Take a Leap of Faith in Your Coaching

There are many aspects of coaching that involve an element of risk. Taking a risk requires courage. Consider how the following coaching techniques require courage and how using or avoiding these techniques will impact your effectiveness as a coach.

Providing candid feedback – providing feedback that is well received, considered and acted on is a skill. But how else is a coachee going to realize that they have a blind spot or are missing something important?

Challenging – as a coach, a big part of our job is to challenge our coachees in a constructive way to stretch their expectations and reconsider their perspectives, assumptions, and beliefs. Without this, they may never make the mindset shifts required to make a change that they themselves want to make.

Offering up a hunch – as you are listening to a coachee, you may have a hunch. If you don’t offer the hunch for their consideration because you worry that they may dismiss it, you run the risk of them missing out on a wonderful opportunity to short-circuit their search for a solution.

Interrupting – imagine a coachee has scheduled 30 minutes to discuss an important issue with you, but they end up focusing on all of the details of the issue and telling a story for most of the 30 minutes. Interrupting risks alienating the coachee, but having them walk out at the end realizing that you let them talk the whole time runs the risk that they don’t see any value in your coaching.

Asking powerful questions – although powerful questions are one of the most effective tools in the coaching toolbox, sometimes they fall flat. How would avoiding powerful questions impact the effectiveness of your coaching?

Offering coaching – coaching is not universally understood and recognized as valuable. By offering your services as a coach, you risk hearing “no thanks.” But if you decide not to offer your services to a potential coachee you risk a missing out on an opportunity for both yourself and your potential coachees.

Being in the zone – if we are thinking about “am I violating a coaching principle” as we coach, we will constantly be taken out of the fluidity of being “in the zone.” There is a big difference in effectiveness between being in the zone and being out of the zone. Rather than second guessing yourself as you coach, just be yourself. If you do violate a coaching principle, it is unlikely that the coachee will know or care and you can always use it as a learning experience to do better the next time.

Whatever your current tolerance is for taking a risk while coaching, consider challenging yourself to push your boundaries a little more. After all, you are encouraging and expecting your coachees to push their boundaries and take the risk of making changes and learning and applying new skills. It is only fair that you model the courage that you are expecting of your coachees.

Coaching Can Be Fun!

There are at least three good reasons to have fun when coaching. First, sharing a good laugh together is a great way to build rapport. It reminds us that we are human, that life has its ups and downs, and that togetherness is one of the things that helps us get through the rough parts and that makes the celebrations that much sweeter.

Second, sharing a good laugh makes us feel good and consequently increases our energy level. It puts us into a more creative and collaborative mood.

Finally, coaching takes us to some awkward or difficult moments. Humor can reduce the tension and help us keep our minds open to possibilities that we may not have previously considered.

A word of caution. Not everyone will appreciate every facet of your sense of humor. I once got the following feedback in a retrospective after a coaching workshop: “I think some folks may have interpreted your sarcasm as mocking what they said.” Especially when a person is feeling vulnerable they may misinterpret your attempt at humor as making light of them rather than the situation.

It is always best to be yourself. If you tend to use humor a lot, that’s great! Just be mindful of who you are interacting with at any given moment. If they don’t seem to fully appreciate your sense of humor, just dial it back temporarily. While your sense of humor is part of who you are, we regularly adapt our behavior to the given situation all the time. Think about how you might act differently at work, at home, with close friends, or at a wedding to name a few examples. Coaching involves interacting with many different people with many different personalities. Make sure to take each person’s uniqueness into account when you are coaching them.

One more point regarding humor: it doesn’t have to come just from you! To the extent that you are comfortable, let folks know that it is totally appropriate to have some fun during coaching. If your coachee makes you laugh, point out how it contributed to the session (assuming it did) and encourage them to be themselves around you.

Using Your Intuition When Coaching

Some people are big fans of intuition and others are very skeptical of intuition. Perhaps it depends on
the definition of intuition. For the purposes of coaching, there’s at least one definition of intuition that can be very helpful: “an insight that arrives in the moment without a clear chain of reasoning to support it.”

Our brains are amazing. We make decisions in the moment on a regular basis “without even thinking about it.” Of course, we are thinking about those decisions, but it happens much faster than when we are trying to figure out something new or do something new for the first time. We often call this distinction acting with or without conscious thought. When we act “without conscious thought” it just means we aren’t aware of our thought process as it unfolds, but we can explain our reasoning afterwards if we need to. For instance, if a car comes out of nowhere and we swerve to avoid it, we can explain “I had a feeling that there was a car about to hit me coming from the left, so I moved to the right.”

