My 5 Biggest Obstacles as an Agile Coach (and How I Overcame Them)
Like most agile coaches, I did not start my professional career in this role. I started as a Product Owner and turned to agile coaching after six years. There are many things about the role of an agile coach that fascinate me. It’s a broad field that includes a huge chunk of personal development. I needed to question a lot of my initial beliefs in order to serve my clients properly so they can achieve more for their customers. Here are five of the most important changes I have gone through.
Insight #1: Embrace the Opposer!
One of the most important realizations during my role change was that the agile coach must earn a different kind of authority than the Product Owner. I like to distinguish between two concepts of authority from ancient Rome: Auctoritas and Potestas. Auctoritas describes authority that is attributed to me by others, e.g. if they perceive me as competent. Potestas describes authority that I receive through my role or position (e.g. as a superior). I wasn’t aware that I had given up a lot of potestas without auctoritas already being attributed to me. Teams are willing to try things out when they trust a coach’s competence, which I didn’t have at that time. I also had no idea about the two concepts of authority. With great motivation to change things and without any idea how to gain authority, I ran into conflicts and encountered all kinds of resistance. Why doesn’t the team now take part in this workshop I have prescribed them? Why do they always question what we do? Why don’t they pay attention to their WiP, even though I have explained several times that they can deliver faster if they do? And with all this, the question also came up: Is it up to me? Looking back, I was dealing with what Lyssa Adkins calls “Master yourself”. Within half a year I had developed massive frustration with my new task and now it was time to work on my attitude as a coach. I decided to change companies for a new start, which was a good decision.
Not because I didn’t like the old company, but because a colleague there had presented me with an enormously helpful model. It helped me to see the potential in resistance: Kantor’s 4-player model. Kantor sees dialogue as an interplay of four stances, ideally all of which are taken.
- Without a Mover there would be no direction
- Without an Opposer there would be no correction or rethinking of direction
- Without a Follower nothing would ever be completed
- A Bystander provides a perspective (e.g. on the dynamics of the current dialog).
“Saying that someone was “nasty” is a moral judgement. Saying that he “opposed” connotes neither good nor bad.” David Kantor, Reading the Room
Yet, the most exciting aspect of this model is not the naming of the roles, but Kantor’s statement that each of these roles is equally important in a dialog. As an agile coach, the stance that had been most difficult for me in a Team until then was that of the Opposer. The model enabled me to appreciate the role. My ego no longer stood in my way. Because behind the role of the opposer there is often a valuable perspective. It can be added to the existing solutions in a group dialog with a simple invitation, e.g. by asking the opposer “How would you do it?” Or to put it in the words of a workshop trainer: “Resistance is first and foremost an offer to talk.”
As you can see, competence comes in different colors.
Your challenge: You don’t know how to deal with people that question someone’s direction and you’re usually trying to “harmonize”.
Try this: Look at Kantor’s 4-player model and try to classify the roles. This can help you recognize the value of contradiction in a group and make it useful for the group.
Caution: Although we might prefer certain roles Kantor’s model is not a personality test. People take different roles in different situations, so no one is always an “opposer” or a “mover”.
Mental Model: 4-Player Model
Insight #2: Address the Elephant in the Room!
One of the hardest lessons to learn was to find out that I — like many people — have a basic need for harmony that gets in my way. It took me a long time to understand that having this basic need is not the problem. Rather, it is how I deal with conflicts in my role as an agile coach. Identifying conflicts is one of the most important tasks of a coach.
For a long time, I put the contradiction between this important task and my need for harmony down to “lack of courage”. Until I found out that people make an important inner consideration when expressing their opinion. Among many other aspects, they wonder: Will my opinion isolate me? This often leads to the so-called Spiral of Silence. People avoid sharing their opinions and thoughts. This leads to invisible blockades when a group actually wants to make important decisions or find creative solutions together. Someone must address the conflict in the room so that the group can resolve it. After this realization, my need for harmony and the naming of conflicts were no longer contradictory. Rather, naming and working on the conflict was a necessary step to achieve more harmony and constructive disagreement. You can also find a lot about constructive disagreement in the classic book “The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team”.
Your Challenge: You think there is an opinion or an elephant in the room that prevents you from talking about the relevant things as a group.
Try this: Write the “elephant in the room” on a piece of paper, e.g. “The presence of the superior prevents you from speaking openly”. Then think about how to address it openly without hurting anyone. Assume that “your elephant” is initially only a hypothesis to which no one might react at first and that no one is to blame for the situation.
You can also try out this retrospective: Spot the Elephant.
Mental Model: Spiral of Silence
Insight #3: Let Go!
When I started my last job I was asked to moderate an important meeting. In the past, Clients perceived it as unstructured and needed a different kind of facilitation. I agreed because I wanted to give a good performance in my new job. But this motivation had an important downside. I was in danger of wanting to please my clients too much to get recognition. Many of us tend to see superstars as valuable members of a team because we tend to hero-worship in our cultures. This superstarism is not very helpful for teams. It is not very helpful to be dependent on one person as teams want to work out the most useful solutions from many different perspectives. What if the superstar leaves the company or the division? Who will do the job then? What I have long overlooked: This also and especially applies to a coach. We should always aim to ensure that the clients can handle our job themselves. So how do you deal with the fact that in my role as a coach I also have the human need for recognition?
