This week, Chapter 1 of Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins (SPaMCAST Amazon affiliate line https://amzn.to/38G0ZD3 – buy a copy). The chapter tackles more than just the question embedded in the title exploring why a coach is needed, the path to becoming a coach and the mindsets, and skills a coach needs.
When I was a youth I played some sports more or less competently, I did not say competitively. All of the organized endeavors had coaches. I still argue chess was a sport and yes, we did have a coach. When we had good coaches I learned and got better; when the title coach was a stretch, I usually got bored, lost all motivation, and at some point wandered away. When I entered the workplace, coaches were replaced with bosses and an occasional mentor even though I was still working almost exclusively in teams. I missed having coaches although the management text I read inferred that the role of a manager includes coaching. The problem was (and still is), that bosses rarely came close to playing even a mediocre coaching role. That is not an indictment, but rather an assertion based on more than a few years of observing the world around me. One of the most significant innovations that agile has given to the business world is reintroducing organizations to the idea of a coach. In many organizations the term coach is cool, everyone wants to be one regardless of skill and capability. A few years ago I watched as a person I knew took an online course and exam over a single weekend and then announced they were a coach. In Chapter 1 the author asks, “Will I Be A Good Coach?” and then provides a framework to think about that question. When I first read this book, I did not spend much time considering the nuances of this chapter, I should have.
The author states that coaching matters because:
“Agile coaching matters because it helps in both of these areas—producing products that matter in the real, complex, and uncertain world, and adding meaning to people’s work lives.”
Reflecting back on the good coaches I have had both inside and outside my professional life, the coaches that both boxes were involved with the teams and organizations I wanted to be part of. While an argument might be made that the team enabled the coach, I would rather assume a symbiotic relationship. (Is there data on which comes first, a good coach or a good team topic?) As a coach and agile guide, understanding that both sides of the equation are important can not be just theoretical – one can’t excel without the other.
One of the critical topics in the chapter is the discussion that coaching is really an amalgam of many skills. While that is not earth-shattering, what struck me was the explicit realization that no one can be GOAT (the greatest of all time) in all coaching skills. A good coach has to be COMPETENT in all of the skills and good in a number of them. Falling back to the classic agile metaphor, a good coach has to be at least a T-shaped person. Understanding that coaching is a palette of skills puts the onus on the coach to continue learning. There can be no resting on their laurels. Continuous improvement is not just for teams and organizations.
A second great topic in the chapter revolves around the concept of “best fit”. Last year I heard a team announce that they would no longer “do” retrospectives. They had found what worked best for them with the strong inference they would never need to change again. This unfortunately was not the first or hundredth time I have heard variations of the statement. There is something magical in the idea that a team or teams can adopt the “perfect” way of working. Perhaps buy a set of “best practices” and adopt them. Even if everything works perfectly today, the context will change. Whether you believe the work world is changing more rapidly today or not isn’t material. Change is inevitable; context will shift. Every individual, team or team of teams must inspect and adapt. Coaches need to help those they are working with to eschew the idea of best fit and buy into continuous improvement.
One last highlight in this chapter that I somehow missed in my first read is the metaphor of gravity. MS Adkins reminds the reader that agile accommodates and guides the “gravity” generated by a flow of value through an organization (value streams) rather than fighting gravity. Coaches help teams to interpret and implement agile principles and practices in a way that works with gravity rather than trying to fight it.
This week’s Experiment: Near the end of the chapter the author identifies 10 mindsets and abilities for those that have native wiring for coaching. I will create a checklist and assess my interactions to see how well I think I am performing in each area. The goal is to identify gaps to guide my personal process improvement journey.
Remember to buy a copy of Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins and read along.
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