How To Use Coaching In An Agile Team

hi I'm Jeff watts and welcome to another of my top 10 tips' videos in this video we're going to look at some tips for helping you coach as a leader so in this video we'll look at what coaching is why it's important for leadership and some tips on how you can get better at coaching in your leadership role there are a number of different leadership styles and stances that you can adopt depending on the results that you're looking to achieve and the environment that you find yourself in if you're looking to create a more self-organizing resilient and proactive culture then a coaching approach could be a helpful useful tool for you but if you're looking to develop self sustaining teams self organization resilience proactivity creativity then coaching could be something that would be helpful to you in creating that kind of culture so if you're looking for some quick results where there is a right answer you know the right answer and you just want immediate compliance then coaching might not be the most appropriate tool in your toolbox so what is coaching well coaching is about helping other people find their solution based on getting a better understanding of their situation it's not about trying to work out how to wheedle your solution into other people's minds so they say what you want them to say as a coach my role is to try and help people that I'm coaching get a greater insight and awareness as to what's going on both in the situation and for themselves so that they can make much more informed decision about what they want to do to achieve their goals now from a leaders perspective that can be quite a challenge most people have got to that position in leadership because of their expertise their ability to solve problems their ability to analyze and find the right solution a coaching leader will put their need to solve the problem to one side and focus on what the person or the people they're coaching think they need to solve and help them solve their problem coaching really about the self-sufficiency within the people you're coaching rather than being the bottleneck as a leader so that every time there's a problem they come to you for a solution successful coaching builds that self-reliance and people know that they can solve their own problems the coaching is different to mentoring because mentoring is really about providing or passing on expertise or experience or know-how so mentoring you could say is about having the right answer or it's clinching is about finding the right question because the right question will unlock the right thought process for the person you're coaching and allow them to find their own path rather than just follow yours coaching isn't management either because a coach doesn't hold the agenda they don't hold the power in the relationship so the personal coaching is in charge of what they want to focus on and how they want to go about solving coaching isn't about people learning from your mistakes if anything it's about helping them make their own mistakes in a safe environment and learning from so when is coaching appropriate for a leader well if you're looking to get engagement and buy-in then helping people find their own solutions it's gonna help with that if you're looking to create self sufficiency proactivity again coaching is gonna help with that because you're helping people find their own solutions if you are looking to focus your time somewhere else and need to get away from being that the bottleneck or the the dependency within a team then again a coaching approach will help you achieve that so what can you do well here's some tips tip 10 is to agree what coaching is now that might sound strange because I've just kind of given you a definition of what coaching is but not everyone has the same interpretation or expectations of coaching not every coach has the same coaching style so the first thing is to get some kind of common agreement about the expectations of what coaching is expected to provide and how we're going to go about doing that what our roles rush possibilities are expectations of one another are if one person is expecting one thing and somebody else expecting another it's not going to be particularly effective this can be is simple at both parties writing out what they believe their definition of coaching is and their expectations comparing and contrasting and then coming to a common agreement about what we both expect coaching years this is often called a coaching contract but it doesn't have to be the right definition the most important thing is that we have our definition and we've agreed on it it might change over time but it's good enough for now tip 9 is to create some safety and I'm talking psychological safety here create the conditions for the person all the people that are coaching to feel comfortable with you and with the process create an environment where people feel able to be open to be vulnerable to share their concerns their hopes their aspirations their anxieties because the more open people can be in coaching the more benefit they get fine they have to be sure that what they're saying to you in this conversation in this coaching relationship is not going to come back to haunt them that you have no ulterior motive that is not going to be used in their performance appraisal that them knowing or share with anybody else whatever it is that they need to feel comfortable do whatever you can to give it the first step is usually around confidentiality this idea that clarifying that there is no ulterior motive than what said it is safe and secure if you're coaching from a position as a line manager then that can obviously be quite tough because there's often this view that appearances need to be kept up the appearance of strength that we can't really risk showing our weaknesses to our line managers for fear that will come back and