Why Coaching is Important

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What is the Problem?

 

For people in 20th century organisations training was an obvious necessity. Just look at the still-classical organisation and see that it has a Training Department neatly tucked into the organisation chart just under Human Resources. (I hate that name…but I digress.)

 

Much changes in our post-industrial world where we think for a living, solving increasingly complex problems. Our paradigm for helping people be effective has not yet caught up.

What are the challenges?

    • We are solving hard problems. This requires the brains of multiple people to be aligned and work collectively to emerge solution options.

 

    • Failure remains stigmatised as something bad, rather than being recognised as an essential and desirable outcome of experimentation towards innovation.

 

    • We remain stuck in authoritative command-and-control cultures that fail to unlock the potential of people.

 

    • Employees acknowledge their own individual achievements, but less so their contribution to the result of a shared effort.

 

    • Managers have not yet grasped their new role as enablers rather than directors.

 

    • Most organisations reward individualism while hoping for teamwork.

 

    • …add yours here…

 

What is Coaching?

 

Professional coaching may be described as a method for helping a person or a team to achieve specific goals in their professional lives. Paraphrasing Kaltenecker and Myllerup: the coach acknowledges that the person or team being coached already has the potential abilities required for reaching the goals and the assignment for the coach is to help unlock this hidden potential.

 

An “agile coach” often steps into acting as a teacher, advisor, mentor or role model. Here she applies her own expertise to lead and guide the individual or team in specific ways. Yet as soon as possible she should return to a coaching stance to return appropriate the power balance to the relationship.

 

The diagram depicts the difference between when the “agile” coach is relying on her own expertise of the content as distinct from the systemic coach using her own ignorance of the full organisational context and applying curiosity as a powerful helping tool to build relationship.

 

Agile vs Systemic Coaching

 

Why Do We Need Coaching?

 

Ask any successful leader and she will tell you stories about the people who have helped her, formally and informally, along her journey.

 

In order to learn and grow we require honest feedback. Without enough trust, honest feedback is unlikely to be offered and received in a productive manner. Traditional work environments do not provide safety for trust to flourish.

 

And in the modern work context that requires collaboration to produce good results we need to develop new “soft” skills that we were not taught at university or technicon. Teams and individuals need to learn to be vulnerable to one another.

 

However it is not a given that we will ask for help. There are hard questions to answer, for example:

 

    • How do I recognise when I or my team needs help? Am I even capable of knowing what it is I don’t know (my blind spots)?

 

    • Why would my boss pay me a salary when I need outside help to do my job?

 

    • How does asking for help make me feel? I have to “lose face” to accept help from another.

 

    • …add your own…

 

In the South African cultural context where “cowboys don’t cry” and “boer maak ’n plan” it can be particularly hard to ask for help. And in the “controlling” and “competitive” styles of organisational cultures that still predominate worldwide it can be seen as a sign of weakness.

 

So many of us live with an unhealthy tension between needing help from others in order to grow, and the uncertainty about whether or when it’s okay to ask.

 

The coach as trusted external party is well-skilled and well-placed to facilitate the necessary conversations to help teams grow trust, deal with conflict and offer commitment that in turn lead to increased accountability and improved outcomes.

 

An Economic View

 

In work over nine years with more than 100 teams we have observed a marked difference between the extent and the pace of growth of individuals and teams that have received coaching and those who have “gone it alone” after, perhaps, a two-day training class.

 

An analysis of our own data shows a correlation between “performing” teams and the quantum of help. The sweet spot seems to be between one and two days of coaching per team member during the first year of transition. To be clear this includes all facets such as advising and organisational development. Our data does differentiate between individual and team coaching, yet clearly there is a need for both.

 

Benefits we have observed during and after coaching include:

 

    • Happier and more engaged team members

 

    • Reduced staff turnover

 

    • An increased sense of “we”

 

    • An increase in self-confidence and independence

 

    • Increases customer and stakeholder satisfaction through value delivery

 

    • Increased throughput and decreased “time to market”

 

    • Increased transparency and predictability

 

When asked how soon the benefits exceeded the costs, many clients have experienced improvement within a few weeks and the classic “J-curve” of change has not been felt. And it is not uncommon to hear “we have doubled/halved X compared with last quarter/year”.

