What is an effective coach?
Numerous perspectives exist regarding the ideal qualities of Agile coaches. We focus on the essential attitudes and capabilities of proficient coaches, emphasizing the need for leadership grounded in a systems-based approach. The attitude of a coach is rooted in their values and how they believe they should work with people. These are not learned as much as they are where people come from. The capabilities of coaches are learned skills that enable them to be more effective.
Through effective communication, applying theories such as Flow, Lean, and the Theory of Constraints, and understanding the fundamentals of human behavior and learning, coaches assist teams and organizations in improving their ability to provide value to their customers. At times, coaches are also consultants. They are responsible for helping teams improve. The balance between these two roles provides efficient ways to reach a goal.
This doesn’t mean telling people what to do, which is ineffective. Telling people what to do often increases resistance if they don’t want to be told what to do. It also denies them the opportunity and practice of working through the details of what is involved. When they encounter a challenge with you not being there, they may not know what to do, and this lack of understanding may have them abandon a solution pattern even when it could have worked. People often already have good solutions. In this case, it is up to us as coaches to empower them to access their dormant knowledge and help them frame it by mapping it to the underlying pattern or theory it relates to. This makes it easier for people to access, apply, and communicate knowledge across contexts and situations.
That is why we focus on asking questions first.
Here are some benefits of asking questions. We’ll cover the following in this book:
●????? generates stronger decision making
●????? empowers individuals and teams
●????? fosters critical thinking
●????? generates ownership and accountability
●????? builds trust and alignment
●????? enhances communication skills
●????? facilitates learning and growth
●????? promotes collaboration and engagement
●????? increases innovative solutions and opportunities
●????? promotes self-discovery
You can learn to quiet your mind and ask more impactful questions as a leader and coach. In an organization, all of these generate psychological safety and cultivate a culture of continuous improvement. Ultimately, these drive organizational agility. It also results in significantly reducing turnover, quiet quitting, and disengagement. It provides focus and alignment across the organization.
Listen to an audio summary of this here .
Attitudes of an effective coach
Attitude is an essential aspect of successful coaching. Some attitudes are related to your personality, but we mean something different here. We mean how you approach things. And this is something you can shift to. You might slip at times and not act consistently with your stated attitude. There are specific practices that go beyond the scope of this book which significantly impact your ability to consistently come from these attitudes.
The right attitude goes a long way with the people you work with. You want to partner with the people you work with. The best coaches are not just passive facilitators, they are guides and leaders. They have sought out what works, courageously tested their hypothesis, successfully implemented repeatable patterns and models, and learned how to communicate to inspire others effectively.? They know when to wear the hat of coach, consultant, facilitator, trainer, mentor, or a combination to serve both the organization and their teams best. This chapter presents the attitude you need to have to solve problems for your team(s) while not forcing things on them.
While it’s great to have these attitudes, we acknowledge that almost no one has them all of the time. Sometimes the world gets the better of us. They are more of a promise to yourself that this is how you will be. When you find you’ve fallen short of your intentions, recommit to them. Don’t judge yourself as having fallen short. It’s natural to not always come from these. The key is to have these be how you live more and more often. The key is also to find the inner work that promotes these attitudes through holistic wellness, an underlying driver to consistency.
It’s worth noticing the time it takes from when you fall short to when you recommit.? If you can shorten this gap over time, then you are well on your way to manifesting your intentions.
Being effective and respectful always makes a difference to your career and how you feel about yourself and your work.
Being a visionary
A visionary believes that there is a better way. They think they can take people from where they are to something better. A visionary sees this future even when others don’t. A visionary inspires others to see it as well.
Many people are too busy working to stop momentarily and see where they are headed. Others think that if “the going gets tough, the tough get going.” A visionary looks for a better way. One that can be achieved more easily and with better results. The unshakable belief that we can improve ourselves and others can be contagious.
Being a visionary is often uncomfortable and requires believing there is a way when others don’t. In such cases, you may pull others forward to become visionaries themselves.
But being a visionary does not mean being a dreamer without rational optimism. We are rationally optimistic about finding a path forward. In determining what is rational, it is incredibly important to consider your position in the context or what we write about, the runway. You may have the experience, a workable vision, and the ability to communicate and implement your vision; however, if you are not in the right place in the organization, you may be done before you start.
Taking responsibility
Taking responsibility means acting as if you are responsible in the matter. Responsibility is not blaming yourself or others. It is your way of being when there are miscommunications, or something does not go according to plan. When what a coach has said is not understood, they take responsibility for the lack of communication. They are committed to achieving a better understanding. Instead of blaming others for the miscommunication, they look to see how to be more precise in what they are trying to say. A visionary must take responsibility to avoid getting sidetracked quickly. A visionary with responsibility will keep looking for better ways despite a lack of agreement. Taking responsibility and being a visionary sometimes means going somewhere else.
Humility
Humility is an acknowledgment that everyone has value. We may be experts in one area, but no one is the best at everything. People with humility can still have self-confidence and know they are good at accomplishing things. Humility is not a putting down of oneself but more of an uplifting of others. People with humility realize they do not have all the answers and must work with others to achieve them. People with humility can put their egos aside. This is particularly important in recognizing that unless the coach is already an expert in a particular domain, they will have to accept the judgment of those with more expertise in that domain. It also means that if you are leading an Agile Transformation, regardless of your experience, you remain open to other coaches, product owners, managers, and leaders, and are willing to acknowledge when their idea is better or at least should be considered. Having humility enables a coach to continue to learn and embrace the value of others.
One of the most significant signs of humility is to let go of your own ego for the greater good. It is not always easy to do especially when people around you are triggered or reacting. However, taking a step back and recognizing that another person, idea, or overall contribution is more important shows respect, gratitude, generosity, and even love.
Another way to show humility is to see everyone as a contribution and to be willing to learn and hear from many voices. Finally, humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.
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Good leaders promote subject matter experts and provide opportunities for contributors to demonstrate and utilize their knowledge.
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Promote your subject matter experts, SMEs
One aspect of humility is to promote others. We have seen coaches and consultants insert themselves between the team and leadership frequently. It is often the way people think that is how the role should be played. We suspect this is more a holdover from traditional project management and a lack of understanding of the value of empowered teams and subject matter experts (SMEs), versus about their ego. In other cases, it is about pushing their own agenda or creating visibility for themselves.
It’s always about them.
A personal story by Paula Stewart
I was working in a large, legacy organization where this was the pattern. There was a very talented technical leader supporting a couple of the teams. He was not always comfortable communicating with leadership. Knowing how talented he was, I was committed to promoting him for both his sake and the sake of the organization. Did this mean that perhaps I was giving up some leverage with leadership? Yes. However, I knew that I did not have the technical chops that he did; if I got out of the way, there would be full communication, a chance to ask questions, and eliminate playing operator. By the way, given the various roles I have played as an engineer in organizations, playing operator is very common. I can tell you this is extremely costly to the organization.
I took the time to coach him on communicating to the Vice President and I set up the meeting. I wanted to ensure everything went smoothly in this first meeting. I felt joy when it went smoothly, and I had taken myself out of the middle. Given a systems perspective, I knew this was better for the organization, for the team(s), and better for the career development of that very talented lead developer. I did make sure that there was follow-up just by asking questions afterward and I helped in putting things into place. At the end of the day, in that organization, was this in my personal interest? No, and yet, I would do it all over again.
Because it is always about them.
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One way that coaches and consultants can make a profound difference to teams is to promote the expertise of subject matter experts and make them more visible to leadership.
Empathy and compassion.
Empathy is walking in someone else’s shoes and seeing the world from their perspective. It means understanding their emotional sense of being.? It is critical for all roles. Empathy facilitates excellent communication. Compassion goes beyond empathy. It takes someone’s concern for the suffering or well-being of others, hearing everything they need to say, and/or taking committed action to alleviate the suffering or promote the well-being of the person in need. This requires authentic kindness and a desire to make a positive difference without disempowering the person you support.
Part of empathy and compassion is also recognizing the situation people are in. Very often people act in a way that’s not consistent with who they really are because of the burdens the situation is putting on them. When a coach looks for this, they can often help a person become much more effective by either seeing how they can improve their situation or helping them communicate effectively the reality of the situation to others and accepting it themselves.
Congruence, integrity, and authenticity.?
Good leaders must “walk their talk.” This means that your words and actions are consistent with each other. Coaches can influence people by modeling behavior. This goes beyond how to do things. It includes your way of being when things get tricky.? This requires integrity - focusing on helping your clients more than easing your ego.
It often takes courage. Being authentic means being honest about how things are. Admitting when you don’t know something or are dealing with something unfamiliar. People tend to try to please others - usually without even realizing they are doing this. Authentic people tend to be more candid and open about what they really think.
Trust is essential in any leadership or coaching relationship. It allows people to share with you what they may not be sharing with their leadership, be mentored by you, and be coached which provides multiple opportunities to impact the system people work in and the individual positively. Congruence means your energy, body language, tone of voice, words, and actions line up consistently and over time in various scenarios.
Sometimes, being authentic is not comfortable. You may know something that you’d rather ignore. Perhaps you’ve been asked to do something, but it’s beyond your capabilities. We’re not talking about when you have imposter syndrome. You may be a competent coach. It’s when what’s needed is outside of your abilities. Being authentic means ensuring your team or clients get the best coaching they can, this may include bringing in other coaches with different specialties.
You may also be talking to a prospective client. If you notice that they are going down a path that a prior client did, one that wasn’t successful, you need to mention it. But this will likely not be comfortable.
Congruence - A consistent focus on the well-being and transformation of each group or team member while demonstrating attentiveness and continuity in interactions by recalling details from previous conversations is a sign of congruent behavior in coaching. It shows that the coach is fully present and engaged with the clients, aligning their actions and communication with the goals and values of the client. This type of attentiveness is valuable in teams and organizations.
Integrity - In coaching, integrity shows up by being mindful of individual boundaries and referring people to others when it makes sense. This careful balance between facilitating growth and respecting personal limits is a key aspect of ethical coaching in any setting.
Authenticity - Being genuinely happy and excited about someone else’s growth shows deep authenticity in interactions. It reflects a sincere investment in the client's success and progress, conveying that the coach's interest and encouragement are heartfelt and not merely a professional obligation.
Congruence, integrity, and authenticity work together
A personal story by Paula Stewart
I had started a coaching group with the message that they were all there for each other as a team and that one person’s transformation was the team’s transformation. This came from my years of working with and leading teams. There was a man who had gone through a very difficult incident. By setting up the team dynamics this way, listening fully with empathy and no judgment, he was able to process this incident. With integrity, I asked him if he was sure that he was comfortable processing something with the team. Not everyone wants to process difficult events with a team. He absolutely wanted to use this coaching approach, and we put boundaries in place while the team rallied around him. He continued to contact me from time to time in his different roles and every time with congruence and authenticity I completely remember his journey and what is critical to him even when he reaches out with months or years in between our last coaching session. In addition, as I continue to grow in my own practices, I share my journey if I know it could make a difference to him.
Integrity is not always comfortable
A personal story by Al Shalloway
Walking your talk is not always easy. I remember my early days as a consultant. Things were going well with the client. After working with them for a few days, I laid out a plan of action, and they seemed positive about it. But then things started taking a bad turn. I can’t remember exactly what the conversation was, but I remember that it sounded like something that had happened about a year before that hadn’t gone well.
Management understood what I was saying about using a combination of Lean and Kanban, and we had made plans to implement it. They had even contracted us to provide coaching. But throughout the process, they never backed what we said.
This was a major lesson for me. Funding does not mean agreement or even support. I realized later that they were just going through the motions because it looked good to their leadership but that they considered the change risky to them personally and would mostly benefit their employees. After this, I looked deeper into what management’s true motives were.
So as this new client was talking, I remember thinking, “Uh oh, this conversation sounds like what happened last year with XXX. I’ve got to point this out.” But the next thought was, “I can only point this out if I mention the failed endeavor with them. That won’t look good. My clients are supposed to succeed.” This “conversation” took only about half a second. At this point, I was in the dilemma of knowing I needed to say something and knowing that put the contract at risk. Fortunately, I had enough experience to know I would eventually tell them everything, so I told myself, “You’re going to tell them this eventually, so stop debating it and tell them now.”
I had every expectation of them throwing me out on the spot - “We don’t want a consultant who fails.”
Instead, they appreciated the honesty. They ended up being one of our better clients.
It’s not always easy, but if you can’t be true to yourself, you can’t be true to others.
And although you may not see it then, people respect your integrity more than anything else. You won’t succeed with those who want something else.
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We have found that being honest in difficult situations becomes easier. But regardless of how difficult it is, being honest is essential.
These attitudes work together
When people have a vision, remain committed to it regardless of what they encounter, are responsible in how they achieve it, believe it can be accomplished, have confidence in themselves, are congruent, and know they must include others, great things are possible. Regardless of the circumstances, people who are committed to their vision don’t give up. Finally, congruent people powerfully influence others. This is required to make a positive difference.
These attitudes work together over a lifetime. Systems thinking is related to all these attitudes. Staying humble and authentic allows you to grow. If you are empathic and compassionate, you will continue to consider your impact on yourself and others and strive to make a positive impact in all areas of your life. Understanding the impact of a situation and having empathy for yourself and others makes it easier for you to accept responsibility and come up with more holistic solutions. Being authentic is the only way to be congruent and have integrity. Having empathy and compassion means you will freely contribute to others and know that when you do this with humility, you see your own blind spots and triggers by successfully having them work through theirs. Ultimately, this means you stop blaming and judging others and yourself. Instead, you recognize what would make a difference and use practices to grow.
These attitudes in action when someone says they do not want to learn
These attitudes work together to help you work in difficult situations:
●????? Being a Visionary tells us there is a solution to the issue, even if it’s not apparent.
●????? Responsibility lets us know it’s up to us to find it.
●????? A belief in understanding gives us the confidence to find it.
●????? Humility reminds us that we’re not superior to anyone else and that everyone can contribute.
●????? Empathy and compassion remind us that when a person causes pain for others, they are likely in pain themselves. We must remember that the system, or situation, then are in is causing the issues we are seeing.
●????? Having our actions and communications congruent, integral, and authentic keeps us on the path that looks for alignment and collaboration while creating possibilities for those around us.
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Lifelong practice
The best coaches and leaders will tell you that they take a stand to ‘be” these qualities. In other words, they intentionally practice showing up this way in their actions and communications. They also take a stand for their customers and clients. They know that living consciously as a stand for demonstrating these attitudes is never “done,”; it is an ongoing, intentional practice. There is no magic pill. Understanding these qualities without consciously practicing them does not make you an effective coach or leader. It is only in the very intentional practice of these qualities that you see where you get stopped, get to give that up, and recommit to practice the attitudes again. The more you do this, the more you come from these attitudes and the more they are who you are. Approaching this with empathy for yourself and others is foundational. Ultimately, you will find yourself being someone who creates their life. When you find you’ve fallen short of your intentions, recommit to them. Don’t judge yourself as having fallen short. This is natural.
It’s worth noticing the time it takes from when you fall short to when you recommit.? If you can shorten this gap over time, then you are well on your way to manifesting your intentions.?
The capabilities of an effective coach?
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Besides having the right attitude, coaches need to have a certain set of capabilities.
1. Know how to get clarity on what success means.?We define an improvement initiative's success by the increased speed of cost-effective value delivery to stakeholders. An organization's success requires understanding who the stakeholders are, their influence, the impact of an improvement on them, their values, their underlying commitments, and what is valuable to them. We also say that stakeholders include employees. If you do not consider them in the picture, it will show up in turnover, not being able to recruit talent, and eventually impact your value delivery.
2. A deep understanding of what makes workflows effective and how to adjust for the context the team is in. When a coach understands why things work, they can provide that understanding to the people and those accountable for the work. The use of theory helps get everyone on the same page. They can also adjust the practices required for the context they are in.
Part of this capability is systems thinking. We will discuss systems thinking in depth throughout this book. Good coaches know that most challenges occur due to the system people are in. The system itself can cause interpersonal and communication issues. A good coach looks at the system first. This perspective gives them empathy. This also has them look for patterns both where they are working and in organizations similar to where they are working. Edwards Deming said that 94% of errors are due to the system. Many have said, “A bad system will beat a good person every time.” It is essential to know that most of the time, the problem is not with the people being coached but with the system they are in.
Systems thinking shifts our focus to the bigger picture instead of taking the easy way out of blaming people.
Understand the system and ask questions.
A personal story by Paula Stewart
While working in an organization, I saw that there were many barriers to work-life balance. Estimates excluded technical enablers, no integrated portfolio existed, and the lack of product management considering sustainability was impactful. As a result, the development teams' work was not clearly measured or understood. They were often blamed. I wanted to ensure work was visible and prioritized according to goals and an integrated portfolio. In the same organization, there had been mass firings of manual testers and little automated testing. The result was that multiple front-end developers spent an average of six to eight hours each night resolving coding problems while deploying to production. From experience leading deployments into production, I knew that testing was happening in production as they didn’t have a staging environment or automated tests. Not surprisingly, developers were exhausted as a result of all of this. It is easy to have authentic empathy when you have experienced similar things.
Picture this: one day, the Human Resource Manager pressed send on an email that promised to provide a solution. The subject line talked about the company's stellar performance. The email offered a life-changing hyperlink, an article about the elusive realm of time management. As if clicking on a mere link, developers would suddenly uncover the mystical powers of bending time to their will regardless of constraints. Can you imagine how employees feel working at an unsustainable pace due to the system they are in? They were being blamed for poor time management.
I promised myself to create a relationship early on with Human Resources and this caused me to research and understand PeopleOps and leadership coaching that gets to a root cause. By prioritizing employees and taking a system’s approach, root cause would have been understood, and compassion would have eliminated the barriers to work while generating empathic communication.
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The importance of this capability cannot be overstated. While coaches don’t need to be programmers, even in digital products, they must understand the universal principles of the specific knowledge work they are serving. This enables them to be proactive and anticipate what may happen. You don’t have to play “whack-a-mole” with impediments coming and hitting you. It also allows you to make more compelling arguments with leadership.
3. Understanding how people learn and what impacts their thinking.?People are complex beings. They have limitations on how they can learn and how much they can know at any time. Understanding these limitations can avoid a lot of wasted effort. Understanding how people learn can avoid creating resistance and empower them to implement new knowledge. People often operate from cognitive biases or incorrect mental models. Understanding what these are allows you to address them proactively.
Part of this is recognizing where people are, which helps you lead them to where they want to go.
4. Be able to convey necessary concepts to different roles such that new actions and behaviors arise. This includes having great communication skills, knowing how to ask questions, how to explain things from more than one perspective, and helping people interpret their ideas and communicate them.? You also need to come from their perspective. For example, using Agile technical words with some leaders or the business does not work. You will get further by understanding the domain of the people you are talking to and speaking to them using their language.
5. Effectively interact with learners to enhance their effectiveness. ?Impactful coaches are respectful, effective communicators, have high integrity, and are committed to whom they are coaching. In other words, they demonstrate high emotional intelligence. They recognize that there are different types of learners and that talking less, asking questions, and listening more will always be more impactful. This includes conflict management, facilitation skills, and how to find common ground when there are competing opinions or interpretations.
6. Have appropriate tools and methods to help people work together effectively. Teams who are not collocated often need to work together. Various technologies and approaches are essential. Technologies include virtual boards, chat rooms, tools for making work visible, tools that simplify remote planning, including virtual conference rooms, collaborative whiteboards, anonymous and real-time surveys, and actionable insights through metrics.
Coaching versus mentoring versus consulting versus training versus facilitating
There are five competencies of a coach, and these rarely occur in isolation. We specially address the need to be a consultant at times. You will understand the nuances in communication for each competency. As it is common for coaches to switch hats, we have worn distinct and physical hats depending on what role we were playing to avoid role confusion.
Coaching is subtly different from mentoring. In both cases, you focus on creating the environment for people to become more effective. In mentoring, by its very nature, you generate credibility as a subject matter expert in a particular domain.
While coaches may not be hired as mentors, it’s helpful if they have the skills to do so. Often, an individual will ask for more guidance than what is made available to the team. Based on a coach’s background, they may be unable to mentor or consult. Mentoring will include direct and straight communication about how to do things. While a good mentor will also ask questions to validate that knowledge transfer occurred, mentoring is more about providing evolving or best practices. Some excellent coaches bring people together and empower subject matter experts to play those roles. Later on, we discuss what a coaching team can provide.
The distinction between coaching and consulting is that coaching draws from a person’s current knowledge and context while asking questions that may cause someone to switch their current path based on their inner wisdom and intuition, while consulting is often more about recommending one path over another. These lines blur, of course. Understanding current ways of working, being curious, and building relationships is critical.
The difference between coaching and training is sometimes subtle. It is useful if a coach has some skill in training. Coaches combine coaching, training, mentoring, and facilitation to introduce and empower teams to implement new concepts. Coaching is typically more about guiding someone to improve their performance in many areas. Training involves introducing new concepts that are useful to enable a particular ability. Both Paula and I have successfully created programs that successfully combine micro-training with coaching and find this much more impactful than days or week-long training.
The time you invest in learning how to create impactful training is well worth it! It is possible to move your teams through change more quickly and even make that change enjoyable if you know how to develop experiential training, how to deliver different modes of training, how to reinforce and check on the impact of training, how to use tools to provide training, and how to bake training into how teams work.? This allows coaches the ability to provide a deeper level of understanding.
Facilitators guide groups through divergent and convergent thinking phases. Facilitation differs from all the above. During any facilitation, it is crucial to maintain psychological trust. People's experiences change depending on their worldview, role, experience, skills, personality, and psychological trust within the organization. A great facilitator can be neutral and comfortable handling conflict, which is critical to go from divergent (brainstorming) to convergent (alignment on solution) thinking. Coaches who don't know how to facilitate conversations effectively can negatively impact psychological trust. A group conversation can alter psychological safety positively or negatively.?
We highly recommend knowing the personalities of stakeholders and preparing them based on those personalities in advance. This one step can make all the difference in psychological safety.
In a coaches' world, all five competencies blend over time to different degrees.
This book concentrates more on the coaching role. However, the information in this book will allow coaches to be more effective in all these competencies.
This book is being put online as part of the Amplio Community of Practice
You can buy a copy of this book on LeanPub .
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