haunt or hamper our career progression so making clear that that's not what's going to happen here is really important I'm not just saying it proving it and one way you can prove it is by demonstrating vulnerability yourself if you are prepared to make you'll sell vulnerable you not only increase empathy and trust in the process but you demonstrate that nothing really bad is gonna happen as a result tip 8 is to get permission now might sound strange because we've already gotten agreements to what coaching is what a coaching contract but we still need explicit permission to be that person or that team's coach coaching really should be pulled as a service as the desi use the phrase that I really like which is don't go around inflicting your help on people you're not going to be an effective coach if you come along and say right I'm going to coach you on this tip 7 is to meet them where they are now what does that mean well really it means don't make any assumptions about what their concerns are their anxieties their hopes their goals their objectives or what coaching is born this is about what they think they should be doing and why so ask find out and really listen to what's being said once you understand where they are where they're coming from or their current situation is only then can you really start working with them to help them find some fault no Menten towards whatever their goal is tip 6 is on us to help them understand now that can be quite tricky as human beings when naturally curious we want to know stuff we want to find stuff act part of that is so that we can draw connections identify patterns solve problems but part of it is also because well we're just nosy and as I mentioned earlier on the best leaders the best coach leaders don't necessarily worry about having the right answer their primary concern instead is that the right question because the right question will force the right thought process for the person the team that you're coaching and ultimately that will be what house then gained forward momentum and say this can be tricky partly because of our curiosity but also partly because well we don't like silence our natural tendency will be to fill that silence and rescue that person but offering a suggestion of our own now that's good it's nice it's helpful you know what but that teaches us then it teaches them that when times get tough when we're struggling then they can rely on us to come up with a solution what more coaching that's not all our aim is to try and create that self-sufficiency and that ability to solve their own problems when we're in coaching mode the goal is to help them find their answer not to satisfy our curiosity now this is just something you're gonna have to practice reflect on get some feedback on bands tip 5 is once we've passed to help them understand is to listen actively that's it listening it's more than just hearing the words it's it's listening for the intention behind the words it's listening for inconsistencies and a big part of active listening is to play back what we've heard just to check we've heard it correctly and then we're not passing it through our own filters and hearing what we expected here or what to hear so something as simple as I just check I've heard that correctly what I heard you say was this that kind of playing things back and just checking in will just ensure was staying on the same page not diverting in our understanding of things and also it increasing a bit of empathy people like to be listened to they like to be heard and it proves that you're staying with them that you're staying with the conversation tip for his hep belief one of my favorite quotes is from good and he said when we treat a man as he is we make him worse than he is but when we treat a man as if he already were what he could be we make him what he should be one of the principles of effective coaching for me it's the idea of unconditional regarde now that means we have a view of the people we're coaching have the potential to become what they want or need to be and whether or not that's true is secondary to whether or not it's helpful which might sound like a strange thing to say but if you believe it's true and you act as if you believe it's true then you're more like it's a making true not least of all because you're gonna pass on that feeling that it's possible or even inevitable to the person you're coach if you don't believe in them that will also transmit to them then they'll lose faith in your integrity your relationship as a coach as a leader and though they lose faith in themselves as well as the process to be honest I'd much rather be proven wrong having a positive view of somebody than proven wrong when having a negative view of somebody tip 3 is to help the people you're coaching increase the benefit hopefully once we've worked out what their goal is what they would like to achieve we can deduce that it beneficial for them to do so if it isn't badly possible why would they even bother doing it clarifying what that benefit is really drilling down into what it can do for them in the long term in terms of their objectives their career goals but also their values and their principles sometimes helping them imagine a future where what they're aiming for whether it's learning a new skill or making a change of work or whatever imagining that that's already happened it's become a reality can help make it more real more inspiring and increase their motivation to actually give it a go and go forward by talking through the benefits with a coach sometimes they can also identify benefits that they weren't even aware of or just haven't really given a lot of thought to or one of these extra benefits and the weight and the perception of these benefits can just give them first sense of yeah this is worth investing my time in this is worth doing I want this tip to is to reduce the cost so on