 

Adding Perspective

 

Before we conclude that coaching is some “magic elixir”, let’s be clear that contexts differ and it is hard to attribute causality to a single element. Nevertheless we have many times heard “we should have got coaching earlier and had more of it”.

As Weick and Sutcliffe remind us in their excellent book about High Reliability Organisations, it is “a sign of strength to know when you’ve reached the limits of your knowledge and know enough to ask for help”.
¹Sigi Kaltenecker (Loop Organisationsberatung) & Bent Myllerup (agile42): Agile & Systemic Coaching
http://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2011/may/agile-systemic-coaching

²Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe: Managing the Unexpected—Resilient Performance in an Age of Uncertainty (Second Edition, 2007, Wiley), page 80.

black and white dolphin in water

Dealing with team conflict and problem solving – Drama Triangle Model

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As a Team Coach or Scrum Master, conflict within a team is something we often have to deal with. Over the years I have come across a number of techniques that help resolve team conflict. Regardless of the technique you decide to use, its important to understand or try to see each individuals map of the world. Try to understand the position each team member is coming from, what state they are in, and how they interact with others based on the given scenario.

Drama Triangle

The Drama Triangle is a model that will assist you, the Team Coach or Scrum Master, understand how the team member is possibly dealing with the conflict within the team or any given scenario.

The Drama Triangle is a model developed by Stephen Karpman, in which a person takes on one of three habitual psychological roles within a particular situation. It is important to note that these roles occupy positions of behaviour and not statements of identity. Also important to note that one may perform one behaviour type in one context and quite another in a different context. Kordis and Lynch have transposed the model into the following symbolic roles. The three roles are:

    • The person who plays the role of a victim (The Carp)
    • The rescuer, who intervenes, seemingly out of a desire to help the situation, or the underdog (The Pseudo Enlightened Carp or P.E. Carp)
    • The person who pressures, coerces or persecutes the victim, plays the role of the persecutor (The Shark)

The Victim or the Carp
The victim experiences a sense of safety by submitting to others. In a threatening or conflict situation, the Carp will rather give in and avoid further conflict. The Carp believes that their views don’t count and have no value. There is another side to the Carp, they can manipulate a situation through anger, resentment and retaliation, so that they do not have to act as an adult or accept any responsibility. A Carp will often seek out a Shark so that they can fulfil their role of the victim.
“Without you, I am not ok”.

The Rescuer or the P.E. Carp
Of the three, the P.E. Carp is the least obvious role. The P.E. Carp does not play the role of a genuine rescuer in an emergency. What they really need is to maintain the status quo or to escalate the drama to continue to feel that they have value. Although they appear to have a strong motive for resolving the problem, their actual motive is not to succeed. They need to feel like they are depended on or trusted. They are the solution hero.
“I am not ok, you are not ok, that’s ok”.

The Persecutor or the Shark
The Shark believes that they are never the one at fault, and is quick to blame someone else. They love the power of manipulating and moving or pushing people around. They are your proverbial bully. They need to be right at all costs and will not back down, whatever the consequences. They focus on getting their own way all the time, resulting in Sharks being easily fooled or losing sight of what the problem is. Their behaviour results in going over and over the same problem without resolving it or finding a solution.
“Without me, you are not ok”

It is often the case that a person will move from one role to another. Consider this scenario: “Why does this always happen to me? (Victim). It’s all your fault this happened (Persecutor). It’s ok, I am sure I will solve your problem (they actively disempower the other) (Rescuer). An individual may assume an alternative role depending on the group dynamic or circumstance. All three roles love drama and all three are victims with different masks.

During a conflict situation, it’s important to see which role is being played by whom. In some cases, it will be obvious which is the default role one particular person plays, which is helpful. Most times, however, people will move between roles.

It will take time for you to develop the skill to identify who is playing which role, and you might not always get it right in the beginning; that’s ok. Some people will be more transparent than others. For example, a persecutor who is passive aggressive will not show any of the expected behaviours, but under the surface they are a ticking time bomb. This isn’t helpful in the moment, but at some point, they will show their true colours. This may help in any future conflict as you will have a better understanding of the role this person may be playing. Watching their behaviour and listening to their language is key to identifying the role being played, and sometimes these behaviours can blur.

