Agile Coaching series-Part 7|Coaching tools📊and focus areas

[#1]

Happy Makara Sankranti/ Pongal/ Bhogi festival wishes dear community.

Welcome to the part-7 of this series.

When comes to coaching aspect, it is a generalized concept that applies to all fields and areas. If I ask, what do you think are the main challenges and focus areas for an Agile coach....?! The obvious responses are -challenges can be any and every aspect in the projects, employee lives, organizational goals, budget, communications, mindset etc….etc… We can’t pinpoint or provide a checklist of general challenges for a coach.

However, an Agile coach will pick up few areas and focus on the learnings and outcomes, like-Mindset shift, manage difficult situations, utilization of rightful tools and techniques, voice of customer, improvements etc.

State of Agile Coaching report-2022 by Scrum Alliance, shed light about the biggest impact in the organizations to be “Agile mindset/culture shift“ followed by “Agility improvements“. This clearly emphasis the need for deploying and employing right coaching tools, techniques and concepts.

Dealing with difficult customer/ end users/ coachee:

A coach success can be felt when dealing with a difficult customer who come for coaching is, when he/she “sees beyond the rudeness and the angry talk” of coachee “instead of arguement or justifications”.

Yes, the difficult customer/ coachee’s mindset will be aggressive and is self-defensive which is hard to convince. And there comes the coach’s efficiency in dealing the situation.

But HOW ….?!

The coach first action is to “observe” the state of the coachee’s- emotional state, eye cues, verbal tone and language, body language/ posture/ gestures and accordingly be prepared with useful techniques and tools.

Note: Listed in the mindmap are only few tools. The list varies according to the Coach style, experience and take-on with the situation.

 

Source: My blog 

Please comment:

• What's your coaching style, tools and techniques that worked in your personal and professional life?
• What is your advise for new Agile coaches?

[Mark Jestings]

Nice article! Thank you for sharing it!

[G subramanyam]

Hi @Mark Jestings I'm glad you liked and found it helpful.