Have any of you caught people saying that this was what they thought of agile coaches? I was having a look at the LinkedIn job alerts section and noticed that there were more and more opportunities for agile coaches and scrum masters. It seems that agile coaching was becoming quite a sought after and recognized 'profession', and many a time there were individuals I was working with who approached me to understand more on what were the 'benefits' of being an agile coach. And so having been in some communities of practice and also made friends with coaches and scrum masters from all over, I decided to crowd-source some nuggets of wisdom for budding agile coaches.
Have a genuine interest in building up people
The first advice came from one of my colleagues, who mentioned that any potential agile coach should first ask themselves if they liked 'building' people, as opposed to building a product or service. Not only that, before taking the plunge into this seemingly interesting role, one should have a gauge on whether they had 'resilience' and patience as a personal trait. Many a times your opinions as an agile coach may not be accepted by the team you are coaching, and having patience is required when progress is slow or when things aren't going your way.
Gain experience as a team member creating fantastic products
The second input I had was contributed by a friend and mentor of mine, who had many years of agile coaching experience under her belt. She mentioned that it was good for the prospective coach to first rack up some experience as a team member, working on creating great products and delivering value to customers. Agile coaching, especially when working with product or engineering teams, requires experience from being in the shoes of product team members. From there on, progressing into the coaching role is somewhat a growth and evolution from the product role.
The 3P's of an Agile Coach
Another piece of advice, this time from some ex colleagues of mine, was for the new coach to be passionate, patient (again) and to have a positive mindset. The prospective coach has to work on having a passion for all things related to agility, take a strong interest in the growth of their coachees and train themselves to have a positive take on everything.
Among those 3Ps, passion for agility was rated as the top prerequisite for someone to be successful as an agile coach.
Understand the definition of success
A really useful tip was contributed by one of my good buddies, who is now the agile coach of a regional financial institution. He mentioned that before jumping into the water, people interested in doing agile coaching should find out how success looks like for an agile coach. As a solution-focused practitioner, I couldn't agree more. For us, it isn't 'safe' to start the journey without knowing the destination. According to an article on Scrum Alliance, “An agile coach's success is often measured based on the performance of those they coached rather than by specific coaching metrics" (Fewell, 2022). Hence, if you're not someone who can accept that frequently you might end up taking the 'blame' for a team's poor performance, which may be due to your coachees not willing to change, or leaders on their side hesitating to role model needed changes, then you might want to think again whether agile coaching may be your cup of tea.
Meet your coachees where they are
And lastly, this is my take on how agile coaches can hone their skills at the start of the journey. For me, it is important to learn how to 'meet your coachees where they are'. It means that when you are coaching, you should really practise active listening, intentionally listening to understand their values, what they already know, together with their needs and expectations from having the relationship with you. As I try to make meaningful impact on the way people work, especially while practicing my craft in both business and technical teams, I need to communicate what the coachees needed to hear, at a level that made sense and was relevant to their situation. What made sense or was important for a team member in a development team was often not the same as a team member from a business team. The stuff that was important to the performance of the business team might not be the same as practices that would affect the results of the technical squad. The idea here is to find ways to support the team in a manner that helps them do their work better. Sometimes all a team needs is for someone to be a good 'mirror' for them to help them unlock their personal resources in order to deliver performance that satisfies their customers.
If you're thinking of whether you would like to join the rest of us who are already in this profession, one of the practical things you could do is to get involved in agile-related communities like Agile Circles or Agile Malaysia/SG. After all, nothing beats meeting people who already have immersed themselves in the discipline to help you understand the challenging yet satisfying role of being an Agile coach.
תגובות