Challenges of Agile coaches and scrum masters - part 4 – Agile coaching and how to stimulate the Agile Mindset.

What is Agile coaching and how do you stimulate an Agile Mindset.

I assume that you now know what the Agile mindset means... otherwise read Challenges of Agile coaches and scrum masters - part 3.

The question you should answer first is; what exactly is coaching? In my view, a coach is someone who helps others learn to help themselves. A team coach is someone who teaches a team to coach itself! An organizational coach is someone who teaches an organization to organize itself. A coach is therefore always temporary. The job of a good coach is to make himself obsolete. He must be “focused” on developing others and subordinate himself to them.  

In Agile land I often see very different movements and coaches have been involved in coaching teams for years. They are even appointed permanently for a specific team. You may wonder whether this really makes teams self-organizing! Coaching is not new. The definition of coaching in Wikipedia is; “Coaching is the form of guidance aimed at changing people in a positive sense, based on healthy people and a belief in the change possibilities inherent in the lasting interaction between insight and behavior.” Around 1840, the word coach was first used at the University of Oxford, England, to describe a private teacher who prepared students for an exam.

The largest renowned institute for coaches in the Netherlands is NOBCO.

Professional coaches have NOBCO accreditation and adhere to the ethics established by NOBCO. According to NOBCO, coaching is:  

"Coaching is a structured and goal-oriented process, in which the coach interactively encourages the coachee to behave effectively through: awareness and personal growth, increasing self-confidence and exploring, developing and applying their own possibilities. Coach and each coached person takes responsibility for the process." *coachee can also be understood as: a team that is coached as a unit.

Important characteristics of coaching are therefore awareness and growth or development. This awareness is necessary to ultimately teach individuals and teams to develop themselves based on intrinsic motivation. This goes further than demonstrating and showing that something works.

In Agile land, coaches provide training, advice, act as mentors, show how things are done, encourage collaboration and try to embed an Agile-based framework in a team. They coach both individuals and teams. And that often goes well at first. The Agile coach thinks: great, they can do it themselves and I can take a step back. But what happens after a number of sprints? The team falls back into old patterns. The Agile coach comes up with something new and starts again with even more fun interventions, even more training and demonstrations. This also appears to work for a while.

Maybe, if you're lucky, a little longer than last time. But in the end it turns out again that it doesn't last.

Agile coaches pay attention: it's not just about the rituals, it's not about the behavior change alone, it's not about creating more "Fun" every time or continuing to reward (celebrate) the team when it has delivered the sprint goals.

An intrinsic motivation must arise. It is about developing an awareness that the Agile mindset and the way in which we collaborate yield more than the old working method. Then there is an intrinsic motivation to embrace the new working method.

Now it is true that I have trained NLP Practitioners and Masters in NLP for 14 years. “NLP stand for Neuro Linguistics programming. Neuro Linguistics programming is the systematic study of human performance. The structure of the subjective experience can be modified, improved upon and removed. NLP sets the frame and allows for growth, and change, at a deeper structure level, much faster than originally believed." I won't go too deep into it here. A lot has been written about it. The name programming in NLP has a bad aftertaste for some, as if it programs people. But it has nothing to do with that. NLP provides insight into their own thoughts, beliefs and behavior, so that the person in question can make much more conscious choices in his own development.

The NLP change model provides insight into this;

What this model says is that people or groups exhibit behavior that always benefits the individual, otherwise they would not exhibit that behavior. What it produces is always a “feeling”. Ultimately, you do something or exhibit certain behavior because it will make you feel good. Sometimes it doesn't work out, but it was the intention. And that intention comes from your beliefs, your thoughts about something.

And if you want to move people to a new situation, such as Agile mindset or way of working, this means that the new situation must provide a “feeling” that is greater and nicer than the old situation. That also means different beliefs, other “beliefs”. People need to be convinced that the new Agile mindset and working method will yield much more for them as a person, but also as a team. Otherwise it would be flogging a dead horse. In short, you cannot force self-organizing teams. Doesn't it sound logical? But unfortunately, practice is often different.

A good coach pays a lot of attention to this process and intervenes in such a way that intrinsic motivation arises within the teams. This intrinsic motivation ensures a movement towards a certain degree of self-organization. I say emphatically to some extent. Not every team develops to the same level. A good coach sees through this.

So.. How do you develop a self-organizing team?

It is therefore important that all behavior produces something positive for the team as a whole, but also for the person. For example, if a “Sprint Planning” or a “retrospective” has been held, it is important to take note of what it has achieved for the team and for the team members personally. Often, especially in the beginning, it will yield something positive for the team as a whole, as it provides clarity on what will be worked on, but this may be different for the team members themselves. As a coach you need to find out when it will provide added value for the team members themselves. For this it is also important to speak to people individually. Take note of this and discuss possible adjustments. Try to ensure that things go a little better with each sprint. Let the improvements come from the team itself. Gather this information throughout the sprint and use the retro to embed the changes. In the beginning, with a team that is not yet self-organizing, it is important to plan separate workshops for this. That takes time and will be at the expense of the “velocity”, but you will recoup this three times over.

 In a next article I will tell you more about what is so important about NLP and how it can help you as a (Agile) coach but also as a non-coach. It gives you a lot of insight into people's behavior.

#DevOps #Agile #Scrum #Scrummaster #NLP #AgileCoach #Coaching