The role of the Team Coach or Scrum Master is to identify who is playing which role in the current situation. Knowing this can help anticipate the behaviours acted out by each role, and prevent people getting stuck. It is important here to rather keep moving forward to finding a solution to the conflict or problem

The Dolphin

It’s only fair that if the other roles are metaphors of fish, that the Team Coach or Scrum Master has a fish metaphor as well. Introducing The Dolphin! Ok, so it’s not a fish, but it is a marine animal :).

The Dolphin has the ability to remain cantered and stay out of the drama. His attitude is to identify the behaviours played out by the participants and work to bring out The Dolphin in all of them. He is creative, firm, solution oriented, he creates a space for others to manifest their brilliance. He is comfortable with conflict and sees it as an opportunity for constructive growth and as a platform to facilitate the system rising to a higher level of consciousness.

An exercise that you may want to consider, is to present the team with the Drama Triangle and get them to discuss, as a team or in small groups, the behaviours of each role. Ask if they have noticed these roles being played out. Give them some time to discuss and then ask them to think about which of the three roles they believe is their default. The objective is to try and get everyone to play the role of a Dolphin. By understanding and identifying these behaviours, they should be more self-aware. I would suggest that you only explore this exercise if you have developed a high level of safety and trust within the team.

The Drama Triangle is useful in many situations, from a family unit to an individual one. Keep an eye on how you respond in a stressful situation. While you are facilitating the resolution of a conflict situation or helping a team solve a problem, you are hopefully not emotionally involved and are therefore able to be the observer from a meta level. In a situation where you find yourself a player in a conflict situation, make a note of which role you seem to default to. The goal is to try and elevate the roles you play in these situations; to become a Dolphin in all situations, not only as a facilitator, but in your day to day life as well. Understanding and playing these roles, and being self-aware of when they change, allows you to have an idea of someone else’s map of the world, which gives you a better view point, to help you to guide.

Remember, a Dolphin always comes up for air, which removes him from the turbulent waters and allows him to keep an eye out on the horizon.

Original Drama Triangle model by Stephen Karpman (http://www.karpmandramatriangle.com/), Adapted by Sedrick Theodosiou – Inspiritu (http://www.inspiritu.co.za/)

man wearing white and black plaid button-up sports shirt pointing the silver MacBook

Have a structure for your coaching conversation

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This blog post is the third in our series about professional coaching skills for agile coaches. If you have not yet read the first blog post, “Listen, be curious and ask the great questions!”, or the second one, “Your strategy for formulating powerful questions”, we suggest you read those before continuing here.

A coaching conversation is not just a small talk about how things are going or not going. Coaching conversations are for committed individuals or teams, that want to make a significant change or get wiser about an important matter. To help you succeed as a coach, you can apply a structure to the coaching conversation that helps you and the coachee or team to focus on talking about the important matter and find specific actions to carry out as results of the conversation. It is important to remember that a coaching conversation is something that you design together with the one or those that you are in service of, at the moment when the conversation is wanted. As a coach you never take the coachee or team to places they do not want to go – this would be strictly out of line. What you do instead is help them to go where they want to go, while helping them reflect on the important matters.

The two levels of the coaching conversation

As shown on the figure below, a coaching conversation is conducted on two levels: A) The conversation level and B) The meta level. As coach you are constantly acting on both levels. The coachee or team is primarily on the conversation level, but will from time to time be invited to the meta level by you.

The two levels of the coaching conversation

The conversation level is where the conversation happens. Here you are using the levels of listening, and you will form questions based on keywords as mentioned in a previous post. The coachee or team will answer your questions on this level as well.

The meta level is where you are designing and reflecting on the conversation. Here you are deciding which powerful questions to ask (possibly based on the Karl Tomm model), which hypotheses to formulate and in which direction to take the conversation next. As a coach you can imagine yourself as having a third eye observing the conversation from this level and your awareness about the flow of the conversation, and the answers you get will help you make the right decisions.

Meet up at the meta level

As mentioned, you will from time to time invite the coachee or team to join you at the meta level. The purpose for this is to have a conversation about the conversation, collaborate on designing the conversation, reflect on the learnings so far and make decisions about where to go next.

There are normally at least three opportunities for meeting at the meta level: 1) establish the contract for the conversation, 2) a time out during the conversation and 3) when you do the summary of the conversation. But before digging into making the contract, you should spend a little time on establishing contact with the one(s) you are coaching. Here chitchat is okay, as long as you are steering towards starting the coaching conversation. Establishing the contact helps people relax and feel confident in speaking freely.

How you can establish the contract

When you are establishing the contract, you invite the other party to a talk about the conversation you are about to have. Here you can ask questions like: “What is the topic you want to elaborate and get insights on?”, “How can I best serve you during the conversation?”, “Are there questions you especially want me to ask or questions you absolutely do not want me to ask?” and “When this conversation is over in (for example) one hour, where do you expect to be, what do you hope to have learned?”. I find it to be good practice to have the coachee or team formulate the goal of the conversation in one short sentence – and I usually also memorize it by writing it down on my own.

Now the coaching conversation can begin – usually by formulating questions based on keywords extracted from the agreed goals for the conversation.

Make timeouts

During the conversation, you can from time to time make a timeout to evaluate the conversation. Here you can summarize the learning so far and decide where to go next. Timeouts help to co-design the conversation on the fly with the purpose of bringing the most possible value into it. Think of it as a sort of inspect-and-adapt on the meta level.

You can use timeouts when you feel the conversation is at a crossroad so you have to make decisions on which path to take next. Be humble and do not take for granted that your personal decision will be the best path. Instead ask the one(s) you are coaching and follow their choice. Remember: it is not about you! It is all about them!
You can also use timeouts to re-negotiate the contract if you realize that another topic seems to be more important.

You can make as many timeouts as you feel necessary, asking questions like: “Let us summarize: We have been discussing …. and …, figuring out that …. . Do you want to expand more on this, or would you rather move on looking at other options? What would this be?”, “As I see it, we can either go in the direction of … or in the direction of … . You might see a third direction. Where do you want to go from here?” or “In the beginning of this conversation we agreed on speaking about the topic: … . It seems to me that we are more discussing the topic: … . Do you want to return to the agreed topic or is the topic we have been discussing lately more important? Do you want to change the agreed topic?”.

When the timeout is over you can continue the conversation taking into account the decisions you have just made together.

Define the next steps, starting with a clear summary

By the end of the conversation, it is time to make a summary focusing on the specific steps the coachee or team is going to do, in order to have the desired change. Have him, her or them speak out the summary instead of you doing it. That fosters the sense of responsibility. Remember: it is not your solution – it is their solution!

It is great practice to ask, as a follow up to the conversation, about what will be the next step, when will be done, and how you will know that this has been achieved. To the last question the one(s) you coach will usually answer something like: “You will get a mail, letting you know how it went”. Your reply can, in service to the other part, then be: “And if I do not receive this mail, will it be helpful for you if I ask you about how it went?”. This attitude sharpens the awareness about the coaching conversation as something that serves a purpose, rather than just being a small talk about life, the universe and everything.

End by asking for feedback

Finally, by being a coach that wants to improve your skills, you should also ask for feedback about the coaching conversation. Ask questions like: “How was this conversation for you?”, “What did I do that was especially useful for you?” and “Which questions did I ask, that were useless or disturbing for your understanding of the matter?”. Receive the feedback with gratitude, maybe ask clarifying questions, but do not go into arguing about where either the feedback was right or wrong. The important matter is how the coachee or team experienced your coaching – there is most likely a point behind the feedback where either you liked it or not.

Previous parts published on August 16th and October 7th. Graphics from the author, accompanying illustrations from High resolution jigsaw puzzle pieces set by Horia Varlan/Flicrk.

A question and exclamation mark of jigsaw puzzle pieces

Your Strategy for Asking Powerful Questions

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This blog post is the second in our series about professional coaching skills for agile coaches. If you have not yet read the first blog post: “Listen, be curious and ask the great questions!”, we suggest you to read that one before continuing here.

