I want to offer two discussion threads for your consideration. Both are from LinkedIn and are quite critical of the place of/for Professional Coaching (leadership coaching, personal coaching, life coaching, ICF coaching) in Agile Coaching contexts.
Huy Nguyen initiated the first discussion, and Francesco Bianchi initiated the second. I’ve only pulled a small selection of the comments from each post—so I would encourage you to read the entire thread.
In the end, I plan on drawing some of my inspiration and conclusions from the discussions. Partly as a wrap-up but also to provide some personal clarity I’ve received from these discussions (and more).
I want to thank Huy and Francesco for helping me focus my thinking and for serving as thought leaders in our community. Taking a stand or speaking out your truth is not always easy, so I applaud both of them for their courageous role modeling and ongoing contributions.
Huy Nguyen
Huy Nguyen reacts on LinkedIn to the following Bob Emiliani article - https://bobemiliani.com/seeing-beyond-what-you-know/
I’ve been really enjoying Bob Emiliani ‘s writings and have ordered some of his books. Replace any mention of Lean with Agile and the writings ring very true. There is a level of trained incapacity among Agile coaches with nontechnical folks walk in cases where I’ve heard that technical experience has been devalued. An example is an over-emphasis in the client-as-expert or that coaching-the-person are treated as panacea.
I’m beginning to think more that most forms of Professional coaching isn’t a stance, it’s a modality with a particular world view. I’ve seen that it especially struggles when there are actually bad actors gaming the system. Powerful and useful when clients cooperate, useless against bad faith. And no, firing a client is also a form of bypassing the issue. Though maybe certain situations are hopeless, it’s still a form of avoidance. We must fight against bypass. Too easy to just leave (and why being an internal coach is better/harder because you can’t just run away).
When I think about extending Agile, we must overcome this and not just stop at blaming the client. We must be able to use a myriad of practices that breed wisdom with the client and help them face their own foolishness. The hard part is not getting shot as the messenger. In many senses, failed transformations are likely to be incomplete transformations. Probably because the transformer got stuck in a multi-polar trap that they couldn’t get out of.
Would love to hear others thoughts
Later on, in the commentary Dave Smith responds with—
Agree with many points here.
I feel the Agile world is rife with too many bad apples, all leaping on the "coaching" bandwagon, hoping a cert or two far makes up for their lack of experience and aren't in much of a position to recognize just how dangerous their actions could worsen the situation. Yes, there are plenty of bad actors out there.
"Too easy to just leave (and why being an internal coach is better/harder because you can’t just run away)" - this. Firing a client or downing tools on them is an admission that you've reached your limit and there's nothing more you can do for them. That's not necessarily a failure: you can only do so much and perhaps it's better to step aside and let someone else take on the task... but this is presuming you don't just shrug and give up too easily, that you apply yourself as much as you can.
"The hard part is not getting shot as the messenger" - it's gonna happen. How we choose to react says more about us than the client.
Huy immediately responded to Dave with—
Dave Smith yes and this is where most coaches are merely mentors and trainers. They are coach by title but get extremely lost in the complexity. A good coach must know how to create a game plan to help extricate a team out of a losing position. Mere professional coaching (though highly valuable) isn’t enough.
More and more I’m thinking that professional coaching helps with “bedside manner”. It doesn’t provide tools in which to explore the problem space with the client other than helping the client conjure their own reframing. I’ll have more to say on tools for reframing in future posts.
And to wrap things up in the thread, Ola Berg contributed---
You are absolutely and totally right. And while it is true that change must emanate from a want to actually change, a life coach can just wait for that want to happen.
But like sports coaches, we agile coaches and lean guides have a mission from the people in charge. The people we help have a job to do, other than to fulfill their own professional aspirations.
So we need to know how to actually "create pull". Inspire to change. Show the knowledge gap together with the message that people need to bridge it, lest they can't do their job properly.
Francesco Bianchi
Francesco began with this post—
When I ask a person a question I usually expect to get an answer.
If I am paying for that person that expectation is usually stronger.
99.9% of the times if I ask an Agile Coach a question I get back a question.
Most of the times I get an entire questionnaire.
There is almost never a conversation to reset expectations or a request for permission to change type of output provided.
Then we are wondering why the role of Agile Coach is starting to be rejected in companies... 🤷♀️
John Clifford offered the following early in the thread—
"It depends," or "What do you think?" are lousy answers. Customers are looking for recommendations based upon who they perceive to be an expert on a topic, not reflection. When I ask a fitness coach if lower reps/more weight, or higher reps/less weight would be better to increase my muscle mass... or improve my functional ability to perform in athletic endeavors... I don't want to hear "It depends," or "What do you think?"
Agile coaches should not try to engage in reflective listening except as a means to ensure full understanding. Instead, our approach should be solution-oriented. That is why clients engage us; they want answers, not questions. If we want to remain relevant, we have to provide value in the form of answers. Yes, some questioning is necessary. I often use the Socratic Method to help customers come up with their own answers, but often the answer is obvious after a few illuminating questions... to me, at least. Then, I work to make the answer obvious to the client. Eventually, I work to enable the client to ask and answer their own questions.
