Introduction

This book is being put online as part a guided, self-study program on coaching in the Amplio Community of Practice

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This book is an essential read for leaders, coaches, and consultants at all levels involved in helping themselves and others to be more effective. At the heart of this lies the art of creating value and inspiring others to do the same. Imagine organizations creating value and empowering every stakeholder in the process. This book doesn't just skim the surface with micro-level practices; it dives deeper, uncovering impactful patterns that shape our ways of being, communicating, thinking, and learning.

This book is a collaboration of two practitioners/consultants with diverse yet complementary backgrounds. Our most significant common ground lies in the understanding that while individual roles, people, and teams are critical in any work environment, the influence of systems and culture is equally pivotal. This shared perspective allows us, the authors, to weave a narrative that melds our individual experiences and insights as both practitioners and consultants, each with decades of expertise with both.

Most of this book is a truly collaborative effort, with both of us integrating our perspectives into the collective wisdom, regardless of who initially contributed the idea. Consequently, we primarily use “we” throughout our narrative. In some instances, however, personalization is valuable. In cases where we wish to share insights derived from specific experiences and we wish to provide our learnings as well as illustrate the concept with a personal story, we will identify the author and use "I" to be clearer.

Our intention is to present a unified yet multifaceted narrative. By clarifying the source of our insights and experiences, we aim to provide you, the reader, with a deeper understanding of the context and richness behind our shared knowledge.?

We address common challenges head-on, showing you how to convert what often becomes a vicious cycle of continuous coaching waves, talent turnover, and missed strategic targets into a virtuous cycle of sustained success and growth.

We venture beyond the minutiae of everyday practices, offering you a collection of impactful patterns that reshape the very essence of being, communicating, thinking, and learning in an organizational context. These patterns are your toolkit for adapting to diverse environments, providing a clear lens to view how ecosystems intricately influence people on a broader scale. By “ecosystem,” we mean how work is done in an organization, the way people are organized, and even includes partners, vendors, and other external entities to the organization. In other words, the ecosystem is the context in which people work.

We’ll use the word “system” instead of ecosystem because it implies a deeper reach. Ecosystems may be more visible, but they are connected to all of the other parts of the system.

It would have been possible to just use the word “system” throughout this book. We use the word “ecosystem” when we want to emphasize that how the system relates to the people in it is important.

This approach empowers you, as a coach or leader, to foster positive feedback loops, an essential mechanism for maintaining momentum and effectiveness during periods of change.

Think of these patterns as keys that unlock the potential to adapt to any context, offering a holistic view of how the systems people are in intricately weave into the fabric of people's lives.

As a coach or leader, you're not just a bystander but a catalyst for change. This book equips you with the tools to create and sustain positive feedback loops.

Although it contains theory, this is not a book of theory. It is filled with practical, pragmatic lessons that can improve your ability to assist others. Many people know useful things, but if you can’t convey them well, they have little value.

This book goes beyond the normal standards of Agile coaching. It discusses three domains often ignored in knowledge work:

How people learn, resist change, filter information, and more. Communication is not just about how to talk and listen better. One must attend to how others talk and listen. This book will provide insights into human behavior and how leaders and coaches can effectively address human behavior.

Throughout this book, we talk about ways of being. This comes from, among others, the philosopher Martin Heidegger and psychologists such as Carl Rogers and Virginia Satir. Ways of Being refer to the enduring characteristics, attitudes, and inner dispositions that shape how a person interacts with the world, rather than just isolated actions or reactions at a particular moment. It encompasses an individual's consistent manner of conduct, thought, and emotional response, integrating their values, beliefs, and identity over time. We have both witnessed over decades how people can transform their Way of Being.

There is a knowable set of causes and effects in the Agile space that have been espoused by several thought leaders such as Dr. Eli Goldratt, Tom Gilb, and Don Reinertsen. We will present a model of understanding that can make an Agile coach often seem pre-cognizant. However, they are just attending to what is, in fact, visible if people know what to look for.

Systems thinking. Systems thinking tells us to look at our organizations as systems embedded in the larger world and composed of subsystems. We cannot look at any one piece in isolation. In addition, the systems we’re in cause most of our challenges. All too often, we look to see who we can blame. We need to focus on what the system is doing to cause challenges, including human behavior. All too often Agile methods are espoused without consideration of how they will impact the people expected to adopt them.

These three concepts interact, and all must be used to be effective. There are many other concepts we cover that are mostly ignored in the Agile space. We’ll discuss these in the chapter Concepts not sufficiently dealt with. These alone would be worth your time. But you will find the three concepts mentioned above greatly magnify their usefulness.

We take it one step further. Many coaching books discuss what to do as if we live in an ideal world. We don’t. Particularly coaches. They don’t get to choose who to coach most of the time. There are, therefore, two significant constraints on them. The first is how to interact with people of all types. This is based on the common human condition. The second is that there is often too little time to get the job done. This book recognizes these challenges and provides insights and techniques to be more effective with both. As you progress through this book, you will gain insights that allow you to see things more clearly and solve problems from a different perspective. Changing how you think, see, and communicate allows you to contribute to people, teams, and organizations powerfully.

This book, along with the support available from the authors’ websites, will provide you with the means to accelerate your road to mastery.

A word of caution

In the writing of this book, even with our knowledge of these practices and theories, we sometimes fell short of the mark we espouse herein. This is a warning that you never escape the human condition. We can now sit back and laugh at the gift this was for both of our lives with expanded love, gratitude, and respect for each other.

This book is organized into three guidebooks

All three guidebooks emphasize the significance of experiential learning with real-world application and a model for understanding knowledge work. These together enable people to take advantage of their own experience. We encourage readers to actively engage with the material and integrate the principles into their coaching and consulting practices. Our goal is to empower coaches with the knowledge and skills to make a genuine impact in their roles, helping teams and individuals unlock their true potential and achieve sustainable success.

The first guidebook establishes the foundational understanding of "being" an effective coach. The second guidebook identifies and creates strategic opportunities to contribute in ever-changing contexts. It equips coaches with the tools and insights to excel in their coaching endeavors by increasing their impact on systems, teams, and organizations. The third guidebook provides some consulting insights. The fourth guidebook provides case studies, special situations, and tips. Together, our goal was for these books to elevate the practice of coaching and contribute to the professional and personal lives of those who incorporate this book into their coaching role.

Guidebook I is called “Coaching craftsmanship.”? Guidebook I covers mental models, self-limiting beliefs, cognitive biases, and ways of being. Coaches are encouraged to impact individuals, teams, and the system by learning patterns and actions for creating an empowering context, impactful communications, and learning.

It introduces the concept of “active speaking.” That is, speaking while attending to how people react to what you are saying.

Guidebook I demonstrates taking advantage of “active speaking” in how people learn and how to coach. We discuss how experts and those with less competence perceive and pay attention to different things. We share the distinctions an expert focuses on and how they think, considering contexts, systems, and patterns.

Furthermore, we discuss the types of communication that promote acceptance of new ideas. You might not realize how much science is involved in this. Our intention is not to be prescriptive. It is the opposite. We wish to inspire you to think about pattern-based solutions that can be applied to many contexts as they are inherently non-prescriptive.

Guidebook II is called “Coaching at Multiple Levels.” It focuses on "being" an effective coach, drawing insights from diverse experiences, studies, and involvement in various coaching communities. This section imparts coaching and leadership qualities, core knowledge, ways of being, and principles of authentic communication that enable coaches and leaders to be truly effective. We focus more deeply on models related to human behavior, relationships, context, communications, systems, and teams. This chapter is critical to impacting culture, so it starts with the quote: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” by Peter Drucker.

