasure trove of skills and talents that influence change.

In this presentation we will draw insights from his ‘Kitchen Nightmare’ escapades and draw parallels with how much his work aligns with that of an Agile Coach and the goal to successfully drive change and introduce a number of models and techniques that are indispensable in the coaching toolkit.

Learning Outcomes:

Understand the difference between coaching, advising and mentoring

Approaches to having confronting coaching conversations

Dealing with denial and unengaged staff

The criticality of a burning platform to invoke change

Why it is important to have coaches as experts

Agile coaching is more than the GROW model (or other coaching models)

It was extremely disappointing that my partner in crime on this talk Renee Troughton could not make the trip to Atlanta to deliver this with me, I certainly hope I did her parts of the talk justice.

Here are a few of the tweets from the talk: