This is part 3 of a three-part series on the profession of agile coaching. You can find part 1 here and part 2 here.
In Part 1, I shared a definition of agile coaching and set some context around where an agile coach may focus their efforts. In Part 2, we explored what an agile coach does for an organization. All that remains is an exploration of how an agile coach does all this.
How do Agile Coaches Work?
So now we come to how an agile coach might accomplish all of those activities described above. It starts with partnering with leaders at all levels in an organization to understand the goals of an agile coaching engagement. An agile coach will then quickly work to understand and reflect the organizational culture back to the client to help inform decisions and to use as a benchmark of progress. Next, an agile coach will work with leaders in the organization to co-create an approach for organizational change. Then, during the engagement, an agile coach will reveal opportunities for business agility. This is where we start to realize that agile coaching is not simply consulting on a bunch of agile practices, but something so much more nuanced, comprehensive, and powerful. It is working with people to reveal behaviors and attitudes, make a shift, and unlock their undiscovered potential for greatness. Let’s dive deeper . . .
Partner with Leaders at all Levels
Let me first state a premise that I provide time and again in when working with organizations and in my talks: leaders are all over an organization. Leadership is a behavior, not a job title. It is not something that only exists at the “top” or an org chart. Leadership is the ability to influence others. So leaders exist at all levels of an organization.
Agile coaches work with leaders at all levels as a partner. I teed up this concept in part 2 of this series, so now let’s dive deeper on what partnership with an agile coach looks like.
Agile coaches partner with leaders and provide support as a neutral third party in tough situations and through change. They provide coaching, usually by sharing observations and challenging with support along a particularly identified goal. There are myriad approaches to this. I subscribe to the Co-Active coaching model with my coach approach (if you want a great read on the Co-Active model, check out Deborah Preuss). The basic tenant is that professional coaching requires a relationship between the coach and the coachee (client). In that relationship, a coach accepts a coachee for who they are and who they are not. In coaching conversations, a coach holds true to some professional coaching foundations. They are present, and fully listening, as the coachee goes through ups and downs of their development. A coach asks exploratory questions to get clarity, open new pathways, provoke coachees with new and challenging perspectives. Finally, a coach articulates what is going on, by sharing what they notice and holding up a mirror to the coachee.
The following coach’s creed sums up some of the ideas above beautifully. Regrettably, I cannot find the source (if you manage to, please share in comments or ping me).
You know what you need. You are supremely qualified to find the right answer for you. You are responsible. You have everything within you now to create your results.
AND I stand with you through this. I will mirror back to you your power & capability. I will help you remember when you forget or don’t want to. I am responsible too.
If you want to transform your life, I will not hold you accountable. But, I will hold you capable.
Agile coaches also provide mentorship by showing leaders the nuances of agility, agile transformation, etc., leveraging their own leadership experience and business skills. They serve as a thought partner, helping to think through things with leaders. Agile coaches offer their own perspectives, based on their experiences, which are unique to the organization, and this is incredibly useful.
Understand and Reflect Organizational Culture
An agile coach offers an impartial perspective. An agile coach has no history with the organization, and is not limited by hierarchy or politics. They can truly see the whole system and achieve the widest possible perspective. They understand how systems work, are skilled systems thinkers and can grapple with complexity theory. They are also skilled at organizational systems entry and how to work with a relationship system (more on relationship systems coaching later).
In doing all this, an agile coach will very quickly get a sense of the organizational culture. They can then assess and engage leaders in conversations about that culture. After sensing the system, agile coaches can recommend changes to help improve the flow of work and make the organization more adaptable. In this way, they have a hand in culture shaping. They can call out the elephant in the room, and this gives the organization and the leaders within it an opportunity to adjust and influence others.
Co-Create an Approach for Organizational Change
Agile is not just a technological play, with new tools and techniques for developing software. Nor is it a new process model, providing a new way to manage projects and deliver. It is both of those, and a way to approach the challenge of organizational change.