When coaching, we can think of intuition in a similar way. We get an insight on what is happening in the moment which is likely based on our past experiences and our skills as a coach. However, we aren’t quite sure how to explain the reasoning behind the insight. As a result, we may doubt the value of that insight and resist sharing it.

If your intuition provides you with an insight that would have helped the coachee move forward, but you didn’t share it, that’s a shame. On the other hand, if you present an insight as an observation, you run the risk of leading the coachee astray.

When you are coaching, and your intuition provides you with an insight, consider sharing it like this:

“While we’ve been talking, I think I may have had an insight, but I’m not sure. May I share it with you to see if it fits in with what we are discussing?”

As long as you make your offer quickly and make it clear that it is up to them to decide whether your thought was truly a relevant insight or not, it is hard to go wrong. If it was useful, then they will incorporate it and move forward. If it was not useful, very little time was expended and you can move on. The more you lean on your intuition, the more your skill in presenting potential insights will grow.

Going Beyond the ICP-ACC - Becoming a Certified Professional Coach

I have decided to head down the path of becoming a certified professional coach. Specifically, I am enrolled at the International Coach Academy, pursuing the PCC level of coaching as defined by the International Coach Federation. I am doing this for a couple of reasons. First, when covering the professional coaching aspects in my ICP-ACC workshop (the coaching mode/stance from ICAgile’s Agile Coach model of coaching, mentoring, facilitating, teaching), I want to be able to do that from the position of being a certified professional coach. Second, I am planning to offer ICF certified coach training to the Agile Coaching community, hopefully starting in the beginning of 2020.

As I make my way on this journey, I would like to invite you to come along with me. I will be incorporating more of what I learn on this blog, in my ICP-ACC workshop, and in additional workshops that cover more of the ICF coaching competencies. I am hoping that some of you will want to be part of my first graduating class of ICF certified coaches as part of my ICF accreditation process, much as some of you were part of my ICP-ACC accreditation process.

As a start, in this post I will introduce you to the International Coach Federation, the professional coach certification process, and areas of the coaching competencies that don’t typically come up in the materials and offerings that most Agile Coaches are exposed to.

The International Coach Federation – ICF
The ICF is the world’s largest professional coach association. They offer a coach training accreditation process for coach training organizations as well as a certification process for coaches. You can become a member of the ICF without being a certified coach. Membership obligates you to follow their ethics guidelines and signifies to the world that you intend to operate as a professional coach. This is a good step to take along the way to becoming a certified professional coach.

The ICF Coaching Competencies
The ICF’s coaching competencies cover 11 different areas, from ethics to powerful questions to managing progress and accountability. The learning objectives of the ICP-ACC primarily overlap with the ICF’s competencies in the areas of: coaching agreements, active listening, powerful questions, presence, self-management, feedback, and coachee accountability.

Looking Beyond the ICP-ACC
Considering that the goal of the ICP-ACC is to simply introduce a few of the concepts of professional coaching while also covering many other aspects of Agile Coaching, it can only scratch the surface of professional coaching. If you are interested in learning more about what it means to be a professional coach, here are two resources I encourage you to explore. The descriptions of the ICF competencies: https://coachfederation.org/core-competencies and the behaviors associated with coaching at different levels: https://coachfederation.org/app/uploads/2017/12/ICFCompetenciesLevelsTable.pdf

Advanced Agile Coaching

This post assumes that you are already familiar with Agile Coaching as described in Lyssa Adkin's Coaching Agile Teams, taking an ICAgile ICP-ACC class, or having read the Agile Coach Basics mini-book on this blog.


The Coaching Mode
When you are in the coaching mode of Agile Coaching, you are not working together to solve a problem; you are enabling the coachee to do all of the problem solving on their own. All of your mental energy should be focused on looking for which coaching techniques to apply and applying them.

Coaching Triggers
When you are in the coaching mode, your main job is to look for coaching triggers. A coaching trigger is a specific set of circumstances that indicate the use of one or more coaching techniques. For instance, if the coachee is wandering aimlessly, that’s a trigger that indicates using a technique like focusing, interrupting, or orienting. On the other hand, if they seem distracted, you should consider using the technique of releasing. Here is a brief introduction to eleven coaching techniques and their coaching triggers that you may find useful.

Redirecting
When you are given a direct request, such as “can you go give that team a refresher on Scrum”, always try to move the conversation to a coaching conversation. For instance: “Sure. What’s the background on this?”

