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.
Check back often as we've always got something to say...
My friend and colleague, Anthony Mersino recently wrote an article that explores a new shift for managers into becoming coaches. The first part of the article mentions me quite a bit, but that’s not what caught my eye. And I also borrowed his photo.
But I digress.
What stuck with me is the notion that managers (traditional organizational leaders/managers), need to be converted somehow to be better coaches to their teams. Especially in agile contexts. And, I couldn’t disagree more.
Why?
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.
My friend and colleague Mike Hall wrote an insightful article entitled—Starting an Agile Transformation with Understanding, not that long ago. It contains the following quote quite early in the article. It touched me deeply with its truth and I thought I’d share it—
Agile Coaches operating as true change agents will spend the first few months building relationships and understanding how your business works. They will lead with empathy and seek to understand. They will dig for the historical perspective of why things are the way they are, in a non-judgmental way. They will observe, ask questions, interview, and establish a “mental context” prior to making any change recommendations. Don’t short change this crucial time period – it is absolutely required for the upcoming Agile recommendations to be meaningful!
The three things that stood out to me from the quote and in reading the article were: Relationship, Empathy, and Understanding.
I was coaching another agile coach the other day and they presented the following story to me looking for my coaching wisdom & guidance…
I know, I know, but I shared as much wisdom as I could ;-)
The sponsor/stakeholder/client (a senior executive in the technology organization) asked them to coach one of their direct reports. That person is a senior manager in the organization, well respected, and long-tenured.
The senior leader gave the coach a list of challenges they had with the individual that they wanted them (the coach) to work on fixing in (the senior manager).
When the coach attempted to “coach” that individual, they met resistance. In fact, the person didn’t see the need for coaching. They recounted that in their last performance review their manager (senior leader) had given them a stellar review, wonderful feedback, and a nice promotion and salary increase. So, they really didn’t feel the need for much in the way of coaching and personal improvement.
The coach went back to the stakeholder and respectfully and delicately communicated the resistance and tried to bow out of coaching the manager. They told the senior leader that, if they felt that individual needed some help, that they would have to communicate that to them themselves, thus opening the door for the leader performing the coaching.
The senior leader didn’t accept that position. In fact, they pushed back hard. They said that (1) the manager had a performance problem and (2) that they were delegating to the coach to “fix it”. As part of their ongoing responsibility as a “coach”. To be honest, they resented having to repeat themselves…
And this is where I came in. The coach was looking for me to do something (ask powerful questions, provide advice, suggest options, mentor them, anything…) to help them to decide what to do next.
I’ve been thinking lately about the nuance of feedback. Inspired to a large degree by the amount of
I like that
or
I don’t like that…
OR
You’re doing great
or
You’re not doing so great…
is feedback that I hear incredibly often in agile contexts.
It’s made me look for exemplars in giving feedback. Both inside and outside of software development and agile circles. And, I believe I’ve discovered one in an unexpected place.
I don’t know if I’d declare myself a foodie. But I do enjoy watching shows on The Food Network. One of them is a show hosted by Guy Fieri called Diner’s, Drive-ins, and Dive’s, often shortened to Triple-D.
I’ve been thinking of balance lately when it comes to agile transformations. And, the sad truth is, I don’t see that much of it.
I either see organizations who are too focused on leadership and leaders driving the transformation, so skewed towards them. Or organizations that are coddling the teams and letting the inmates run the asylum, so skewed towards the team.
What does “Balance” need to look like?
I’ll give you a quick example. There’s the notion of servant-orientation and servant leadership in agile contexts. This is normally focused on leaders serving their teams. For example, a Scrum Master is a servant leader in their mindset and they need to serve their team.
But for every reaction, there should be an equal and opposite reaction to achieve better balance. So, yes, leaders need to serve their teams.
But the reciprocal is that teams need to serve their leaders as well. They need to give be respectful of their roles, inclusive of their ideas. They need to provide the transparency of forecasts, work, and progress to support the leader’s operational needs.
Josh Anderson and I explored this notion in more detail in one of our recent Meta-casts. We called the episode The Reciprocal Conundrum. I’m hoping you give it a (balanced) listen to see if it changes (or rebalances) your thinking.
Stay agile my friends,
Bob.
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?
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’ve been struggling with Cynefin for many years. First, let me share some (perhaps partially) knowns—
I know Dave Snowden is smarter than me;
I know that his Cynefin model is the result of many years of thoughtful research and experience;
I know there is a strong connection between Cynefin and agile approaches and an agile mindset;
I know I like Dave’s stance when it comes to SAFe and other agile disruptors;
I’m slowly working my way through the recently published Cynefin book.
But…
All of that being said, I didn’t “get it” until recently. It all started and came together for me with this video by Sharon Robson.
It’s short, ~5-minutes. And in the 5-minutes Sharon does a wonderful job of explaining how agile leaders can use Cynefin as a sensing, thinking, and reacting model/tool for their tactical and strategic interactions with their teams and their businesses.
It helped me to “get it”. Not just understand the model, but understand how it can be applied in our agile leadership journey. It’s caused me to become much more patient in my leadership, sensing first, and then deciding on what path to take given the situation, context, and nature of things. It’s also amplified how interesting and valuable being able to help my teams navigate complexity and chaos can be.
I thought I’d share it with you. Now, back to reading (and digesting) the book…
Stay agile my friends,
Bob.
I saw a tweet by Cory Bryan that referenced a tweet from John Cutler from April 2021. I’m not sure how widely cast it was, so I thought I’d share it again here.
To say that I love where John went is an understatement. And Cory’s edition of—
“How” can we…
“What” can we…
And “When” can we…
Added even more value for me.
Can we do more work we are proud of?
Can we work more joyfully, and sustainably?
Can we work together more often?
Can we learn more effectively? Can we accelerate/amplify feedback loops?
Can we shorten the distance between our team and customers/users?
Can we create more lasting value for our customers, users, and company?
Can we connect more of our work to real impact instead of proxies?
Can we delay certain decisions until we have more information?
Can we reduce the cost of changing our minds (both now, and in the future)?
Can we reduce our “inventory” of unfinished, non-value-producing work?
Can we reduce waste that doesn’t serve the team, our customers, and our company?
Can we lay the foundations that will support our future success?
I think this list is particularly useful for my colleagues in the product space. I hope the questions are as thought-provoking for you as they were for me. John is a treasure in the community in that he makes me (us) think more deeply.
I need to do more of that…
Stay agile my friends,
Bob.
