This idea came out of another Moose Herd discussion.
The situation where (sometimes) an agile coach can get lost in their role and forget to be themselves. To move from being:
Coach Bob, who has to “show up” as an agile coach every minute of every encounter of every day;
To simply…
Bob, who coaches, but who also is an employee, colleague,equal partner, and human being.
There’s potentially a huge difference between the two. For example, the latter allows me to:
Vent if I need to, or complain to my boss;
To get overly excited about an idea;
Not have to say…Yes, and… all of the time;
Not having to look for deeper meaning or revealing the system;
To passionately disagree with someone;
My emotions to surface, to get defensive, overreact;
To have a bad day; to have a great day;
To not want to coach now, today, this week;
Be real, be genuine, be ME.
Wrapping Up
The key idea here is for agile coaches to not get too “wrapped up” in their role to the point where they are always the coach or always coaching. To allow ourselves to occasionally step out of that role and become us. To not be afraid to express ourselves, to ask for help or a break, to not always have to be “coaching clients”.
Let that run around your mind as a coach and see if it resonates. Reflect on times when you’ve been coaching when you actually shouldn’t be coaching. And think about giving yourself permission to stop doing that.
But there I go again, always coaching…
Stay agile my friends,
Bob.