Agile2013 Lightning Talk: Olaf Lewitz on Headology
Channel: Olaf Lewitz
Date: 11/08/2013

recorded by Claire Moss @aclairefication—Thank you!
What Agile Coaches can learn from Discworld Witches
or: "Headology demystified"
slide deck: http://www.haikudeck.com/p/xVlT4vftG6/headology
Granny Weatherwax has an amazingly respectful way of influencing people, and Tiffany Aching conceptualises it beautifully on her journey becoming a witch. I learned more from Pratchett's novels than from any book/course/method on "coaching".
Some ideas I'll pick from:
- being good over being nice (honesty and trust)
- trading rather than selling your service (coaching ethics)
- on magic and when not to use it (intuition, tools, and safety)
- guarding the edges (integrating and balancing roles and containers)
- first sight, second and third thoughts (observation, meta-level thinking and double-loop learning)
This will be a very serious and very funny talk.
from Pratchett's Maskerade:
"Granny Weatherwax had never heard of psychiatry and would have had no truck with it even if she had. There are some arts too black even for a witch. She practiced headology---practiced, in fact, until she was very good at it. And though there may be some superficial similarities between a psychiatrist and a headologist, there is a huge practical difference. A psychiatrist, dealing with a man who fears he is being followed by a huge and terrible monster, will endeavor to convince him that monsters don't exist. Granny Weatherwax would simply give him a chair to stand on and a very heavy stick."