Do you have what it takes to be an agile coach?
Before joining Xero, I used to work in project management. The way we ran projects was to think about people as specialised resources who would be deployed to different initiatives.
But there was one project where we got the opportunity to ask people if they actually wanted to join the project team. We built a team around motivated people and it was so different. I didn’t have to manage them, I just needed to guide them.
It really opened my eyes to the fact that when you let people jump into the work they want to do, it’s a whole different game.
You can put the carrots and sticks away. That’s when a friend said to me: ‘Have you heard of agile? There’s this whole way of working that’s built around that’.
What is an agile coach?
At Xero, we’re called agile team facilitators. In some ways we’re like sports coaches, responsible for helping teams perform at their best. It could be about improving communication, or enhancing software delivery practices and processes.
Really whatever they need to give our customers a great experience using a high-quality product. The role also fosters collaboration across disciplines, so regardless of whether you’re a developer or designer or tester or quality analyst, our aim is to get you solving problems together right from the start.
But we don’t just use agile methodologies to do it. That’s why our team was recently renamed ‘Product Delivery Centre of Excellence’, because we use a whole bunch of different tools and mindsets. These include agile, lean, design thinking, DevOps and more.
Every team is different and has a different style of working, so we don’t force people to use a certain approach. We’re not the agile police. We seek to guide them towards the desired outcomes in a way that suits them.
It’s such a fun job. But it’s also challenging to look at a group of people and work out what’s holding them back. You need to make sense of the mini culture of one team and try to understand what’s going on.
We spend a lot of time observing people’s behaviour. Who is speaking a lot? Who is getting ignored? What processes aren’t working? We try to keep fresh eyes and fight out biases so we can hold a mirror up to the team.
Sometimes people resist a coach, because it seems like a weakness. But I believe we all need help to step back and see the wider picture.
As well as agile team facilitators, we also have product delivery coaches, who partner with our facilitators. Both roles are focused on building capability, they just do it in different ways.
Facilitators are embedded in a team and work with individuals on the ground, often for six or 12 months at a time, whereas coaches come in at a strategic level and work across product groups and leadership teams, to advocate for our facilitators and address the blockers that are holding groups back.
Skills you need to be an agile facilitator
There’s no particular qualification you need to be an agile team facilitator. But there are a few skills that you need to be able to navigate tricky conversations, help teams work through challenges and establish ways of working that will stick around long after you’ve moved on.
Emotional intelligence
First and foremost, you need emotional intelligence (EQ). You need to be able to read rooms and understand the subtleties of body language to identify what people might be feeling, so you can investigate it further. But you also need to be able to regulate your emotions and understand how you’re impacting the team, so you can stay neutral and not get in the way.
We’re not counsellors, but we do want to create an environment of psychological safety.
People should feel comfortable sharing what’s going on with them or speaking up when they think something needs to change. It’s a delicate balance that requires lots of vulnerability and trust, so it’s really important that the facilitator has a high EQ.
Leadership
As humans, we have an incredible ability to do something for a little while and then revert back to our old ways. It takes good leadership to build positive habits and reinforce them over time. But in facilitation, it’s more of an influential type of leadership, because we don’t have any authority over the team. We have to earn their trust and help them see the benefits of changing the way they work, so they want to keep going.
Leadership skills are also important for making sure everyone has a voice. That’s a big one for us. We want everyone in the team to be able to contribute. If they don’t, you need to be able to understand how to work with each individual in a way that engages them and drives the team forward. We can teach people how to implement the different tools and mindsets that we use, but you really have to be a people person to be successful at it.
A team player
We not only coach teams but we are a part of one. We value practicing what we teach and understanding how it feels to work transparently. So we have a community of agile practitioners around the world who come together to pursue a common goal and share what they’ve learned while embedded in their team. Having a ‘home base’ is really powerful, because it means you can debrief and tackle problems together. However, it does mean you need to be a team player and actively participate in our coaching community. Because we can’t do it alone. We need each other.
As well as sharing knowledge and experiences, we also do strategic initiatives together. For example, we might start seeing a pattern across Xero where there’s a consistent pain point. Generally, we’re not the ones who are implementing the change, but we can bring awareness to the problem and support building up knowledge so teams have the tools they need to try and tackle the problem. The better we work together as a team, the more successful we will be.
Some of these skills are instinctual, but all can be developed. At the moment, we’re building our team of agile facilitators and product delivery coaches to make sure we can support as many teams as we can around the world.
