Chapter 2 of Extraordinarily Badass Agile Coaching: The Journey from Beginner to Mastery and Beyond begins the heavy lifting of describing what is required to be a badass agile coach (or just any kind of agile coach). When I began my career, I believed that skills and techniques were all that mattered. It took me a number of years and jobs to realize that mindset was just as important and to get to that realization I had to determine what mindset means. Mindset is important for any job but critical if you are coaching or mentoring others. Early in this chapter, Mr. Galen states:
“The only true measure of your mindset is your behavior.[1]”
There are several important behaviors highlighted in the chapter that struck me. Two I want to highlight as you re-read the chapter.
The first is that coaches (of all stripes) need to let go of their egos and their personal baggage so that they can serve those they are coaching. The concept of servant leadership is important, but I think that before you can even get to servant leadership a coach needs to learn that it is not all about them. Many coaches make the outcomes they are helping to accomplish their accomplishments, putting their egos ahead of their clients. They become fixers. Fixers of processes, fixers of people, and fixers of companies. I see all of my clients as capable (Bob’s words for capable are creative, responsible, and whole) which puts me as a coach in a place where I see my role of helping people to unlock their capabilities and then providing them the support to be responsible and accountable. Mindset is critical for making any of this happen, and when I get full of myself I end up in the wrong mindset. Care and feeding of your coaching mindset require continuous introspection and practice.
The second is the idea of presence and privilege. Presence is all of the attributes that affect how you are perceived. Bob’s list includes gravitas, personality, and others. A presence is something that you can cultivate and it is something that once you have honed the skills can be manipulated. Coaches, like all leaders, need to adjust their presence based on the context of the situation. Privilege is less learned and more inherent in a position. As a consultant working with internal coaches, I often have more privilege than internal coaches I work with (a bit of power that needs to be recognized and leveraged carefully). Even the times I worked as a senior coach internal coach I had more privilege than junior coaches – there were people that I could talk to that would listen because of my stature. Just to be clear, privilege is translatable to access and power to make things happen. To an extent, the concept is insidious because privilege often attaches to people for the wrong reasons (with or without their knowledge). As a coach, recognize the privilege you have been given and have earned and share it to help the people you work with.
Your mindset is as important as all of the tools and techniques you acquire to guide and facilitate. To be a badass agile coach you need to work on your mindset every day. Consider reading Greenleaf’s essays on Servant Leadership. Buy a copy of Anthony Mersino’s book on Emotional Intelligence. Create a learning plan to build your coaching acumen that doesn’t just focus on agile frameworks and techniques. I think all of the authors would agree that working on your mindset is at the heart of being a badass agile coach.
Buy a copy of Extraordinarily Badass Agile Coaching: The Journey from Beginner to Mastery and Beyond (Amazon Associate Link) and read along.
Previous Weeks:
Week 1: Logistics and Forewords – https://bit.ly/3zoAYlx
Week 2: Introduction to Badassery in Agile Coaching – https://bit.ly/3hcEPMs
[1] Galen, Robert; Fields, Jennifer; Galen-Personick, Rhiannon; Summers, Mark. Extraordinarily Badass Agile Coaching: The Journey from Beginner to Mastery and Beyond (p. 34). RGCG, LLC. Kindle Edition.
