Me and my training: Dino Zafirakos and his ICAgile Expert in Enterprise Agile Coaching (ICE-EC) journey
In this interview series, I speak to experienced Agile practitioners about a specific training they took to find out what it was about, what they took out of it, and how they apply the material when working with the clients and organizations they serve.
Dino Zafirakos
Dino Zafirakos is an international coach and facilitator that accompanies CXOs and executive teams on journeys that are personal and collective. Dino brings a calm confidence and a gentle force to the table, being able to navigate even the most complex and difficult conversations. He is focused, practical, articulated and respectful.
In his vision, he accompanies individuals and teams so that they are future-ready: we need to be able to navigate the reality that we live in with the necessary understanding and the wisdom that will help us to ride through the journey.
Find out more about him here
The ICE-EC program is quite long. What was the experience like?
The ICAgile ICE-EC journey is a multi-month program. We had a full-day call every month, with some shorter calls dispersed in between. The shorter calls were organized by the students for homework and support. The whole thing took 6-7 months and was fully online. We had hoped to do a ‘residential’ (where everyone gets together in one location for a couple of days), but the program took place under the shadow of COVID and a lot of organizations did not support traveling at that time.??
You really go through the wringer and do a lot of hard work
You really go through the wringer and do a lot of hard work. You will doubt yourself and have all kinds of ups and downs. You get a lot of support from your fellow students and the facilitators, so you can jump back in and keep doing the work.?
There is a lot of value in these longer, cohort-based programs because the format is so different. It is not just ‘in and out’ in a few days. This is a real commitment, you will get out what you put in.
What did some of that ‘hard work’ look like?
One of the pieces in the ICE-EC is the work on the self. How do we show up as leaders, as coaches? We learned what our strengths are and our ‘tendencies’: what happens if those are left unchecked? How can we use the gifts of those pieces?
For me in particular: I become more aware of how I use the notion of ‘distance’ to stay non-attached to the system I am coaching. Keeping some distance from the team has been useful for me, so I do not get caught up in what is happening, so I can be a better coach. The flip side of that is that the distance (if taken to the extreme) can create a disconnect. Especially when it comes to working in a team as a team member. I have been successful in keeping that balance, but it is good to know I have that tendency.?
What did you learn?
The experience was quite valuable for me. I was already exposed to things like professional coaching, leadership development, large group facilitation, and different models on how to deal with change; the program helped me understand how to synthesize it all. I learned how to bring it all together and see what starting to engage with a human system would look like. How would I start working with a team or an organization? What would be the first things I would do with them? How do I start those conversations? Based on that, which avenues would I explore? Now I have an understanding of why I would take one option over another.?
It provided me with a map of how to work with an organization, asking suitable questions.
It provided me with a map of how to work with an organization, asking suitable questions. Some of those questions were actually about ‘non-Agile work’ since they had to do with change itself. For example: ‘
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It is very similar to setting the scene at the beginning of your professional coaching conversation, but now for a much longer arc.
It has given me more structure: What does the beginning of this work look like? What does the middle look like? What are some ways we could work towards the future? How can we run experiments (especially with people who do not like the word experiments)??
How did you learn that? Did you learn new models or tools to use?
It was not so much about learning new tools. The people who taught this course were also not very prescriptive as in: ‘You must use this tool or that model’. They would have some examples of course: ‘You can do this’ or ‘You could use that’, but you are free to use whatever tool or approach that you are comfortable with.?
It was more about ‘Why this tool?’ ‘What was my motivation for using this particular approach?’ ‘ What was my intention here?’ You learn to question your own assumptions or beliefs.’Okay, I am engaging this organization for the first time. Does it still make sense to use this tool, even though there was success with it in the past? Is there something specific about the context in this organization that might make this approach not as effective?’
So this course is more about becoming more aware of how to use the tools you already know and why, then it is about learning new ones?
Yes, that is right. At the end of the course, we also had to submit our documentation and the casework that we did. At that point, we were expected to be able to explain what prompted this approach. Why this particular tool? We had to justify that: this is why I did it and this is what I learned. This structure as a form of reflective practice was very useful.?
In this program, you really learn how to integrate those competencies with how you show up in this work
The ICE-EC journey is very competency focussed. You need to submit all that for graduation, so it serves as evidence of those competencies in action. I think that is also the key differentiator compared with some of these other longer cohort-based programs: it is less about knowledge and more about competence. I think that is where the argument is with some of those two or three-day courses: I find a lot of them very useful, but they are all knowledge-based, which is sometimes used as an argument against them. In this program, you really learn how to integrate those competencies with how you show up in this work.????
Is there anything you should do/learn before you take this training? Where do you need to be in your own journey?
You need to do the two foundational courses in the ICE-EC journey first, this is a huge piece. I also think you need the opportunity to put the concepts into practice, even before you begin the ICE-cohort. You should start having that exposure to the organizational level and engage with leadership and their challenges, so you learn how to craft a coaching journey with the broader organization.??
I can also strongly recommend practicing professional coaching skills and strengthening that muscle, so to speak. For some people in the Agile industry, this piece is less used or less familiar. As a result, they lean on this skill less and they quickly default to other skills such as teaching or facilitation.
To whom/when would you recommend this training?
I recommend this to people who want to move beyond methods and tools. This program is right for you If you are interested in how to think and operate in a slightly different way. You will more effectively integrate what you already know, in service of the clients you are working with. You will learn how to do your work in a different way and how to ‘be’ in a different way.
Dino took the Enterprise Agile Coach Expert Cohort ICE-EC Program through Adventures with Agile.
This is the second article from a series. Find all the articles here .