the flip side of that cost the equation if you like there are some costs associated with making it happen these financial costs time costs emotional costs mental costs physical costs opportunity costs or just fears fear of confer on you for example and you as a coach can help reduce them or mitigate some of those costs will be real okay they will actually be something that they need to do in order to get some benefit and by listening them out we can create an action plan for mitigating those costs making things a little bit easier perhaps even you as a coach or a leader can do something to help reduce those costs maybe some of those costs might not actually be real quite often people will imagine costs or barriers or problems that in all probability won't happen so just getting them out of your head verbalizing them or putting them on paper can help us just critically evaluate their like it and if they're more likely then we can just make a conscious decision to not include them in our decision making process of whether to go ahead with this one which increases the chances of it happening my number one tip for increasing your coaching ability as a leader is to let go of the solution now I know I'm running the risk of repeating myself here but it's so important it's worth saying again this is one of the problems that we're mostly unaware of as a leader we have a history of expecting to solve problems of being expected to solve problems of having problems escalated to us too for us to do something about being the problem solver has helped us to get where we are but it won't help our people get to where they need to be so letting go of your idea of the solution it's the number one thing that you can do to increase your effectiveness as a coaching leader one thing you can do to help you with this it's just to remind yourself that even if you know the answer your solution is never going to to be successful as a solution you can help somebody else come up with and the main reason for that is ownership because their idea is their idea they're much more invested in their idea being a success than my idea being a success even if you're not intending for them to take your solution off it's much harder for them to get rid of that thought out of their heads once it's in there then if they've got a blank canvas to start on if they're struggling to come up with a solution or an idea it can be overly tempting to offer yours it's natural to want to rescue them with your idea your solution your suggestion and having that idea in your head can stop you thinking about anything else stop it being present but if you're in that kind of situation and you do offer something even with good intentions you're going to be overly influenced in this situation so if you find yourself in a situation where the personal coaching is struggling to come up with our own idea try coming back to something they've done in the past ask them when have they been successful what if they try something it worked even if it's not directly related to the situation at hand looking back at their past strengths that past successes and seeing anything can be pulled from those situations and applied to the present to help them in this situation another strategy that could be used for the user coach here is to help them think about how to make the situation worse enough to call this this psychopath approach and people often find it easier to be destructive and constructive what you thought of all the ways of making it worse you can flip them to think how we can make it better in the alternative or at least stop it from getting worse but whatever you do try really hard to keep your solution your suggestions out of this conversation so those are the top 10 tips just a quick recap agree what coaching is between yourself and the person you're coaching create a sense of psychological safety get permission to be their coach meet them where they are ask questions to help them understand not you to understand listen actively have belief in them help them increase the benefit of what they're trying to do help them reduce the cost and the concerns with what they're looking to do and let go of the solution yourself I hope those tips be useful and you can go put some of them into practice in your leadership style when coaching your people and your teams so if you've got anything that Yuma likes me tips on in the future all you need to do is the like the video subscribe to the channel and leave the comment naming the topic that you're looking for some help it and you never know the next video could be for you also if you're looking to help yourself develop as a coach and a leader then why not try some of our training courses just check out inspector know.com and look at the certified agile leadership course for the advanced certified scrum master course or the advanced certified scrum product owner course or you can get some one-to-one coaching sessions with me sometimes having some one-to-one coaching yourself provides a great insight into your coaching style and your coaching approaches there's even a discounted taster session available just click on inspect and adapt calm and go to coaching okay well that's the end of the video I hope it was useful and until next time I'll see you see you

Channel: Inspect & Adapt Ltd

Views: 9,324

Rating: 4.9255815 out of 5

Keywords: leadership, leadership institute (organization), coaching (profession), leadership development, coaching, training, business, success, geoff watts, top ten tips, ten tips, tips, team, team coaching, leader, team leader, geoffcwatts, agile, agile team, agile coaching, coaching tips, agile tips, leadership skills, leadership tips, agile software development (industry), leadership motivation, agile coach, coaching agile teams

Id: po8VGE5D-9s

Length: 18min 41sec (1121 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 08 2018