Geoff and Paul discuss the “Wheel of Life,” a pizza-shaped self-assessment tool borrowed from life coaching that can be used with individuals or teams to visualise how different aspects of work or life are going. They explain setting context and psychological safety so it’s clearly for self-development, not performance management, then co-creating 6–10 segments, defining what 0 and 10 mean, and scoring subjectively. For teams, members score individually first to avoid bias, then compare results and focus on spreads rather than averages to surface differing perceptions. The coach prompts reflection on the shape, helps select one or two focus areas, and encourages small experiments to improve scores and revisit over time. They give an example team wheel (e.g., goals, collaboration, psychological safety, quality, stakeholder alignment) and a personal energy-level example, and mention downloadable templates and a request for listeners to share and rate the podcast.

Downloadable content here: www.inspectandadapt.com/podcasts/ep15-the-wheel-of-anything

01:17 Introducing Wheel of Life

02:28 How the Wheel Works

05:08 Safety and Confidentiality

06:13 Scoring and Reading the Shape

08:21 Team Use and Differences

11:29 Run Small Experiments

12:33 Team Health Example

17:23 From Two to Three Mindset

22:01 Templates and Wrap Up

22:17 Where to Find Us

22:51 Final Goodbye

Geoff and Paul discuss the long-running agile training exercise “The Ball Point Game,” often used in in-person Certified ScrumMaster courses to teach iterative improvement, inspect-and-adapt, and self-organisation. They explain the setup (typically 10–12 people and many tennis-ball-sized balls) and core rules: each ball must touch everyone, have airtime between people, not be passed to a closest neighbour, return to the starter, and dropped/removed balls incur a penalty while the team self-scores. The game is played over eight timed iterations with planning, running, scoring, and re-estimating, and teams usually improve after a chaotic first round. They highlight learning outcomes around experimentation, the dangers of targets and competition, facilitation/Scrum Master questioning, lean waste and flow, leadership dynamics, and contrasts with waterfall-style planning, and they plan to share a PDF of rules and invite listeners to submit scores or videos.

00:59 Podcast Intro Setup

01:25 Ball Point Origins

03:06 Game Rules Explained

06:18 Iterations Timing Format

10:09 Early Rounds Expectations

11:52 Experimentation Mindset

14:46 Targets Scores Psychology

18:00 Facilitation Prompts Tips

23:04 Variants Flow Competition

27:43 Wrap Up Resources Challenge

28:29 Final Goodbye

Geoff and Paul discuss “powerful questioning” in agile coaching and introduce a practice technique called Hot Seat Questions. They note the term “powerful questions” is often overused and shouldn’t be forced, but good questions can help shift thinking and open up new solutions. In the exercise, a group designates a “hot seat” where one person shares a coaching scenario for 30–60 seconds; each listener then asks one question that the hot-seat person does not answer, but instead gives feedback on the question’s impact (e.g., “That question was powerful because…” or “It could have been more powerful if…”). They emphasise psychological safety, letting go of the need to know, avoiding leading or rambling questions, and noticing nonverbal cues. They end with a brief example and mention downloadable guidance and a request for reviews.

Downloadable content: www.inspectandadapt.com/podcasts/ep13-hot-seat-questions

00:00 Welcome and Catch Up

01:06 What Makes Questions Powerful

03:57 Hot Seat Questions Overview

04:58 How to Run the Exercise

07:51 What Powerful Looks Like

09:22 Safety and Letting Go

11:13 Feedback Structure and Observations

12:35 Common Question Traps

15:05 Live Hot Seat Demo

19:19 Wrap Up and Resources