Personal Thoughts
Robert Galen
We've Moved
We've Moved
Walking Their Talk, Sustainability, Inspiration
Robert Galen
Sustainability

I saw this wonderfully courageous and informative post by Sabine Canditt the other day where she wrote about Sustainable Scrum. 

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sustainable-scrum-responsible-choice-sabine-canditt-x0gef

After just completing a The Week program facilitated by the amazing Ann-Marie Kong, it touched my heart.

That said, I wanted to highlight one comment reaction/interaction between Sabine and Erich Bühler 

Erich said—

Thank you for bringing this approach into the world! Scrum does provide an iterative approach for teams to create value, but its scope is limited to the product level and struggles with dynamics across the whole organization for several reasons.
Without updating the underlying business and financial model at a strategic level, Scrum alone cannot transform organization-wide sustainability.

Sustainability
Short-takes, Inspiration
Robert Galen
Sandy’s Take
Sandy’s Take
Short-takes, Personal Thoughts
Robert Galen
The Human Aspects of Agile Coaching
The Human Aspects of Agile Coaching
Coaching, ACGW, Personal Thoughts
Robert Galen
Keys to Building your Coaching Relationships

I talk a lot about the first step in coaching any client (individual, system, team, etc.) is to build a relationship, gain empathy and understanding, and then gain an idea of where/how to help initially. So, do NOT start to coach until you’ve done some relationship-building. 

But what does a coaching relationship, or a professional relationship in general, look like? What are aspects of that? Here are a few things that come to my mind—

  • Making + taking the time.

  • Explaining what you do—what is Agile Coaching.

  • Building some empathy; walking in their shoes; understanding where they are coming from.

  • Meeting them where they are.

  • Listening; reflective listening; building metaphors together.

  • Connecting with their language, not yours.

Keys to Building your Coaching Relationships

Agile Coaching

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When to Coach the Problem versus Coaching the Person

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When to Coach the Problem versus Coaching the Person

I received the following question from another agile coach the other day…

I'm wondering if you might have a solution for an issue. Within the Agile Coaching Circles, we see a lot of "coaching the problem, not the person." This is regardless of where the circle is located: Europe, Africa, Australia, or North America. We've done the "temperature" exercise, where the more impactful the question, the higher the temperature. However, I'm on the lookout for other exercises to do with groups to help them understand the difference between problem/person. Might you have any ideas? I've got this question in a few different Slack channels and so on, but so far, nothing is coming up.

And here are two resources that help to illustrate the challenge associated with the question—

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYfmo8qvPSA

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57adc4fa46c3c4f7faf7e4c5/t/5e1f83963315a227f1a0483c/1579123617420/Coach+the+Person%2C+Not+the+Problem+edited.pdf

Here's my reply…

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Extraordinarily Badass Agile Coaching

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It’s finally here. What’s here, you might ask?

My new book.

Cool! What’s the title?

Extraordinarily Badass Agile Coaching

The Journey from Beginner to Mastery and Beyond

About the Book

The profession of Agile Coaching is, in a word, confusing. That’s because of a number of factors, including:

  • It gets conflated with Professional Coaching and it’s so much more than that;

  • There isn’t a standard or generally accepted model for what it is and isn’t;

  • Clients don’t understand it, so shared accountability is unbalanced with their coaches;

  • There is specialized nuance around the skills of coaching at the Team, Enterprise or Organizational, Technical, and Leadership levels.

This confusion has created a space where nearly anyone can claim to be an Agile Coach with little experience and narrow skills. Resulting largely in mediocrity and negative impacts for our clients, who by the way, are counting on and paying us for help.

Bob Galen has written Extraordinarily Badass Agile Coaching to help alleviate the confusion. The book centers on the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel as the competency and skill maturity model to baseline your agile coaching skills against. Its core goal is to “raise the bar” as to what true excellence looks like and to help you establish a personal development and growth plan.

Bob intentionally uses the term Badass to create a vision of professionalism, craft, passion, accountability, and expertise that you need to bring to bear in service of your clients if you represent yourself as an “agile coach”.

Being an Extraordinarily Badass Agile Coach isn’t easy, quick, or for the faint of heart. It takes lots of hard work and dedication. It also requires a map to point you in the right direction. Consider this book that maps to coaching badassery, personal growth, and client service.