Asking the right questions is a challenging task. Especially when you do not want to pose your own opinion on to the person or team you are talking with. Great coaching questions are open-ended, non-judging and helps to foster new ideas and visions about possibilities. These kind of questions we call powerful questions.

There are several approaches to practicing powerful questions. They depend on which coaching school you are coming from. One approach is to practice a deck of questions until you know them by heart thereby being able to choose the right one in a given situation. Another approach is to learn a strategy on designing the right question in the moment. This strategy comes out of a model developed by the Canadian psychologists Karl Tomm.

The past and the future – simple and complex understandings

The approach of Karl Tomm has roots in systemic theory. It encapsulates circularity and the understanding that each of us has a different view of the facts about a given situation. No one has a monopoly on the truth. The model pictured below shows two dimensions: Time and understanding.

The past vs the future on the horizontal axis, and simple vs complex understandings on the vertical axis.

Some of our powerful questions are aimed at what has already happened, and some are aimed at what could happen. Some of our powerful questions presume that there is one and only one truth (linear questions), and some acknowledge the diversity in our understanding of the truth (circular questions).

When we ask questions that are past-oriented and linear, we ask questions like a detective in an interrogation: “What happened?”, “Who did what?”, “Who’s fault is it?”, etc. Here we are looking for facts that helps us understand the issue.

When we ask questions that are past-oriented and circular, we ask questions like a anthropologist doing his research: “What do you think was their motivation to do so?”, “From which point of view could the action he did, make sense?”, “Could it be that she saw something that the rest of you did not realize? What could it be?”, etc. We are looking for intentions and expanding our understanding of the intentions.

The questions we ask are future-oriented and circular questions with the intention of exploring opportunities and expanding possibilities. Here we ask questions like a future researcher. We might also ask questions that suggest that a miracle happened overnight: “If you come to work tomorrow and the problem has disappeared overnight, how would you notice?” “When you, in three months, have solved this matter and look back on it today, which decisions did you make that made a difference?”, etc. Questions in this category might seem a bit strange at first, but give it a try. The advantage of questions like this is that they disconnect the person or team in front of you from the constrained situation they are currently, freeing up energy to see new perspectives and decide new cause of actions based on those perspectives. They help the person or team in front of you to see which part of the miracle or the desired future is already present today and how they can be used as stepping stones towards the goal.

Finally, we can ask simple or linear future-oriented questions. They are questions that captain would ask. They are more directive and serve the purpose of setting direction for the wanted change: “What is the first thing you are going to do?”, “Who will you talk to?” and “How can he or she help you?”. Like in a retrospective, this is where the specific tasks are defined and prepared for action.

It is like driving a car

When coaching someone, we are mostly looking at the future and the change we are going to make. However, from time to time we must look back to the past to understand what have happened and why we are in the current situation. It is like driving a car: We are mostly looking out the windshield at the traffic in front of us, but from time to time we also look in the rear mirror to know what is behind us.

There is no specific route you must follow when using the model of Karl Tomm. Personally, I find  that most of the time I start as a detective, then become an anthropologist, then investigate  as the future researcher and finally ending as the captain. But on my way, I may jump back and forth when my intuition tells me to.

Asking powerful questions is a valuable tool you can use as a coach, and with practice, you can, in time, be fluent in this approach.

Read this series’s third and final part, “Have a structure for your coaching conversation”.

A question and exclamation mark of jigsaw puzzle pieces

Listen, be curious and ask the great questions!

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Working as a ScrumMaster or Agile Coach for a team, you know that one of your most important objectives is to help people better themselves. “Ask the team” we often hear, but actually, our job is a bit more complicated than that. Asking the right questions can be a challenging task, especially if you already have the “right” answer in mind. If this sounds familiar to you, there is help in the curriculum of professional coaches.

 

The first important ability you have to learn is to be silent and listen. When coaching individuals and teams, you are not the important part. They are! Therefore, active listening and awareness of which level you are listening on, is essential. Professional coaches talk about three levels of listening:

Level one is your level if you are unaware of active listening. Here, you relate what is being said to your own world, situations your past recall, your strong opinions about the matter and so on. Most likely, you end up being the one talking, sharing your own experiences and giving advice. Is this helpful for the person or team in front of you? It can be, but it might also be that you have been providing the right solution to the wrong problem! When it comes to helping the one in front of you, to better their own capabilities, you definitely did not succeed.

