Different coaching styles for different levels of Shu Ha Ri
Hi guys, in my last post, I spoke about Shu Ha Ri as a tool for agile Coaches and how it can help them to identify at which level of Shu Ha Ri their teams are. In this blog, I will explain what type of coaching should you apply depending on the level of your team. On the picture below you can see different kind of coaching styles for each different level (the original model can be seen in this post.
Teaching - A the name shows, at this stage you must teach the rules. The teams that are at this level they have a really basic knowledge of agile values/principles/practices. They need to have someone to guide them. Examples from Lyssa Adkins:
“Follow these rules. I have followed them before, and I know they will give you what you want. So, for now, just follow.”
“The rules work. Anything else is an impediment.”
“Everything you could need is right here, in this simple framework, so look here for your answers first.”
“Here is how this works”
Coaching - Is the next step. Here, teams have a good understanding of agile values/principles/practices, they start to interiorise them from their past experiences. They start to understand how they can use different approaches to achieve the same end result. At this stage, teams can come up with their own solutions, they just need a coach to help them finding different ways to achieve what they need. Examples from Lyssa Adkins:
“Why does this way of working work?”
“What kills it? What renews it? What feeds it?”
Advising - The last stage. In this stage, the team has fully internalized the values, principles and practices. Everything runs quite well, the role of the coach works as an advisor. For example:
“May I offer an observation?”
“That could work. Try it”
“I do not know. What do you think?”
One important thing, each successive stage contains the others. For example if a team is in “Ha” but you want to introduce a new practice or idea, remember to use a “teaching” approach because they are new to that practice so they will be in Shu for that idea. This is important because most probably you will be changing coaching styles depending on the practice or idea that you want to feed into the team.
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Thanks for the post Luis. I find the Shuhari model a useful framework for evaluating where a team is with respect to their evolution from novice to mastery. One caution for new coaches applying this model is don’t just focus on the process, and engineering skills behind necessary for doing Agile when at the Shu stage. Don’t ignore the soft skills and the ‘Mindset’ (Carol Dweck’s definition) of the team. Human systems (like Agile Teams) that rely on collaboration for effectiveness and improvement require team members to also work toward mastering those skills and values that make human collaboration synergistic.
An even more interesting challenge is applying Shuhari above the team level to coaching middle to upper middle management in trying to get them to ‘be’ agile. This level in organizations is where I find the largest impediments for teams and the overall organizations that are striving to
‘do’ and ‘be’ Agile. It is here the train most often gets derailed.
Middle to upper-middle management don’t ‘do’ agile like teams but they must ‘be’ agile to effectively serve their teams. This is where leveraging current thinking in the behavioral sciences (behavioral psychology and behavioral economics to name two) can serve an Agile Coach in forming techniques for moving people toward the behavior and practices that align with Agile Values.
Again, very interesting!
How does one get a team to open up to such teaching? While I agree with your analysis, I struggle with teams (and management) that believe to be expert after reading a 15 page guide. (Will this perhaps be a three part series of posts? ;) )
In general, people often do not to see that there is anything beyond the Shu stage (or in Dreyfuss terms ‘Advanced Beginner’ - there’s various blog posts about that around*). They read a bit, decide it’s simple, too simple to bother to absorb and internalize it properly and start to apply it in their own context. Basically they try Ha without their Shu’s on. Often they toss aside most of the knowledge as it doesn’t immediately exactly fit their context and therefore surely doesn’t apply there. That’s what subsequently interorizes through their own experiences..
Then they bring in a coach. Anything he teaches is too theoretical, not pragmatic enough; they have already considered that stuff and tossed it aside. They want to be coached, not taught. But they lack the understanding to work with. Now what?
*Like: http://blog.bruceabernethy.com/myblog/2007/08/the-dreyfus-model-of-skills-acquisition/
Great stuff :)
Good post Luis.
If I were a beginner coach how would you help me find my way between the different levels? I’m missing the rules about how to chose each of the levels ;)
Luis, Very interesting and useful. Thank you
Thanks :)
Very interesting