Releasing
You may notice that the coachee has something on their mind getting in the way of working on their main concern. Consider bringing it out into the open with a question such as, “you seem a bit distracted by something. What’s up?”

Spectating
When you are overloaded, you may feel the need to ask the coachee to pause, slow down, or repeat information. Instead, try following along with them and allow them to pursue their problem solving thought process wherever it may lead. When things settle down, you can always ask for a summary.

Clarifying
If something the coachee is saying doesn’t make sense to you, it may be there’s something they haven’t completely thought through but they don’t realize it. Having the coachee back up and take a look at what they are saying may help them uncover a hidden assumption or a blindspot. Example: “I’m not sure I’m following you. What’s another way to explain that?”

Splitting
By thinking of a goal as a user story, with a who, what, and why, most of the ideas from user story splitting can be applied to the goals that coachees come up with during coaching. For example: “If you were to break this down into smaller pieces, what would those pieces be?”

Re-evaluating
As we go about life, we create mental models for everything: mental maps, labels, and analogies to name a few. We say things like “kind of like Scrum, but without the sprint boundaries,” “helpful,” “stubborn,” and “I feel surrounded.” If the coachee seems to be stuck in a particular mental model, having them brainstorm alternative mental models may help them find a new direction to take.

Highlighting
Very often, the coachee will express a potential solution unintentionally disguised as something else. Here are some key indicators that the coachee is skipping over a potential solution or piece of the puzzle. The coachee says…

• Do you think I should do X, Y, or Z?
• I wish they would…
• I don’t get why they do X (instead of Y).

If the coachee is presenting potential options and then asking your opinion, turn the tables on them. For instance, if they ask “do you think I should do A or B” you can turn that into “Well, I may have some thoughts on that, but tell me your thoughts first.” When the coachee is deciding on an option, make sure they consider the ones that came up while highlighting potential solutions.

Focusing
Part of being a coach is taking on the work of keeping the coachee focused. That allows the coachee to follow their thought process wherever it leads without worrying about the time. If you feel they are getting off track, you will be there to check in with them to see if they feel they should continue down the current track or need to refocus. Focusing has three related techniques: interrupting, orienting, and summarizing.

Interrupting
Any time you feel that the coachee has gotten off track, or you have come across a coaching trigger, it may be time to interrupt the coachee. Here are a couple of methods of interrupting that may work for you or perhaps they will remind you of a method that you like to use:

• Open your mouth and take a breath as if preparing to speak, but then don’t say anything and close your mouth again.
• In as friendly a way as possible, raise a finger and say “if I may?” and give an expectant look.

No matter what, continue listening and make it clear from your body language that you are definitely still paying attention. Note that some people have an aversion to being interrupted for any reason, so use your discretion when interrupting and err on the side of being patient.

Orienting
Most situations that arise in coaching are part of a bigger picture. The bigger picture influences the coachee and their problem solving approach. If you have a sense that the coachee is missing the forest for the trees, consider asking them to orient themselves to the bigger picture. For instance, asking “How does what we are discussing relate to your goals and vision?”

Summarizing
When something is clear, it can be easily described. If you find the coachee is using a lot of detail to describe something and it is still not clear what they are saying, ask them to summarize. This can help both of you to determine if there is a need to explore the topic further or pivot to another technique. Example: “That was a lot of detail, can you summarize it for me?”

Next Steps
Check out the book Co-Active Coaching, which is one of the best and most practical Coaching books out there, or pursue an International Coaching Federation certification. You may also be interested in my new online Advanced Agile Coaching workshop which this blog post is based on.

Agile Coach Basics - Online Mini Book

I have been posting pieces of my Agile Coach Basics mini-book, which was initially developed for my ICP-ACC Agile Coaching workshop. This post ties them all together with an introduction as well as a list of all of the posts so that you can skip any posts you've already read. Enjoy!

Coaching in an Agile Environment
When I first understood the value of Agile, I wanted to share it with everyone. I did free webinars, wrote blog entries, spoke at conferences, joined and then ran the Agile New England meetup in the Boston area, and did everything I could to spread the word. I took the approach of teaching and sharing my experience. When people shared their difficulties in implementing Agile, I was brimming with enthusiasm to help. I leapt into problem solving mode and explained what I thought they should do. But then I started to notice that my directives often led to objections and more questions. I began to realize that in order to really solve other people’s issues I would need to actually be them, which is impossible.

Soon after this realization, I read Lyssa Adkin’s book “Coaching Agile Teams” which introduced me to a different way to think about Agile Coaching. And since that time I’ve done a lot more reading, had the privilege of interacting with a wide spectrum of Agile coaches professionally and at conferences, and worked with dozens of teams and organizations seeing what works and what doesn’t when helping others become more Agile. From these experiences I’ve come to understand that people get a tremendous amount of value out of the process of coaching itself, completely separate from any increase in Agile knowledge or ability that I may also impart to them. I have learned just how powerful and valuable the process of coaching can be, especially when carefully integrated with mentoring, teaching, and facilitating.

Agile Coach Basics Table of Contents
What is an Agile Coach?
Emotional Intelligence 
Neutrality - Coach as Mirror
Multi-spectrum Awareness - Presence and Observation
Coaching - a Coaching Conversation
Coaching Questions
What Does an Agile Coach Do All Day? Part 1
What Does an Agile Coach Do All Day? Part 2
People Do What They Desire to Do - ADKAR
Feedback and Advice
Using Your Intuition

Stay tuned for additional sections.

What is an Agile Coach?

There are many definitions of Agile Coach out there. One view is that an Agile Coach is an expert in all things Agile, or an expert in a particular area of Agile such as Scrum, Kanban, SAFe or some other methodology. Here is my definition, based on the ICAgile view of Agile Coaching:

Agile Coach: a servant leader that guides people as individuals, part of a team, and people at all levels of an organization towards greater levels of Agility using the skills of Coaching, Mentoring, Teaching, and Facilitating.

And here are my definitions of Coaching, Mentoring, Teaching, and Facilitating:

Coaching – using skills from professional coaching as part of a coaching conversation to help others identify and explore issues and then help them choose a path forward and commit to it. The skills from professional coaching include Emotional Intelligence, listening, presence, asking questions, and feedback. In this mode, the coach does not use any subject matter expertise, even if they are a subject matter expert in any topics that arise.

Mentoring – providing information, feedback, advice, options, examples, and illustrative experience as part of a mentoring conversation based on the mentee’s free choice. Similar to coaching, with the key difference being that the mentee has explicitly asked for mentoring and the mentor is a credible expert in the skill or role. Mentoring applies when a person has already received teaching in a skill or role.

Teaching – providing learners with new knowledge and skills and providing an environment for the learner to confirm that they have acquired the new knowledge or skill.

Facilitation – using specific tools and skills to help an individual or group efficiently discover, explore, and choose options for producing a specific outcome or set of outcomes, without directly contributing or allowing one’s own preferences or biases influence the outcomes.

Next: Emotional Intelligence and the Case of the Self-Conscious Scrum Master

Feedback and Advice

As an Agile Coach, a large component of what you do is to provide feedback and advice in some way shape or form. And, in order to stay in sync with those that you coach, you are of course open to feedback and advice on your coaching. Feedback and advice are very similar. In both cases you are providing information which you believe the recipient is unaware of. This brings up one of the first issues with providing feedback and advice; while you may think that the other person is unware of the information you wish to provide, they may actually be very aware of it. Here are a few reasons why people ignore the information that others provide to them:

• The information seems wrong or doesn’t make sense to them
• They haven’t figured out how to act on the information
• They are aware that some people feel they should do something differently but they aren’t interested in doing it
• They don’t care enough about the issue to make a change

In the case of feedback, the recipient is often unaware of the impact they are having on others. In the case of advice, the missing information may be given as part of feedback or it may be expressly requested by the recipient. Feedback usually starts with an observation, advice may not. With feedback, there may or may not be suggested next steps included. In the case of advice, suggested next steps are the advice.

Here’s a simple example. One day, I made a mistake in buttoning up my shirt and I hadn’t looked in the mirror before heading to work. I got a couple of funny looks from co-workers before one kind soul let me know that my shirt needed some adjustment and suggested that I look in a mirror. In this case, pointing out that there was an issue was all that was needed. Looking in the mirror I could see quite plainly that I had made a mistake buttoning my shirt.
Let’s map this out:

Knowledge gap: I didn’t know my shirt was mis-buttoned
Observation: “your shirt is not buttoned properly”
Impact: looking unprofessional
Potential next steps: re-button the shirt properly

In the case of advice, it may be that a person knows that they are missing some information and are looking for ideas and options for next steps. Here’s an example involving advice. A manager approaches the Agile Coach for a team and says “I thought the whole idea of Agile was that the team would make more decisions on their own, but they still ask my opinion on decisions that I think they should make on their own. Do you have any advice?”