When you are on level two, you are focused on the person or team in front of you. You are connected by eye contact, deep listening to what each person is saying and what the person is saying “between the lines”. You are trying to understand the perspectives and intentions of this person by letting yourself see the world from their position.

At level three, you are doing the same as on level two, however, you are also sensing the feelings; the happiness, frustration, the sadness of the one in front of you – and you reflect those feelings back.

When you are listening, it is almost impossible not to be at level one once in a while. It is not bad to be at level one, but you should try to find survival techniques to move you from level one to level two or three when you realize that you are on level one.

So what are we listening for?

One technique to apply is to be listening for keywords. Keywords are words that stick out in the conversation – words with a deeper meaning. When identifying keywords, you can repeat them to yourself to memorize them and use them to form new questions. In that way, keywords help to unlock the understanding of the topic you currently are discussing.

When using keywords, do not take anything for granted. Be curious about the obvious things and ask clarifying and verifying questions.

If you are in doubt whether a certain keyword is important or not, there is a simple and efficient way to find out. Just ask if it is important or not. You will get an immediate answer.

With the use of the levels of listening and asking questions based on keywords, you are on your way to being acting more as a coach than a mentor. There are of course more advanced techniques that you can learn but start by practicing these basic techniques before going further.

It is important to remember that not every conversation is suited for coaching. If you have a fixed agenda with the purpose of providing tough feedback, coaching is not the format to use. Coaching is for well-functioning people, who want to reflect on a matter and find new ways to act with the purpose of improving their situation. As a coach, you do not take the one in front of you to places that they do not want to go. A coaching conversation is a conversation, that you design together as a shared responsibility.

By the end of each coaching conversation, remember to ask for feedback so you can learn and improve. What did you do during the conversation that was especially useful? What did you do that was not so useful? Which questions did you forget to ask?

If you are interested in learning more about professional coaching in the context of agile teams, you can get extended agile education through the Advanced Agile Team Coaching course developed by agile42. Through this course, you will, in addition to acquiring professional coaching skills, learn about the Coaching Structure and tools that are part of our Team Coaching Framework and used on daily basis by agile42 coaches.

Read the second part of the series, “Your Strategy for Asking Powerful Questions”.

Photo by Horia Varlan, on Flickr

black click pen beside MacBook Pro on table

Agile Estimating 2.0 – Cheat Sheet

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Team Estimation Game

  • Start with a stack of ranked story cards. The team will arrange the cards so the smallest size items are on the left and the largest items on the right. Items with the same or similar size should be grouped together in vertical columns (the same place in the left-right direction).
  • Place the first (highest ranked) story card in the middle of the table (or in the middle of the board or wall)
  • Team members take turns estimating in a round-robin manner. On each turn, the player has two options, as shown below. With both options, the player will explain to the team the reasons for his or her estimate.
    • Take the top story card off the stack and place it on the table based on its estimated size
    • Move a previously placed card to a new location if you think it should be estimated differently
  • During a player’s turn, other team members may speak only to ask clarifying questions; they must not express their own opinions during another player’s turn.
  • After the last story card has been estimated, each player may take one more turn to move a card if he/she wants to.
  • Assign story point values to each group of cards. Even numbered teams use the pseudo-fibonacci sequence (1,2,3,5,8,13,20,40,100), and odd numbered team use powers of 2 (1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128)
  • You may not have stories for every number in this sequence.
  • Numbers represent the relative size/effort estimated for each story. For example, 3 story points is approximately 50% more effort than 2 story points, and 8 points are two times the effort of 4 points.

The Team Estimation Game was originally developed by Steve Bockman

Using color to visualize your backlog

  • What aspects of your stories are important for estimation? Discuss this with your team
    • Example: type of materials used, number of pieces, method of construction, etc.
  • Download Agile Estimation Cheat Sheet

This cheat sheet was part of the agile42 speech together with Propero Solutions on the Scrum Gathering Shanghai 2010.