Interviewing for any role can be challenging, but I think it’s particularly challenging to interview agile coaches.
Why?
Because there’s not a clear definition of what agile coaching is or what agile coaches do. Seriously? Yes! And without a clear definition how do you determine what questions to ask? And what a good agile coach, looks like?
Because everyone nowadays seems to be a “highly experienced, passionate, agile coach”. Because of the lack of standards and definitions, literally, anyone can declare themselves to be a coach. So, discerning credible skills and experience can be challenging. (Note: I just did a search for “Agile Coach” on LinkedIn and received ~300k matches)
And, because the few certifications surrounding agile coaches are still a work-in-progress based on #1, it’s challenging for you to depend on them to fill in the understanding and clarity gap.
So, if the challenge is so great, what’s the best way to find competently skilled coaches?
Questions?
I’m not going to give you a series of questions to ask in your coach interviews.
Great, I can hear you say. But, if not questions for questioning, then where are you going, Bob? Well, I’ll tell you…
Instead of traditional interviewing techniques, I recommend you select your agile coaches by inviting them to…well…coach. To audition them, if you will. I’ve found that this is the only way to discover great coaches. To see them in action, applying their craft, in situations that align with your needs.
But what does an audition look like?
Auditioning
Well, that’s fairly simple. You set up some coaching situations (scenarios, scenes, scripts) and simply invite the coach to coach.
You’ll want to make your scenarios as representative of your organizational culture, team dynamics, and challenges as possible. Remember, you’re not just evaluating the coaching candidate, but you’re sharing a window into your culture so that they can make a good decision as well.
Here are a few considerations for your interview scenarios:
Duration – make each coaching session minimally 30-minutes, but shoot for ~1-hour. You want to allow sufficient time for the coach to “go deep”, so don’t rush it.
Exercise their stances – Stances include coaching vs. mentoring vs. teaching vs. advising. The scenes should allow for or encourage the coach to switch in and out of several stances to demonstrate their nimbleness.
Co-coaching – Often coaches will be part of a team and occasionally pair-coach with others. So, it’s important to check the coach’s competency and comfort with pairing.
Teaming – This doesn’t apply if you’re hiring a lone wolf coach. But if you’re not, you’ll want to check to see if the coach fits the coaching team’s style, experience, and approaches. And remember to hire with diversity strongly top of mind.
Directional nimbleness – Check to see how comfortable the coach is coaching “down” – towards the team, coaching “laterally” towards peers, and importantly, coaching “up” – towards stakeholders and leadership.
Individual vs. Groups – Check to see how the coach handles individual, one-on-one coaching as well as group-based coaching.
Handling adversity – Check how the coach handles challenge, conflict, pushback, disagreement, constructive feedback, etc. You want this to be as congruent and real-world as possible, but also be a bit edgy!
Principles & Ethics – Check to see if the coach is capable of saying ‘no’ and speaking truth to power. And check on their understanding of agile coaching ethical standards.
I realize all of these require a lot of thought and care in creating your coaching interview scenarios. But it’s time well-spent and worth it.
Evaluating their coaching
First, it’s really up to the “clients” of each session to weigh in first. They need to be thinking of how the coaching “felt” to them and did it accomplish the goals set out at the beginning of the scene? In other words, was the coaching experience helpful, courageous, and impactful to them?
Secondly, you’ll want your own coaches to weigh in with their observations and feedback. These are the primary two feedback loops in the audition—how did the client feel about it? And how did your internal coaches see the coaching unfold?
This brings up an important point. When you’re auditioning, you’ll want to add a few “observers” to each scene. Not too many, perhaps 2-5 is a good number. If you’ve ever engaged with facilitated fishbowl discussion, the auditions should look a lot like that.
Finally, remember that coaching is incredibly nuanced. What I mean by that is that there isn’t one recipe or one right way of coaching a given scenario. One observer might feel that the coach did a great job and another could see it completely differently. Just as in planning-poker discussions, you’ll want to hear from all voices and then have the group make a determination. I often use roman voting as a means of surfacing individual observations and feedback.
Wrapping Up
Interviewing your agile coaches might just be one of the most important things you do within an agile transformation. Choose wisely, and magic can happen as you change your entire culture. Choose poorly, and your entire transformation will suffer.
Agile coaches need to be held to a very high bar because of the influence and impact (positive or negative) that they can bring to your organization.
Taking the time for thoughtful and careful auditioning will ensure that your coaches are fully capable of making positive impacts.
Stay agile my friends,
Bob.
MORE: A few years ago, I wrote a whitepaper around the considerations for selecting agile coaches. I need to update it again, but you might find some value in my thoughts from ~2017.