Let’s assume that the coach takes the manager through a whole coaching conversation and the need for advice remains and that it maps out like this:

Knowledge gap: the manager can’t see that they continue to countermand many of the decisions that the team tries to make on its own
Observation: “Last week the team decided to release, but you told them you didn’t think the customer wanted a new release, so they didn’t release.”
Impact: “Right after that happened, as they were about to make another decision, one team member said they should ask you what you thought before making the decision.”
Potential next steps: “One option to consider is to let them make more decisions, even if it isn’t what you would do, unless you think a decision would create a major problem.”

When making an observation as part of giving feedback or advice, remember to make the observation in a neutral way.

Feedback Tips
Here are some tips for maximizing the chance of feedback being well received.

• Opt-in – ask for permission or respond to a request
• Timely – provide feedback and/or advice in as timely a fashion as circumstances permit
• Safe - in an appropriate environment with a chance for interaction – not a “drive-by”
• Credible – limit yourself to areas where the receiver sees you as credible
• Good will – make sure the feedback and/or advice is sincere and intended for the recipient’s benefit
• Conversational – rather than focusing on a piece of feedback, consider starting a conversation on the topic in general. It may turn out that the recipient is already aware of the topic and is looking for ideas.

Receiving Feedback
All feedback can be useful feedback. Even if an observation feels wrong, hurtful, or ill-intentioned, there may be information in the feedback that you can use. Just because information was delivered poorly doesn’t mean it is useless.

The first step in getting value out of feedback is to just receive it. You don’t have to agree with it to acknowledge it. For instance, rather than saying “that doesn’t make any sense to me” you could try saying something like “I hear what you are saying.” If you feel your emotions rising, consider saying something like “that’s a lot for me to absorb. Let me think about it and I may follow up with you.” You don’t have to respond right away.

You can use most of the ideas about giving feedback in reverse. If someone says something that feels like a judgement, you can ask for a specific example.

Even if the feedback doesn’t make any sense, there may be something for you to learn. Look for patterns in what multiple people say to you over time. See if you can find somebody you trust to help you make sense of the feedback you are receiving.

Next: Using Your Intuition

People Do What They Desire to Do

A good word for an Agile Coach is “catalyst.” According to Merriam Webster, one of the definitions of catalyst is “an agent that provokes or speeds significant change or action.” The main idea of coach as catalyst is that you are helping to bring about changes that might happen anyway, but are more likely to happen with the addition of your insight, inspiration, and ability to shine a flashlight on potential areas for improvement. Your influence will increase the likelihood and pace of change.

A striking example of this happened on an engagement where I had the opportunity to kick things off with a series of interviews with the leadership. I always ask just two questions in discovery interviews: “what do you see as the issues and what do you see as potential solutions?” This always brings up lots of useful information. In this case, those interviews involved a series of statements that formed a chain. I heard “I’d really like to do A for the Agile effort, but I need B first” and from another leader “I’d really like to do B for the Agile effort, but I need C first.” All I had to do was to observe to the group during the follow-on workshop that between the 8 of them, they each needed something that one of the others was willing to do. The result was an amazing start to their Agile Journey and today, a few years after that workshop, they are now a mature and thriving Agile organization.

The ADKAR Change Management Tool
A useful tool for being a catalyst is ADKAR. ADKAR is an “individual” change model. That is, it is a useful framework when working at the individual level as opposed to the organizational level. It can be used with any number of individuals, but when trying to make changes at the departmental, division, or organizational levels, it is best to combine ADKAR with something like the Kotter change model.

ADKAR is an acronym for Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement. The main idea of the model is that people are more likely to make a lasting change when they are aware of the need for the change, they themselves desire to make the change, they have the knowledge of how to make the change, and they are reinforced (supported) in their journey to make the change until they have gained the ability to make the change.

There is always something that an individual or group wants to do and will do with the right support, you just have to help them find it. By thinking of yourself as a catalyst, you can help surface those potential changes using ADKAR. It is important to remember not to look for things that others want to do that align with what you want to do or to push others towards things you think they should want to do. You are working to find and accelerate the potential that is already there.

Coach Past Your Involvement
Acting as a catalyst reinforces the idea that the changes that will encounter the least resistance and stick are the ones that people want to do, choose to do, and actually take steps to implement. Changes that people undertake that require constant propping up, by you or others, aren’t real changes, they are temporary detours and people will revert back to their old ways when the props are removed. By thinking about what will stick when you are not present and being a servant leader by focusing on what others want, you are also more likely to avoid influencing others with your own preferences, biases, and personal point of view.

Use ADKAR as a Guide
Raising awareness, increasing knowledge, getting organizational support (reinforcement), and finding ways to give people the time to grow their skills (ability) all increase a person’s desire to implement a change. By leaning on ADKAR, next steps will become more obvious to everyone. If there are things that you are aware of that your coachees are not, work to gently raise their awareness. If you start leading people down a path that they don’t see, you will encounter strong resistance. Resistance is a good indicator that you are on the wrong path. You may feel like you know what needs to be done, but if a coachee doesn’t see what you see or doesn’t choose to take a certain action, then it isn’t the right path for them to take, no matter how much it seems like the right path in general.

Building Ability Requires Support ( aka Reinforcement )
Let’s say there is a team that has become aware of the connection between lack of well factored code and supporting unit tests and quality issues. They have a desire to learn how to do Test Driven Development, but they have very little knowledge or ability to do TDD. They believe that they will increase their velocity by increasing quality if they start practicing TDD. They believe that if they hire a TDD coach for a month they will be able to double their velocity, but that their velocity will be unpredictable while they are learning. The team proposes the TDD coach to their manager and the manager approves. They now have the support to build the ability to work in a new way. Without that support, it is unlikely that any effort by the team to learn and apply TDD would stick.

Next: Feedback and Advice

Multispectrum Awareness

As a coach, you are most effective when you are completely tuned in to and focused on what is going on with others while self-managing your own emotions and behavior. Two important aspects of being fully tuned in are presence and active observation.

Presence
When your attention is focused on the here and now, you are “present.” When your attention wanders away, you are distracted. When you are distracted, you will miss valuable information.

You don’t need to be present all the time. It is perfectly fine to daydream or let your mind wander. But when you are facilitating a meeting, teaching a workshop, or coaching someone, it is vitally important that you be 100% present.

Here are some things you can do to become more present:

• Breath in normally, then exhale slowly
• Sit calmly for a moment doing nothing. Notice what is going through your mind
• If something is distracting you, take action to remove the distraction. For example, make a note, set a reminder, or do whatever you need to do to get any internal distractions “out of your system.”
• Look around you and think about where you are
• Think about why you are doing whatever you are doing. In the case of reading this, why are you reading it?
• Focus on the here and now and let everything else fade away

Active Observation
Active observation is the act of observing everything in the environment in a neutral and intentional way. Rather than observing events, making judgements, and then remembering and replaying those judgements, active observation focuses on observing what happened as literally as possible and without judgement.

Active observation includes a full spectrum of inputs: what is being said, the emotional overtones, body language, movement, and interaction with others and the environment. Active observation also includes layering in the context of what’s happening, such as the influence of recent events on people’s current behavior. The hard part is tuning in across all parts of this spectrum of inputs at the same time.

One day, while attending the standup meeting of a new team, I was feeling frustrated. I was thinking about how terrible their standup was and could only think about how they must not have paid attention in training. I was wondering why they couldn’t do this basic ceremony when other teams that had been in the same training were doing just fine. Then somebody asked me a question and I realized I had no idea what the question was. I had lost my presence. I apologized and muddled my way through the rest of the standup.

When I was distracted and judging their behavior I was unable to see the two issues that were really going on. In order to really absorb as much information as possible and to understand what is happening around you it is important to develop the skills of Active Observation, Emotional Intelligence, and being present.

Active observation draws on and reinforces many other skills. Active observation makes it easier to understand another’s emotional state in order to better practice social awareness and self-management. And by practicing self-management, one is more likely to maintain a good rapport with the coachee(s) and to be more present. When we are truly in the moment the skills of Emotional Intelligence, Presence, and Active Observation build on each other holistically and become indistinguishable as separate skills.

The next day, I made a conscious effort to focus on what was actually being said and what was actually happening. I realized that everyone was doing a “readout” to me personally and most people seemed distracted when they weren’t reporting their status to me. Having them treat their coach as a project manager was a familiar problem and I knew how to handle that, but I wasn’t sure why folks were so distracted.

At the end of the meeting I gently mentioned that folks seemed distracted and I asked if there was something going on in general that I might not be aware of. I learned that there were actually two “teams” in this “team” and so half of the people were disinterested half of the time. That was another familiar problem that I knew how to solve. At least half of the job of being an Agile Coach is understanding what is going on. Active observation is a powerful tool for helping you get to the root of the problem.

Next: Coaching - A Coaching Conversation