No one goes to see a coach or consultant if they understand how to solve their problem. No one wants to hire someone who is a parasite, or who creates a dependency.
Brett Maytom then commented—
This is a fairly big question to answer as many subtle facets come into play.
The first is to read the room and choose the stance applicable to the situation; it's a choice. It may be a mentor, trainer, coach, consult or muse, facilitator, actively do nothing, points north and a few others.
My biggest dig at the agile coaches is the influx of life coaches without business acumen or product development knowledge. They don't know how to step into another stance. Their default is always in a coaching stance. Every problem is done the same way, and it becomes robotic and of low value. I wrote a post a while ago on that.
The core thing is that we are there to help the business deliver its product, that is what the primary objective is. Coaches have to have a strong business purpose but also balance that with the people element to make that happen.
I speak to tons of coaches, and scrum masters and frankly most don't have the skills needed to do the job. When trying to help them learn those skills, they are stubborn as hell and think they can DIY it by watching a few videos or reading a few posts on it. They need good mentors, and there are not many around that can do it, those that are, are just overshadowed by noise.
My reactions
1—My friend Peter Fischbach has also recommended Bob Emiliani to me for quite some time. Now that Huy has also weighed in, I guess the stars have aligned to compel me to dive into his work.
2—Huy’s use of the word modality truly struck a powerful chord in me, especially when you add the phrase –a particular worldview. This will be something I’ll be noodling on for quite a while.
I’m beginning to think more that most forms of Professional coaching isn’t a stance, it’s a modality with a particular worldview. I’ve seen that it especially struggles when there are actually bad actors gaming the system. Powerful and useful when clients cooperate, useless against bad faith.
It makes me think of professional coaching as different and orthogonal to most coaching. I’d add that is also struggles to show, delivery, demonstrate, and amplify your value as a coach.
3—I’ve often disagreed with Huy around his notions that an Agile Coach needs to be in it for the long haul with their clients no matter the situational context. He brings it up again here using terms like—avoidance, bypass, and being easy to just leave.
I think we have different perspectives on how to handle clients and situations where folks don’t want to be coached. But that being said, I don’t think I’ve ever avoided, bypassed, or just left a client without there being an ethical or reasoned cause. Even though I’m usually an external coach, I have a fairly dogged view of my responsibilities as a coach, as most of my clients will tell you 😉
4—Dave Smith offered this—
I feel the Agile world is rife with too many bad apples, all leaping on the "coaching" bandwagon, hoping a cert or two far makes up for their lack of experience and aren't in much of a position to recognize just how dangerous their actions could worsen the situation. Yes, there are plenty of bad actors out there.
I largely agree with him. Of particular impact to me is the notion of not understanding how dangerous their actions are. I often equate experience to technical or business experience. But I think there is a notion of humility and knowing what you don’t know the experience that needs to be fostered among many acting as “Agile Coaches.” Ending the hubris that believes Professional Coaching is the same as Agile Coaching.
5—I like the notion of—need to know how to create pull that Ola Berg mentioned. (There might even be a future blog post on that topic 😉)
6—While John Clifford’s reaction is clearly strong, it does resonate with me. It makes me think of the current trends in the agile community of laying off coaches and Scrum Masters—many of whom have been trained to lean into a professional coaching stance. This propensity to questioning has done all of us, including them and their clients, a disservice.
7—As I read Brett Maytom’s comment, I was reminded of an article he wrote a while back and my reaction to it. His article was entitled—Exposing the Truth: Life Coaches Masquerading as Agile Coaches, published in February 2023, less than a year ago.
As you can read, my initial reaction to Brett’s post was negative. I pushed back and took a more inclusive view of—there’s a place for Professional Coaching in Agile Coaching. Now, in hindsight, I think I was wrong, and I now largely agree with Brett’s assessment. There isn’t a place for 1-stance Professional Coaches in agile contexts. It simply does more harm than good.
Wrapping Up
I want to clarify my position supporting Professional Coaching and Coaches in agile contexts. I still support them, but—
If and only if they have worked and will work to expand their skills repertoire for stances;
If and only if they realize that experience (chops) trumps everything, and;
If and only if they realize that providing consultative advice is a valid stance to serve many of their clients.
If they struggle with these notions in any way, I would say—stay in your Professional Coaching lanes and stay powerful in your questioning. And please stay out of my Agile Coaching world, as you are doing harm.
Or, to close in the way Brett Maytom closed his article—
In conclusion, the madness of life coaches masquerading as agile coaches needs to stop. Agile coaching is a specialized form of business coaching that requires expertise in agile methods and practices and deep knowledge of business and product development. Let's leave the frolicking in the meadows to the life coaches and focus on getting businesses the results they need to succeed. It's time to put a stop to this life coaching madness and get back to the business of agile coaching.
Stay agile, my friends,
Bob.