The second week of the Agile Coaching Lab has been all about the practice of coaching.
What is an Agile Coach? — We watched a video of Lyssa Adkins and Simon Power talk about What is an Agile Coach? and in particular how the role can be modelled by the Agile Coaching Competency Framework and its 8 dimensions. And we read the whitepaper “Developing Great Agile Coaches — Towards a Framework of Agile Coaching Competency — Part I” by Lyssa Adkins and Michael K. Spayd, both Co-Presidents of the Agile Coaching Institute, on the development of the Agile Coaching Competency Framework and details of those dimensions.
Agile Coaching Competency self-assessment — We then completed a self-assessment of our ‘level’ in each of the 8 dimensions of the Agile Coaching Competency Framework. This was very useful, and I was immediately able to put it to use in an interview situation. This provided shared understanding of my competencies and areas that would benefit from growth. And it provided a way to judge how my competencies aligned with the role on offer. My interviewer really liked that!
Consensus Voting — Not directly about coaching, but a tool that coaches can use to for consensus decision making. We used consensus voting to gain shared understanding on our preferences for a range of options for the name of our coaching lab cohort (or team), and to gain consensus on the selection of just one option, by the group. This took the form of each person assigning their vote from 1–5 to each of the options laid out on sticky notes. Each of the votes had a meaning assigned as follows.
- I don’t support this option at all.
- I have reservations about this option and will need to discuss it before agreeing to it. Even then I may not support it.
- I’m OK with this option and I’ll go along with the group, though I’d like to discuss it and hear why we should go with it.
- I’m fine with this and happy for us to adopt it.
- I like this a lot. It’s by far the best option.
The best part of consensus voting is that it moves a group away from quantity voting to quality voting, which is considerably more informative. It can also be used to check the “sense of the group”, or the quality of the consensus.
Observe a coach in action — We ‘observed’ (in)famous Chef Gordon Ramsay in scenes from Hell’s Kitchen through the lens of Agile Coaching to reinforce our understanding of some bad and surprisingly some good behaviours that an Agile Coach may use!
Agile Coach Pitch — In a fictitious scenario we collaborated in pairs to develop and present (as a video recording and slide deck) our pitch to the executives of our ailing company. How could Agile, and more specifically Agile Coaches help?
It was great fun and allowed us to remind ourselves of all the benefits of Agile and coaching, and how those benefits could help solve some organisational problems.
Entering Systems — We listened to episode 8 of the “The Law of Raspberry Jam” podcast on podbean.com, by Esther Derby and Viktor Cessan about “Entering Systems”. This was all about joining groups in their context, e.g. being the new coach on the block, and how that affects the team dynamic. Some great learning of what to be aware of in these situations; our self, the group, and the system itself, and how our entry affects system dynamics. There was more to it than that. It’s well worth a listen.
Another momentous week of learning! 😃