An agile coach serves as a guide for change. They are skilled at the human change process, facilitating communication and shifts in the way organizations work. Change is bad for business. Business (and humans) crave stability. But a stable, inflexible organization will not survive in our complex, ever-changing world. Agile coaches can help create a business case for change. They can help develop components and considerations for organizational assessment to give you a sense of where you are with agility. And they can bring the agile mindset to the change you desire.
Agile coaches are also skilled at implementing a variety of frameworks for bringing agility to the enterprise (some like to call it enterprise scaling, but I think that must actually be balanced with descaling the organization). Agile coaches bring a wealth of experience implementing multiple frameworks and approaches to many organizations. Yet they also understand that there is no blueprint, that every organization will be different. They can help your organization with organizational design and a new operating model, with things like roles, product model, and governance. They can advise and consult on future work, non-hierarchical operating systems, and methods to decentralized authority,
Remember, agile coaches play the game of change all day long, and are some of the most adaptable people out there. They are adaptive, resilient, and future focused yet grounded in pragmatism and the challenges organizations face. They believe in empiricism, in making decisions based on what is known, on sense and respond in order to move through chaos, and then inspecting and adapting to improve along the way. Finally, they bring a myriad of change management tools and techniques and experiences helping other organizations. They are skilled at facilitating, educating, and communicating at an organizational level. An agile coach will provide the support you need to weather the storms of change.
Reveal Opportunities for Business Agility
Agile coaches bring reinforced learning of agile practices (covered in detail in part 2 of this series). They work with teams to develop goals aligned to customer outcomes, plan adaptively, and measure success. An agile coach with the right experience and business mastery can also provide support for strategy and business process improvement. They can extend these practices to the larger organization to reveal opportunities for business agility.
As an agile coach is a thought partner to leaders in an organization, one of the ways they can assist with business strategy is by helping clarify an organization’s purpose and goals, and how it will measure success. Remember, an agile approach is one of inspection and adaptation, and if we don’t measure, decisions will be random and useless.
An agile coach can also provide mentoring on business process improvement to help improve the way an organization works. They understanding business processes and their impact. They work with leaders to identify and address organizational impediments. They have experience coaching support for core functions (CS/Sales/Marketing, HR, Finance). Finally an agile coach understands business agility and how to evaluate business performance with agility in mind. If you want the support of a true agile coach that can support your organization with business agility, reach out to a Scrum Alliance Certified Agile Coach.
A quick note of caution here as we have just covered a good bit of ground on process, frameworks, and methods. While many agile journey’s for organizations start with processes and tools, particularly ones that foster more radiation of information, transparency, and help us connect to strategy, that is only the beginning. These are highly tangible, yet less impactful. The most powerful type of agile coaching, and the only kind that can be truly effective, focuses on behavior — how individuals show up and how teams come together. This is surely less tangible, but the only way to create lasting change. The most effective agile coaching engagements involve leaders at all levels engaged in a creative process to develop better ways of working and changing behaviors to hold a more agile mindset. This will create a robust organization that can survive this increasingly complex business landscape.
Wrapping up
This post was a bit longer than most. In fact, it is the first time I have had to split something into multiple posts. I hope the detailed explanation of the profession of agile coaching was illuminating. I shared some thoughts on the profession as an overview, then defined what an agile coach is, what they generally do for an organization, and then how they might go about it. A Certified Agile Coach offers all of this, rather than a dogmatic set of practices or a blueprint for success. This is what sets them apart from consultants and other self-appointed experts in the industry. I encourage you to turn to a skilled, professional agile coach for experiments with agile in your organization.
And what do I make of all this as a professional agile coach? With the skills and experience outlined above, I offer my clients a partnership on their path to more agility. For each individual, team, leader, and organization this will look very different. My role is not to define the goal, but rather challenge and support around values and principles undergirding the agile mindset as clients seek their own outcomes with agility. I will coach common practice when appropriate, and offer models and frameworks that may suit the clients’ needs, but ultimately I collaborate to help them find the best option to fit their context. Then I work with them to see their approach come to life and inspect and adapt with them along their journey.
Until the Next Iteration . . .
Jason