Chapter 6 of Badass Agile Coaching: The Journey from Beginner to Mastery and Beyond is titled, Badass Agile Coaching Operating System. There are several important concepts to explore in this chapter all wrapped into the metaphor of a computer operating system. The book Great Big Agile (featured in Re-read Saturday in late 2020) also used this metaphor. It paints a useful picture of layers built on and communicating with other layers to achieve a larger purpose. I hate it, I am tired of it, and will probably use it next week to make a point. Pushing all that aside the concepts that struck me during my read were:
- The continued refinement of the distinction between professional coaching and agile coaching,
- The importance of mindset,
- Powerful questions, and
- Listening.
Listening is a core competency to succeed in any walk of life, not just coaching. Listening is the combination of hearing and interpreting. Failure in either part is a failure in listening. Many significant failures in software development are failures to use the right type of listening. The authors focus on active listening and why active listening is table stakes for being an effective coach. Building on the concept of active listening there are other types of listening ranging from comprehensive to therapeutic listening (see Beginning Agile: Types of Listening). Each type of listening is useful in different scenarios and often practiced intuitively, but all of them assume you are practicing active listening.
Powerful Questions (including Clean Language) is a technique that uses a set of questions to generate interest, establish underlying assumptions, and move the conversation closer to a root cause. Using either or both, Powerful Questions and Clean Language (more on Clean Language) helps a coach to put their biases aside and to help the people answering the questions to get past the metaphors they use to obscure meaning. Any type of questioning framework requires practice or you will seem like you are acting mechanically and people will disengage. Also, while questions are great tools, falling in love with just asking questions leads to Death By A Thousand Questions. Keep in mind that questions are a tool for you and the coachee to gather information so that you both can act.
As a coach, you need to establish a personal mindset (Chapter 2) and layer on a coaching mindset. Simply put you need to be self-aware and under control and then understand and acquire the ethics, principles, and competencies necessary to be an agile coach. If you are not in control and comfortable in your professional skin you can not be a good coach. Bob describes these two mindsets as the hardware level (personal mindset) and device driver level (coaching mindset).
I know I have commented on the distinction between professional and agile coaching multiple times and I have read Extraordinary Badass Agile Coaching, but the real world keeps dragging me back to the concept. Just observing and asking questions does not work in agile coaching. As coaches, we have to play a more active role. Every agile coach needs to understand that their remit is broader and that to be effective you will need to embrace a wide range of stances. I often use the term agile guide (Listen to Woody Zuil, Allan Kelly, and myself discuss being an Agile guide in SPaMCAST 612) as a way to highlight the dynamic requirements of the role.
Catch up on previous installments of Extraordinarily Badass Agile Coaching: The Journey from Beginner to Mastery and Beyond (Amazon Associate Link – buy a copy or two and give them to friends):
Previous Entries in Our Re-read:
Week 1: Logistics and Forewords – https://bit.ly/3zoAYlx
Week 2: Introduction to Badassery in Agile Coaching – https://bit.ly/3hcEPMs
Week 3: The Mindset of the Badass Agile Coach – http://bit.ly/3Eu0qJu
Week 4: Agile Coaching Frameworks – http://bit.ly/3Ok60S7
Week 5: Badass Agile Coaching Agreements – https://bit.ly/3iylnKM
