Hi guys, in my last post I explained a tool that I learned in one of Lyssa´s and Michael´s workshop. This tool is a great guidance for coaches in their coaching sessions. Now I will explain where you coaching focus should be placed. During an iteration, a coach must be aware that sometimes his coaching skills are needed to help both teams as well as individual team members. So let´s see when these different skills are needed…
In the beginning of each iteration, the coach must lead the team as a whole unit. Activities, like an iteration planning, require the coach to fulfill all elements in a group. At this point, there is not much work for individual coaching.
As soon as the iteration begins, team members approach the coach with their specific problems. Here, the coach must give an attention to each of them. At this point, the team coaching is not needed. The further the iteration proceeds, more attention towards individuals is required.
When the iteration reaches its end, team coaching is again desired. Activities, like retrospectives, are fundamental and here the coach must help the team as an whole unit. The coach will immediately address individual concerns together with the team, making the individual coaching almost no existent.
Below you can find a picture I took from Lyssa´s and Michael´s material - Coaching Agile Teams Workshop, that concludes what I wrote. The reason why I conceived this post is to create awareness among agile coaches. Coaches need to be aware that we need different skills for different situations. I believe, to be a good agile coach, we need to master not only the individual coaching but the team coaching as well.
Hope you liked this post.
Thanks,
Luis
you gotta love the wisdom Lyssa and Michael share…their classes or their holistic open minded sharing forums ROCK!!!
Indeed Paul
While I support leading from the front, when the team is lost, off the reservations, or having problems, I have found that when you do too much coaching in a ritualized manner such as you may be saying, it becomes a crutch you and the whole team latch onto and thus become hobbled. This often is the path back to a command and control mode that masks itself as increasing neediness for guidance.