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?
I was talking with someone the other day and we landed on a metaphor for agile coaching that has really resonated with me since. We explored how becoming a chef or master chef as being seemingly similar to the journey that agile coaches take on to master our own craft.
And the journey is not by personal declaration, for example, I am a Master Chef. Or I am a Master Agile Coach. Not at all.
Instead, the recognition is hard-earned over time. Earned mostly by demonstrating our skills to other coaches, to leading coaching authorities, and ultimately to our clients.
What are some of the activities or things I would think about for agile coaches who are operating with the mindset of a master chef?
Learning
Chefs go to cooking schools as a baseline in their learning. When they exit, they typically start at the bottom and work their way up in their profession. Their progress is not by talking or self-promotion. Instead, it’s by demonstrating their skill and abilities to, well, cook. And cook and cook.
I was in a coaching conversation the other morning with another agile coach. They brought up a scenario at work where one of their key stakeholders (executives) had said something like—
I’m fully on board and bought into what you’re focusing on in the agile transformation…
And I stopped them.
As I thought about it, the thought that kept coming up was this—
Being supportive of;
Fully backing;
Having their buy-in;
Being on board with.
Isn’t good enough for leaders when you’re a coach in an organizational transformation. Sure, those words are nice and appreciated, but I was thinking they are just table stakes. That the coach needed MORE from the stakeholders.
I’ve been seeing these surveys and statistics reference around The Chaos Report for nearly two decades. Often, as in this article here, they are used as citations supporting agile ways of working. And since I’m an aglist, you’d think I would be in full support of them. But I have three core problems with the reports themselves and the incessant quoting of them to support some position.
Trust?
First, I’m not sure I trust the data. Where does it originally come from AND are the collections accurate?
For example, I used to fill in project timesheets at the end of each week. I filled them in with the best recollection I had and with my perception of time spent. I realized over time that I was probably only reporting at 50% accuracy. And that was as an individual contributor. Aggregate that data over 100 developers over 1-+ projects every week. Would you trust what that data was telling you?
So, rolled-up statistics collected from a wide variety of companies doesn’t always make me that trustful and confident in the data.
Based on a bit of a lark, I attended Gustavo Razzetti’s Culture Design Masterclass on March 19th. I’ve been wanting to get around to talking about it for quite some time, so here are some reactions…
https://www.fearlessculture.design/
First of all, the attendees were outstanding. It was a very diverse and eclectic mix of folks that were fare wider than my typical “agile coaching” colleague universe. I enjoyed and learned much from the diverse perspectives.
Second, I want to highly recommend the Culture Design Canvas as a very general-purpose tool for exploring, exposing, understanding, and potentially changing your culture. As an agile coach, I saw many applications of it in my Enterprise-level agile coaching activity.
I haven’t thought of the Pareto Principle in quite a long time.
It was a central theme to my 2004 Software Endgames book because of the implications of Pareto and software defects (trending, clustering, resolution, complexity, etc.) It was a rich and interesting way to view defects at the time. Still is.
Then I wrote a blog piece entitled Pareto and You – Separating the Wheat from the Chaff in 2013, where I explored the implications of Pareto beyond software testing and defects. At the time, I saw the principle as something that could potentially have broad implications beyond software and into life itself. That is, could we view it as something as reliable, consistent, and law-like as the law of gravity?
I had been thinking the answer to this was yes. That is, as long as we view it as a lens for guidance rather than a law that strongly drives our behavior, measurement, and reactions. Consider it a Pareto Compass that would guide you towards True North in your understanding of complexity.
We were chatting about agile coaching the other morning in the Moose Herd and the principal came up again. I mentioned it as a lens that an agile coach could leverage in their assessment of and navigation thru Agile & Digital Transformations. Afterward, I put on my brainstorming hat to envision scenarios in my agile coaching journey where I might be able to look at the world through a Pareto lens—
I shared a post a while ago focused on coaching alignment between coaches and not making assumptions that we’re aligned. It was a personal story where I assumed something when I should have checked in and aligned with my partner coach.
A friend and colleague of mine, Richard Khor made a nice comment to the post on LinkedIn that inspired this post/reaction. Here’s his comment…
Awesome post. Another assumption that is often missed is the direction or experiments that were done before. In other words, coming behind another coach and making the bad assumptions that what was there before was wrong.
And this resonated with me for a while. I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve often been critical of what I’ve found going into a new coaching context. I don’t personalize it and start blaming my predecessor coaches, either internal or external, but I do point out what I perceive as mistakes.
I’ve known Mary Thorn for around 10-years. We’ve grown up together coaching and teaching agile to a wide variety of organizations and teams. Mary calls me her mentor, so I guess I am. But I’ve probably learned more from Mary than she’s ever learned from me.
We’re friends, colleagues, and incredibly like-minded when it comes to agile strategies, tactics, tools, and techniques. So, on the surface, you would think we’d be in permanent, lock-step alignment.
Sure, we have our disagreements. For example, one of the big ones relates to SAFe—
I’m a recovering SPC and Mary is a hardened SPC.
She loves the framework and I tolerate it.
She leverages it in her coaching and company contexts, and I normally don’t.
In a word, Mary is SAFe, and I’m not that SAFe.
But they are quite few and far between. And, we often have a bit of fun with our differences. So, we’re aligned, right? Well, we are and we’re aren’t.
Let me share a quick story…
Many of you know that I often like to begin an article with a musical connection if I can.
The band Queensryche is a fairly well known heavy metal band who had a song Resistance. It’s not my favorite song of theirs, that’s probably Best I Can, but it’s a good one. And it was running through my mind as this topic rose up in my thinking.
But moving on…
I was hosting a Coaching Clinic at the Agile Online Summit this week (late October 2020). In our Monday and Tuesday clinics, about ten people were looking for help in overcoming resistance within their agile contexts. Leadership resistance and team-level resistance were neck-in-neck as being problem areas.
As I was facilitating the coaching sessions, it made me think about resistance. And I remembered an old (mature, but still relevant) article written by Dale Emory on resistance entitled—Resistance as a Resource. It was published in 2001, so about 20 years ago. Dale also used to share on this topic at conferences.
I’d read it several times over the years, but I read through it again. And as I did so, it resonated more with me now than it ever had before.
I often hear of Communities of Practice as it relates to—
Product Ownership;
Scrum Mastery;
UX & Design;
DevOps;
Architecture;
Agile & Lean;
And Coaching
In agile contexts. But I rarely, if ever, hear of a Community of Practice as it relates to agile leadership. I wonder why?
I actually think the notion makes the most sense at the leadership level because there’s so much transformational work for leaders to take on around—
Finding the Vision and WHY behind their agile transformational efforts;
Establishing clarity around roles & responsibilities;
Creating more trust & empowerment across the organization;
Creating a more strategic focus;
Coaching their teams;
Actively culture-shaping in day-to-day behaviors;
Establishing effective metrics;
Learning, growing, and developing as effective agile servant leaders.
Shifting that must happen at the leadership level for an effective and successful agile transformation to unfold. And the best strategy for this is not each individual leader going it alone. The best approach is to form a team of leaders who are going to be receiving training and coaching together. In other words, forming a learning and collaborating cohort who helps each other in their journey. A group of accountability partners, if you will.
Let’s explore one idea around that next.
