Agile Coach Competency Framework: Revisited

A Quick History Lesson

The Agile Coaching Competency Framework was originally developed in 2011 by Lyssa Adkins and Michael Spayd as part of their work as Agile Coaching Institute. Marsha Acker and her company, TeamCatapult , added to this framework by teasing apart the stances of Professional Team Coaching and Professional Coaching. When originally developed, it was often referred to as the “x-wing diagram” because of the lines that differentiated the stances from one another, and I must confess to calling it that myself. I also went back and reviewed the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel, a crowdsourced initiative that answered Bob Galen ???? ’s call for Agile coaches to have more than coaching skills. The wheel depicts how Agile coaches can practice and continue to grow in practice of our craft.

Leading Us to...Now

Like many of you, I suspect, I’ve used this framework for so long that I simply use it, not think about it. So, I went back to the basics, taping out this diagram on floor, thinking long and hard about how I know when to move from one stance to another, what I depend in on me and around me to make that movement possible. I reflected on my actions, how I subconsciously use this framework with clients, how I work as a coach. Now, I find that it still hold, mostly, and that led me to begin experimenting with the framework. In the newly visualized diagram below, you can see three additions:

• The center circle of self-mastery
• An inner ring of Agile coach in a mindset of learning, curiosity, reflective practices, and growth mindset
• An external ring, wrapping the model in lived experience, mentor coaching, cohorts, feedback, and assessments

Let’s start with the inner ring: self-mastery, or self-control. To stand fully in self-mastery is to know your triggers, your weaknesses, and how you react, not respond, when they appear. You’ve done the hard inner work of grappling with your own demons, and you likely have a coach or even coaches, a tribe of mentors, and colleagues to whom you turn to work through issues. You are a long, deep breath, and you take off the shoes of your voice in charged situations. (Full credit to Ocean Vuong for that last metaphor.)

Our next stop is continuous learner. I have yet to meet a good Agile coach who was not committed to learning. Between speaking at meetups, listening to podcasts, attending conferences, conversing with colleagues, practicing at one of the Agile Coaching Circles , and reading various books, all have been committed learners. We have to be. There is foundational knowledge of which to be aware of and use (think Adkins’s own Coaching Agile Teams, the Scrum Guide, and scaling frameworks such as SAFe and LeSS), but also advances in behavioral science, the development of new games,?TED talks on organizational design, and more. Our field is evolving, and we need to evolve along with it.

Finally, we have the external ring of lived experience. This is where we take our practice, our work in each of the stances, our reflections to others as we work to improve. We join cohorts, we have our work supervised and assessed by experts in that field. The outer ring came about as to my thinking, the practice of coaching is behind other fields. For ongoing licensing and accreditation, social workers must have a certain number of hours of continuing education and supervision. Physicians are required to accrue a minimum number of hours every two years, a percentage of which must be in medical ethics. Part of mental-health professionals’ licensing is supervision by more experienced practitioners, and they must also obtain continuing education. The field of coaching is not here, or at least not yet, though I do see signals from different governing bodies that this will be coming sooner rather than later. (Huzzah!)

And Back to Competency

The key word in both the framework itself and this post is this: competency. As Agile coaches, we cannot be competent in our work if we do not stand in self-mastery, if we are not continuous learners. Additionally, to support us in that learning and the practice of our work, we need the lived experience and practice of our work all while taking in the supervision and assessment of others more qualified. What I like about these additions is that they are of equal importance. One does not outweigh the others, and we need all of them to support and evolve the stances from the original framework.

And before I go, one final point. As an Agile coach, if you want to move from competence into excellence, these additions point the way.

#feedback

So, this is me, asking for #feedback from the Agile and Agile coaching communities. I’m looking for answers to these questions:

• Do these additions of “Self-Mastery,” “Learner,” and “Experience” support Agile Coach Competency Framework? If so, how?
• If not, how do these additions not support the existing framework? Where did I go sideways in my response?
• How do these proposed additions feel to you? What is missing? What should be added? What should be removed??

I’d love to hear from you. Seriously. Respond to this post, adding your feedback to the comments, message me, send me an email, call me directly.?Let's collaborate and work together to build this forward.

And if I have stated any of this incorrectly or missed giving credit where credit is due, please let me know. Many people have worked to create and improve this framework, and I want to give credit where credit is due. Speaking of which, Linda N. photographed the starfish used as the cover for this article and all of my blog posts.

#agilecoaching #agilecoachcompetencyframework #agile #icagile #coaching #crowdsourcing