On the ANE panel last night, an agile coach asked, “What's my path forward as an agile coach? What do I do next?”
That's a great question and one each coach might ask, to make sure they continue to add value to the client. (Internal or external, all coaches have clients.)
I said that if the coach wanted to move up the hierarchy in the organization, the coach needed some form of management experience.
I was only partly correct. Experience helps us see and feel the pressure our clients have. That can help coaches, but not all business coaches need to have the precise experience their clients do.
But all coaches need to:
- Understand which level(s) at which the client wants the coach to work
- Bring empathy to the client's pressures and position.
- Focus on business results, not agility per se.
Let's start with the levels.
What Level(s) Are You Supposed to Influence?
Coaches use their influence to support a change for the client. While they might teach as part of their work, effective coaches do not primarily teach as part of their role.
If you don't have experience in a role similar to the client's role, you might have a very difficult time showing your competence, building trust, and discovering shared interests. (As a coach, you might represent others to your client.)
That competence, trust, and shared interests means that coaches who are supposed to coach at several levels often fail at several of those levels.
While everyone might feel the pressure of “do more!!!” everyone feels the pressure differently.
- Teams might feel pressure from a too-large backlog or too-long roadmap. Coaches might be able to aid relatively local changes to alleviate that pressure.
- People who facilitate larger efforts, such as product leaders, portfolio managers, and most middle managers, feel the pressure to “deliver” or “perform.” Too often, these people hear, “I don't care how you do it, just do it.”
- Senior leaders feel similar pressure to deliver, but too often, that pressure is quite personal. Literally, the senior leaders' jobs are at risk if they don't “deliver.”
Whenever I've been in that position, my mind immediately went to, “how many months of mortgage payment (or insert a large monetary outlay here) do I have available?”
That's why I don't see many coaches succeeding when they work with teams on how to do the work, middle managers on managing all the initiatives (notice the lack of endings), and senior leadership for the business. I'm sure some people can succeed at these various levels. Most cannot. Especially if you've only had team experience and brief team facilitation, such as Scrum Master, experience.
Multiple levels for coaches is the same problem as specifying both strategy and tactical levels for managers in a job description. It doesn't work because it's too difficult for almost anyone to succeed in the role.
Coaches can succeed when they have experience and limit the number of levels at which they're supposed to work. As long as they add empathy.
Empathize with Your Clients
In my experience, organizations create similar pressures for people at similar levels. That's because the organization creates its system. And Paul Batalden said:
“Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.”
That's why people at similar levels feel similar pressures. Not because people are somehow bad, stupid, or wrong. But because they work in a system that the coach is supposed to help change.
Tall order.
That's why all coaches need to understand the business results they need to facilitate through the client.
Define the Business Results
Nobody wants to “be agile.” People want the results agility offers them.
What do those results look like? It depends on your organization, but here are some results my clients want:
- More frequent and faster releasing of valuable product so customers see why their subscription is a better deal than buying a competitor's product outright.
- Faster capitalization for accounting purposes.
- More frequent experimentation for backlogs and strategy.
- Better predictability that they will release something, even if they don't yet know what.
Agility can help achieve these results. But if the coach doesn't know that the client wants these results, the coach says, “That's agile.” Or worse, “That's not agile.”
No one cares about how agile you are. No one.
But everyone cares about the business results they are supposed to achieve.
That's why possible paths forward for coaches depend on what you want to achieve in your career.
Coaching Paths Depend on Your Business Outcomes
What outcomes do you want in your career? I'm a product development generalist. That's why I have coaching and trusted advisor clients, but I don't limit myself to those roles. I use most of the roles in the table above with my clients.
Decide on your coaching path by examining the outcomes you want to achieve. (Yes, coach yourself.)
Then, assess your experience, the level(s) at which you want to work, and how you build empathy with your clients to achieve those outcomes. What do you need to change to be an even more successful agile coach?