This guidebook discusses how the system people are in affects leaders, individuals, and teams, along with proactive steps you can take. Paying attention to frequently ignored common models of human behavior, team distinctions, and organizational patterns can provide a solid foundation for your teams. We expand from how coaches continue to engage in personal development to working with individuals to working with teams and organizations.? In addition, we identify what is often missing in organizational transformations.

Guidebook III is called “Coaches need to consult at times. ?While this book is primarily about coaching and is intended to be applicable to all approaches, there is a thin line between coaching and consulting. Consulting involves changing how people work and advice on it necessarily includes something about the approach being espoused. In this guidebook, we’ll talk about a variety of issues that are perhaps more for consultants than coaches but which coaches should be aware of. We will discuss both some standard issues to work with as well as some of the concepts in Amplio.

Who this book is for

This book is designed for anyone who wants to improve their ability to lead and/or coach people. However, it has a few people specifically in mind and we will add discussions about how to use this book for specific roles.

Leaders, managers, coaches, and consultants invested in creating resilient learning organizations

For organizations to succeed in the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world (VUCA), it only makes sense that leaders possess the same qualities, mental models, principles, and ways of being successful coaches. This book will benefit leaders involved in any organization-wide change.

This book will help you communicate and work with people more effectively, regardless of your approach.

Scrum masters who want to become effective coaches

We believe that being an effective Scrum Master requires more than what’s provided by Scrum itself. Without a mental model that represents what makes knowledge work effective, Scrum Masters are limited to an "inspect and adapt" approach, having to run experiments without assurance that they will be an improvement. A new world of possibilities opens to them with the addition of the theories of Flow, Lean, and the Theory of Constraints. This book will help Scrum Masters become better Scrum Masters and more effective leaders. They are encouraged to think and communicate about the systems they are in using their dormant knowledge and experience.

People who want to take advantage of what’s been learned in the theories of Flow, Lean, and the Theory of Constraints.

Shared understanding accelerates overall understanding. In the years since the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, the theories of Flow, Lean, and the Theory of Constraints have been deepened and become readily available. This book takes advantage of them by using them as steppingstones to convey essential concepts.

Knowledge workers who want to be empowered

This book is also for knowledge workers to have a holistic understanding of the context, the system, and organizational barriers and patterns that impact them in their work and who would like to learn how to coach up.

Being a great coach parallels the idea of mental models in Amplio - it's not just mindset. Hence, this book is designed especially for those learning Amplio.

Podcasts for many chapters are available

Many of the chapters have podcasts about them. Others are being added over time.

You can find these podcasts here .

Themes

Throughout the process of writing this book, several themes became apparent:

1. Everyone benefits when coaches empower organizations to see how critical it is to fully invest in understanding and acting on what their customers value while eliminating everything that pulls the organization away from that focus.
2. There is an intractable challenge often due to cognitive bias, mental models, limiting beliefs, assumptions, and simply fear of change: People only sometimes see 'what's in it for me,' the (WIIFM) factor. Reframing is a core competency for effective organizational transformation.
3. Coaches have the potential to generate significant value by recognizing that transformation is a journey comprising numerous transitions. They create an architecture of the transformation while focusing and acting on improvements. Having this holistic, longer-term perspective and a short-term focus is critical.
4. Coaches become more effective through learning and applying mental models, distinctions, patterns, understanding contexts and ways of being, thinking, communicating, and learning. They can partner with other coaches with different strengths and gain mastery more quickly.
5. We emphasize context, systems, and patterns at a higher level than frameworks, methodologies, and practices. By quickly recognizing patterns, we can positively impact any organizational transformation.
6. In transitions, all stakeholders must be brought along. People often consider those lagging to be impediments. However, when we respect these people, we often discover insights that will help everyone move forward.
7. Coaches are more successful when they incorporate a model of understanding based on validated experience into their coaching.
8. Partnerships between business and technology, product management maturity, and digital capabilities are foundational. While starting with teams is popular, it doesn’t directly address these and often leads to problems later.
9. Every transition should include a systematic approach to finding and addressing organizational barriers.
10. All aspects of an organization must be included, not merely business and development. Value to customers can be delivered more quickly when Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, and ops are included from the very beginning. All departments that support the organization must also be attended to (e.g., People/HR, Finance) even if they are not directly involved in development.
11. Alignment around strategic goals and metrics involving people, financial services, and business and technology partnership provides workability. Without it, coaches find themselves in organizations where priorities and decisions work directly against the transformation.
12. When you recognize organizational barriers as patterns, there are often simple ways to address challenges.
13. The potential impact of coaches is more significant than many people realize, even coaches themselves.
14. Everything begins and ends in communication. Investing in communication across an organization is foundational.
15. Psychological safety must be built into the system people are in.

