August 25, 2009 in Agile, Books by Mark Levison

IMG_0299-3 Yesterday (Monday) Liz Sedley and Rachel Davies ran a coaching workshop “What Does an Agile Coach Do?” that helped me spot several things that I just never think to pay attention to. From Richard Hackman’s book “Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances” (which they highly recommend) they provided a number of observations. First we have to appreciate that there is distinction between a Leader and a Coach. A Leader is part of the team were as a Coach shouldn’t be part of the team and must set the stage for the day they leave.

Hackman identifies three types of coaching intervention and three opportunities to use those interventions effectively. Types:

  • Educational – improve the teams understanding/knowledge
  • Consultative – improve the teams process/actions
  • Motivational – improve the teams effort

And then three opportunities to use these interventions most effectively:

  • Beginning – Motivational
  • Middle – Consultative
  • End – Educational

Like Paul King, I found this counter intuitive at first until they suggested that we think of this a the iteration and not release level. So the start of the iteration we provide the team the motivational push to help them get the most done. In the middle of the iteration we can provide guidance and suggestions to improve the flow and progress. At the end of the iteration we reflect and find ways of learning from what happened. Each table was given a number of problem scenarios and we were asked what would we do. After describing what we would do we were asked to classify each intervention as Educational, Consultative, Motivational or other. Again like Paul it quickly became obvious that I do very little in the way of motivational intervention. In addition I spend a lot of my Educational efforts at moments when the team is less receptive and they will be less effective.

In addition I discovered a few other interesting things:

  • Breathe, Pause, Wait – don’t act in the heat of the moment. Instead relax and assess what tool will suit your needs best.
  • Ask questions and understand not just the what, but the why did the situation end up the way it did in the first place. Intervene only when you understand the whole situation, especially the history.

Finally Liz Sedley told me: Don’t ask why many people will take ‘why’ as an attack and go on the defensive. Instead ask ‘how’ and ‘what’ questions. The exception of course is doing root cause analysis (i.e. 5 why’s) and in that case you should explain what your doing.

Along with Richard’s book I’ve also had several recommendations for books on Systems Thinking: Bas Vodde and Craig Larman’s book Scaling Lean & Agile Development apparently contains a good chapter on Systems Thinking and Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization. I’ve heard of the latter book many times but never knew that the Fifth Discipline was Systems Thinking (Thanks Declan).

Other blog posts that I’ve spotted from Monday: Giving and Receiving Effective Feedback (my writing on InfoQ), Paul King’s: Counter-intuitive Agile Coaching Tips (also from this workshop), Masti, Co-Creator, Pair vs. Review, Agile Games – Agile 2009, Day 1 , FitNesse vs. Robot Framework – Agile Testing Tools and A conversation with Neal Ford.

Caveat Emptor – if you buy any of the books after clicking on my link I get 4% of the price. In all likelihood that means I might be able to afford a coffee or two.

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If you want to bring Mark into your organization for Training, Coaching or Consulting please visit the corporate site: The Agile Consortium.