Sample Chapter

If you’re “on the fence” about whether the book is right for you. I’d recommend reading the Introduction, as it explains the intent, overview, and major themes within the book.

Getting a copy?

If you’re mostly interested in e-copies, I’d recommend purchasing your copies from Leanpub. You get more version flexibility that way AND you’ll be able to receive future updates too.

  • Amazon versions are available here Paperback & Kindle.

  • Leanpub (PDF, EPUB, and MOBI) versions are available here.

Landing Page

Once you get your copy, you’ll want to check out the book’s Support & Repo Page for helpful information and ongoing shares & updates.

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Ongoing State of Agile Coaching

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Ongoing State of Agile Coaching

The State of Agile Coaching report was recently published by a collaboration between the Scrum Alliance and the Business Agility Institute. I participated in the survey and I eagerly awaited to see what surfaced. Since this is the first of its kind, I knew that the insights would probably surprise me a bit.

Links for you—

https://businessagility.institute/learn/state-of-agile-coaching-vol-1-2021/504

https://resources.scrumalliance.org/Article/state-agile-coaching-report

Here’s a quote from the preface of the report:

The idea for this report was born out of a sense of frustration and necessity. We had just read an article from Anand et al on McKinsey.com, “Growing your own Agility Coaches to Adopt New Ways of Working.” The authors wrote something that gave us pause:

“While the role [of agility coach] has exploded on LinkedIn and many profiles claim to be agility coaches, there is no degree or accepted global accreditation that provides comfort around the skills and experience needed for the job.”

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Mirrors and Windows

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Mirrors and Windows

We were collaborating in the Moose Herd the other morning about agile coaching stances and when to be prescriptive (consulting or advising stances) and when not to be (coaching, facilitative learning, or

(I’m referencing the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel here for the stances…)

As I sat and listened to the discussion, I thought of a metaphor for the coach to help when adopting certain stances. I likened it to a mirror and a window.

The Mirror

This is where you simply serve to reflect back to the client you’re coaching. You, add, change, or delete nothing. How could you…you are a mirror.

The mirror reflects; clearly and succinctly. It says nothing. It does nothing. It owns no actions. It simply reveals the system (or the client) to themselves.

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Agile Coaches need MORE than Coaching Skills

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Agile Coaches need MORE than Coaching Skills

I earned my CEC (Certified Enterprise Coach) certification with the Scrum Alliance in 2012. I’d applied in 2011, so it took me about a year to go through the process at the time. If my memory is right, I believe I was about the 43rd CEC at the time.

I did a search of CEC’s and CTC’s on May 26th and it showed 118 and 156 worldwide respectively. That’s ~300 coaches. The growth of CEC’s over an ~8-year period was ~10/year.

I had been serving in leadership and agile coaching roles for quite a few years prior to that. I’d also been part of a couple of fairly successful agile transformations at the organizational level. So, while I was confident in my coaching capabilities, I was excited to go through the process as a way of validating my journey, experiences, and skills.

Back then, the focus was on the breadth of your stances.

What do I Do as an Agile Coach?

What do I Do as an Agile Coach?

Dave Rooney is a Canadian Agile Coach who recently wrote a nice article about what he focuses on in his agile coaching. I thought I’d share it and play off of Dave’s ideas a bit.

In the article, he mentions 6 important activities:

  1. First Do No Harm!

  2. Listen

  3. Ask boatloads of questions

  4. Challenge assumptions

  5. Teach/Coach Agile practices

  6. Work myself out of a job

My reaction to Dave’s list…

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Everyone Needs a Coach

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Everyone Needs a Coach

The next time you’re looking to engage an agile coach, there’s an additional set of questions I want you to explore with them—

  • Do you (they) have a coach?

  • How often do you (they) meet?

  • What are you (they) currently working on in your journey?

  • What was the last crucial conversation you (they) had with your coach like?

  • Reflecting on your being coached journey, how coachable are you? What are the keys to your being coachable?

What I’m asking you to explore is their personal coaching journey. I feel that most agile coaches are comfortable coaching. But the counterpoint, being coached and being coachable, are often a different question. I guess it’s the age-old challenge of telling being easy and receiving being much harder.