Concepts not sufficiently dealt with in knowledge work

There are many concepts we’ve found useful, even essential, that are not commonly discussed. We’ve listed a few of these here:

●????? Effective “attitudes” for coaches and the fact that it is a lifelong practice: Attitudes of an effective coach, Coaching is a lifelong practice.

●????? System Thinking creates empathy and workability: Common cause and special cause errors, The importance of systems thinking, Understand the system.

●????? Using systems thinking and known patterns based on theories and models accelerates the emergence of effective practices, https://fs.blog/first-principles/ , Inspect and adapt versus efficiencies using models.

●????? Understanding patterns gives people an edge by enabling them to have a holistic view of how things work together.: Thinking in patterns.

●????? Respect the context you are in. Context is decisive: Capabilities of a coach, Coaches and leaders create empowering contexts .

●????? Combining value streams, systems thinking, context, Lean, the Theory of Constraints, creates deep insights providing what actions to take.

●????? Recognizing that different aspects of knowledge work have different degrees of complexity.

●????? The biggest challenge with knowledge work is small errors or misunderstandings causing big problems, not complexity: Complexity Is not our enemy; nonlinearity is.

●????? Effective coaching requires conveying essential distinctions that many don’t even notice. What’s the difference between experts and those with less competence .

●????? Recognizing that although companies are organized vertically, the work flows across the organization horizontally. Vertical organizational structures create silos with attention on local optimization and not on quick value delivery.? This can be illustrated in a graphic that makes waste in a hierarchical organization painfully clear: Managing within a hierarchical organization.

●????? How to communicate effectively with leaders: Getting executives to understand quick flow

●????? We need a way to continuously address organizational challenges and barriers. More waste is caused by not addressing these barriers efficiently than by not knowing what to do: We know what causes waste. ?

●????? Any change initiative is more successful when communications are strategic and coached including: 1-Listening fully to hear what people don’t say, including their commitments, 2-Acknowledging people authentically and the way they want to be acknowledge: Communications are foundational, Communicating for commitment.

●????? Talking about Challenges versus Problems: Talk about challenges, not problems.

●????? The foundation for great coaches and leaders is personal integrity. The foundation for personal integrity is well-being which must include mental fitness practices.

●????? It is critical to understand the roots of human behavior to support people through change.

●????? Being attentive to how people learn and think: Ways of being.

●????? How to start an engagement by being respectful and making clear the path to be taken will be decided on as a partnership. Starting an engagement.

●????? How starting teams with preset, not fit for purpose methods, can adversely affect team Agile adoptions. Working with organizations.

●????? By creating partnerships between business and technology at the start of a transformation, every phase becomes significantly more effective. Start with the business.

●????? How to coach managers.

●????? Agile coaching teams often model hierarchies with silos, the very structure they are trying to dissolve in their organization. How about modeling a learning organization?

●????? Coaches are in a great position to drive change around artificial intelligence.

●????? Everything begins and ends in communication. Investing in communication across an organization is foundational.

●????? There are a million ways to build psychological safety and being a systems thinker makes it easier for you to find the opportunities.

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