I was in one of my Moose Herd (virtual Lean Coffee, coaching group/guild) meetings the other day and one of the folks asked a question about a team member they were coaching. I’ll try my best to capture it—
I have a team that I’m coaching who suffers from lots of WIP and they carry over between 30% and 40% of their stories per sprint. I’ve tried bringing up various ideas to help with this, but the team lead, a very strong character, always disagrees with any of my suggestions/ideas. They simply override me and consider it a non-problem. What coaching ideas do you have to change this?
The Herd group brought up quite a few suggestions, for example:
Better backlog grooming
Smaller stories
Discussion around WIP, Lean, and the importance of getting things done
Impact on forecasting and stakeholder trust
Talking to the persons manager
Perhaps trying Kanban, etc.
Everything we said the coach basically replied: Done that, tried that, didn’t work, give me something else…
I recall distinctly at the end of the scenario the posture from the coach seemed to be disappointed. He wanted an—
Answer
Solution
Silver Bullet
Fix
Change
And it stayed with me for quite a while. I felt like we hadn’t served him very well. But then it dawned on me…
What did, you might ask?
It dawned on me that this is NOT this coach’s problem. In fact, they shouldn’t even be trying to coach this individual (and team). Here’s the general question the coach was asking:
As an agile coach (or Scrum Master), what do you do when folks don’t want to be coached?
His answer was: continue until it changes, be relentless, push, prod, entice, trick, plead with, train, convince, etc.
My answer is: STOP!
Don’t take ownership of someone else’s actions. They own that. You own being there, being available, encouraging them. But in the end, you can’t MAKE someone agile. You can’t MAKE them be curious or want to improve. You can’t MAKE them want to change or be more open-minded.
A Coaching Story
I once was engaged to do some coaching at a large networking company. Part of the engagement was for me to be available for the misc. coaching of anyone in this VP’s 400-person organization.
We struck on the idea that I would come in for a set number of days, sit in a roomy conference room, and have “office hours”. The idea was that anyone (individual, team, group, whatever) could stop by and receive some coaching. We set up a calendar and everything.
Great idea, right?
On the first day of office hours, I arrived early for the anticipated rush. You see these folks were struggling quite a bit, so I knew there would be lots of interest. Well, wait for it…
Nobody came. I ended up doing some other work for the entire day. From my perspective, it was fine. I got some much-needed work done AND I completed a full-day of coaching based on my contract.
It wasn’t my issue that nobody came. It wasn’t an issue at all. The “system” simply didn’t respond and that was a fine outcome as far as I was concerned.
My sponsor, the VP stopped by at the end of the day and asked me how it went. I said –
Great! I got quite a bit of work done. He asked who had stopped by. I said nobody. And he was taken aback. I said it was ok with me. But he smiled and said that it wasn’t ok with him.
He immediately went back and crafted an email to his entire team. To his credit, he didn’t prescribe that they visit me. Instead, he spoke about the investment he was making in coaching, his desire for continuous improvement, and the tremendous opportunity for learning there was by engaging with me.
The next day, much to my chagrin, I was swamped. And every day thereafter…
That one simple change on the part of the organization’s leadership made a significant difference in the entire engagement.
What’s the point?
First, I would have been fine with the engagement if nobody had shown up at all. Disappointed a little? Yes. But fine with that outcome.
The primary point being, I don’t consider it my job as a coach to make people want to be coached. I can’t “make them” do anything that they don’t want to do.
I’m here to help those that want to be helped. Who is interested in what knowledge and experience I offer? Who are open-minded to new approaches and ideas? Who are in a word—coachable?
If they’re not, then that’s ok. In fact, it’s more than ok. It’s a normal part of organizational change and folks will be ready for it when they’re ready for it.
But it’s uncomfortable
You bet it is. It’s really hard to sit back and let your client “come to you”. Particularly if you’re being paid to coach. Or you’re an internal coach in an organization.
But regardless of your motivation, you can’t force people to do what you want them to do…
Wrapping Up
So, if I had it to over again, I’d respond this way to my coaching colleague—
I have a team that I’m coaching who suffers from lots of WIP and they carry over between 30% and 40% of their stories per sprint. I’ve tried bringing up various ideas to help with this, but the team lead, a very strong character, always disagrees with any of my suggestions/ideas. They simply override me and consider it a non-problem. What coaching ideas do you have to change this?
Read a book, articles, Bob Galen’s blogs ;-)
Write a blog post
Start a coaching circle within your company to refine/sharpen your (and others) coaching chops
Coach those who want to be coached (members of that team or other teams)
Take an agile class to sharpen your skills
Go to the beach, or the mountains, or to the lake
Pursue a useful certification
Watch some videos (Ted talks for example)
Journal about your adventures
Have a discussion with that person’s leader/manager about the situation and ask them to partner with you in coaching them
Or help the leadership team create a more compelling vision for agility
Or take a walk outside, go to a movie, or otherwise take care of yourself!
Though I wonder how he would have reacted to this approach?
Stay agile my friends,
Bob.
Epilogue
While not directly related to this blog, I think this series has enough alignment to be worth reading. See what you think…