Bob's Blog
Bob is a prolific blogger who simply enjoys sharing his experiences with colleagues in the Agile Community. Topics revolve around Scrum, XP, Kanban, Project Management, Business Analysis, Testing, Leadership and General Musings.
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Viewing entries tagged
Coaching Conversations
How do we determine if we are the “right” agile coach for a—
Client, Individual, Group;
Team, System;
or Leader?
Is there a singular answer? I don’t think so, but here is a shortlist of considerations—
1. Solid introduction—Have an introductory coaching session and see what unfolds. It makes sense during this session to explain the role/notion of coaching. What you do and how you do it as a coach. And what you don’t do. Then, both you and the client determine if it makes sense to continue.
This was inspired to write this by the Music City Nashville talk by Faye Thompson and Charles Husemann. It was entitled: Coaching Katas - In Search of The Answer to the Agile Kobayashi Maru.
Essentially it was a series of coaching scenarios where we run thru Coaching Kata’s (very similar to Dojo’s as I’ve shared on them before). The scenarios were inspired by Star Trek episodes (original Star Trek I might add). In it, they emphasized using the 7-questions from The Coaching Habit book by Michael Bungay Stanier.
As we debriefed each of the scenarios, I heard attendees really struggling to apply the 7-questions effectively as part of a “normal” conversation.
It made me think that:
7-questions (from the Coaching Habit)
Powerful questions (from Co-Active Coaching)
Other question-based coaching models
Can set you up for failure if you don’t use them sparingly within the ARC of an overarching conversation model/framework. And we shouldn’t use them sequentially or artificially as well. They are also only for the coaching stance/role. For example, what about teaching, mentoring, or modeling stances/roles?