A simple strategy helps me a lot: Redefine how you measure success. Instead of getting recognition for doing the job, I get it for enabling others to do it. It’s essential to find the right timing for this. Enabling clients to do the job themselves at the right moment is the key. Prepare yourself for this moment of handing the job over to your clients. Second-Order Thinking is the strategy of choice here. Simple and powerful at the same time you just ask yourself “And then what?” to come across second- and third-order consequences. In my case, the second-order consequence was: “I’m seen as responsible for the meeting and the results”, which was not my long-term goal (and by the way, not my client’s either). So I thought about how I could avoid this consequence from the start.
In my case, I communicated right at the beginning that I wanted to hand over the meeting again in the midterm. I moderated this meeting for a few weeks and helped to make it a little more structured. During my vacation, the team chose to moderate the meeting itself. So I took the chance and resisted my inner desire to be needed since I anticipated this moment. They had so much routine in the meeting that they no longer needed me. I could devote myself to things that were more important for the client and added more value.
Your problem: You always get into situations where you have the whole responsibility for a topic. You see this dependence as a risk and even as a burden for the goal of the group.
Try this: The next time you take on responsibility, plan for the transfer of responsibility, and the necessary steps. Communicate your intention from the beginning.
Mental Model: Second-Order thinking
Insight #4: They Know Best!
For a long time, I assumed that I know best what a team needs in order to achieve a certain goal. In doing so, I ignored that very complex processes take place in groups. They are not easy to diagnose from the outside. This is well-known thanks to systemic research on groups. You can’t assume a causal chain, “Do A, then B happens”. Still, I have experienced many Scrum Masters and coaches — including myself — who assume exactly this. Quotations like “they just need x or y, then they will run” are visible expressions of this assumption.
Groups, like many other systems in our complex world, are systems in which one can learn by testing. One can judge retrospectively whether an experiment was successful or not. This is a strategy that the Cynefin framework also applies to complex systems. My goal is to enable teams to self-diagnose. My task as an agile coach is to offer them the most useful perspectives and models possible based on the hypothesis I have to achieve this. A successful self-diagnosis is the precondition for self-management. The group can better achieve its goals.
There are concrete tools you can offer your teams for them to self-diagnose. You might know the Team phases according to Tuckman, Kanban, or the 4-player model mentioned above. For example, the perspective of Kanban makes it possible to see Blockages in the Workflow (self-diagnosis). The team can then take measures to improve the flow (self-management). See this very helpful article by Stefan Willuda for more details about how Kanban can help a team self-diagnose.
If a model or intervention was not helpful, I accept that as a learning experience.
Your challenge: A group does not change, although you think you actually know exactly what is going wrong. You have told them several times, but they just don’t understand it.
Try this: Take the attitude that your diagnosis is only an assumption and try to find out what your diagnosis is based on. You can use the Ladder of Inference. Ask yourself what other data you can observe. Challenge your assumptions. Which other model can you offer the group or team to identify the biggest obstacle to achieving their goals? My colleague Stefan Willuda wrote an inspiring article of how to make reflection and designing interventions a habit.
Mental Model: The one that is most useful to the group
“By using the Ladder of Inference, you can learn to get back to the facts and use your beliefs and experiences to positively effect outcomes, rather than allowing them to narrow our field of judgment. Following this step-by-step reasoning can lead us to better results and shared conclusions thus avoiding unnecessary mistakes and conflict.” Christine Noffz
Insight #5: Use Models!
If you have read my blog post carefully, you have surely noticed a pattern: Every decisive step in my development was made possible by changing my perspective. There is a simple way to achieve this: models. (Mental) models help you classify things and find new approaches to solutions. If it is possible to talk about it, very often basic assumptions behind a certain action come to the surface. Knowing those assumptions helps to change beliefs and actions.
Your challenge: You are facing challenges in your personal development. You need to overcome them so you can be of best service for your clients again.
Try this: Write down everything about your challenge that comes to your mind. Pick one mental model that seems to fit. Ask yourself: Were does my problem fit in here? What other perspective can I take using this model? Taking a different perspective will immediately help you to find different solutions.
You can find an extensive list of mental models here: https://fs.blog/mental-models/
“Mental models are deeply held internal images of how the world works, images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting. Very often, we are not consciously aware of our mental models or the effects they have on our behavior” Peter Senge, 5th discipline
In Conclusion
I became more effective as an agile coach by using mental models for my personal development. Cherishing opposers in teams as valuable contributors and learning to address the elephant in the room has helped me as well as my clients to develop. Furthermore, I learned that by letting go of my desire to be important I enable teams to rescue themselves.
Yes, mental models can help you. But be aware that you can only keep a few new concepts in mind at a time. Once you have internalized and applied a model, it will be easier to access it next time. Here is my advice: development with mental models takes time, so don’t put yourself under too much pressure.
If you want to know 5 more challenges agile coaches face, read this great article from my colleague Ido Sternberg.
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