Exploring the Journey and Depth of Agile Coaching

https://www.amazon.com/Extraordinarily-Badass-Agile-Coaching-Beginner/dp/0988502658/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2AUWSJFDLD514&keywords=bob+galen&qid=1660059485&sprefix=bob+galen%2Caps%2C64&sr=8-1

Joe Krebs 0:10

Agile FM radio for the Agile community. www.agile.fm. Welcome to another episode of agile FM today I have an Agile coaching guru Bob Galen with me guru because he just released a brand new book about agile coaching, the BadAss Agile Coaching book, we're going to have the link of that book to Amazon on the show page. We met just recently in the National Conference in the Agile 2022. We were shocked. We had breakfast together, and we realized Bob has not been on the show. And we change that right away. And here we go. This is Bob, welcome to the show.

Bob Galen 0:58

Thank you, Joe. I appreciate I appreciate it very much. I was surprised at agile. You and I've been in the community a very long time, almost. We have parallel backgrounds and we've never met. I know I've know of you and I know you were in the New York area. So I've known of you over the years. But it was it's funny when you uncover people in the community. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So thank you for having me.

Joe Krebs 1:27

Yeah, thank you for joining. And especially so timely because the Agile conference was just like a few weeks ago, when we're recording this, this this episode, it Bob, you can be reached at rgalen.com that is your entry point for everybody who wants to find information about you the book, your services and everything. But as you just said, like-wise, we bumped into each other, doing breakfast, like I know you I know you had. And so let's talk and we had a great conversation about the book by then we realized maybe that is of interest for a larger audience. But we didn't record them because we had other things to do. But now it's the time to talk a little bit about the book, the Bad Ass Agile Coaching book, it's a journey for beginner to mastery and beyond. So it's a coaching book, I myself do a little bit of agile coaching, obviously, as www.agilecoach.com, which I am. And but I would like to talk a little bit about this book with you. Because, obviously want to know why what was the reason for writing it in the first place? There's a lot of books in that space. What triggered this that you started writing and exploring this journey?

Bob Galen 2:46

Thanks for the question, Joe. It's for me for me personally. So it's not money that drives if anyone's writing books, it's not the revenue, that at least that's my understanding that drives you. For me, I've written three or four agile, I've contributed to some agile centric books. And what I need because I found that writing takes a lot of energy. And it's an it's an it's a long project. And so for me, personally, I need to have passion around something. And it starts with a problem, I see a problem in the community, or a challenge in the community. Years ago, I wrote a product owner book. And it was around the first edition was in 2009. And, and I saw a problem around 2007, that there wasn't a lot of, there wasn't a lot of guidance for product ownership back then. And I was like, gosh, this is a shame. And the product owners are struggling in within the organization I was part of and in general in the community. So it's the same thing with coaching this time I need I need to get riled up about something I need to get passionate about trying to help with something. In this case, I feel I felt like and I still feel like the Agile coaching community is a little bit confused. It's a little bit immature at times, it's a little bit, it doesn't have a sense of what Agile coaching is. There's a lot of people who claim to be agile coaches, and who really don't have much experience or even, you know, a sense of what the competencies are around agile coaching. And they're not walking their talk. Maybe they don't know what to walk. So I wanted to provide a guide to sort of set the landscape not that I'm a guru, you know, going back to what you said, I don't consider myself a guru. I'm just a practitioner. But I have a good sense of what I work on. I'm a continue. I'm continuously developing my own coaching skills. And I have a sense for what that should be what excellence should be. I'm not there yet. And I wanted to capture that in the book to try to help coaches to improve the I don't know the profession of agile coaching. I know that sounds grandiose, but I really wanted to put something out there to try to let you know, raise the bar for Agile.

Joe Krebs 5:04

So, so definitely, Bob. So I heard this joke before in the in the community. And that was like, What's the difference between the scrum master and Agile coach and it's $50 an hour. So maybe maybe that goes down the path of what you're saying is like, what is? What are the differences between these definitions, these job descriptions sometimes and sometimes they say it's not a job description. Now the term of professional coaching is coming in on the hear that term quite a bit. Right. So there's there's a lot of things going on in the in the community. And maybe we have the chance to clarify some of those things based on your opinion. What did you learn about agile coaching about writing the book, I would be curious to hear like this, there's got to be something obviously, this is a multi month kind of project to complete a book. And I'm sure there was a journey for you too where he was like, I learned something about agile coaching, and I picked something off even though you would have been in this community for quite some time.

Bob Galen 6:09

So one of the things I was looking to do, is there themes in the book that I was trying to anchor on. One of the things that I I created for the book was a few canvases, to try to provide tools for coaches. So for example, coaching agreement canvas with a client, and what does that look like a coaching self assessment? Like how do you assess a coaching session, and then and then plan it beyond that? So I wanted to I wanted it to be reflective, and I wanted to provide that the other thing I in the book I was looking to anchor on, like what is a model? Or what is it for? I hazard to say framework, but what is a? What is a framework for for agile coaching, I don't know if you're familiar with Lisa Adkins and Michael spades, X Wing, the Agile I forget agile coaching competency framework, I sometimes call it the X Wing model, where they talk about, they have aspects of coaching. And I and I like that, that sort of a notion in the primary, and I think of it as stances. So the primary stances that Michael and Lisa talked about were training, mentoring, facilitation and coaching. And coaching in their sense, was professional coaching. And, and the entire x wing was What does agile coaching, so agile coaching is not one thing, it has a variety of stances, or you could think of them as competencies that you have to sharpen as a coach, and I wanted to anchor on that, or something like that. Now, what I found is an evolved framework called the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel. And so I anchored the book on the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel, and the Growth Wheel sort of supports what Lisa and Michael were doing, but it added, it added some stances if you will an aggregated some stances. So it expanded on this notion of what are the aspects or what are the competencies of a good Agile Coach, you don't have to be perfect in everything. But all of the competencies, but if you're growing yourself, where are your strengths? What does your client need? And how are you? How are you continuously learning and developing yourself? So I anchored it on the wheel, the wheel added in a nutshell, it added a leading stance. And it added a consultative or an advising stance, if that makes sense. So it actually gave coaches permission to provide advice. Yeah, there's another joke in the coaching community that, you know, the the Agile coach, all they do is ask questions of their clients until their clients head explodes. And they and that's the professional coaching stance, the professional coaching stances is one of the you know, sort of the aspects of it. The core aspects of it is you don't you don't provide advice, you ask questions, you ask powerful questions. But if that's the only tool you have, you may not be serving your your client, right, your coaching clients so that we'll provide that. And it also talked about leadership. A leadership stands from the point of view of the coach is a role model. The coach is a leader, whether you like it or not, maybe not a big L leader in the organizational sense, but a leader in the change leadership in that stance and how do you show up? So for example, one of the aspects of leadership stance is your presence or your gravitas as a coach, being self aware of how happy you know, your presence matters, or I think, I think your presence matters as a coach and how do you develop that? How do you become self aware of that? So so that to me, the wheel is a nice baseline framework to say, Oh, this is what Agile coaching is. And then if I want to aspire to that I need to develop in those areas.

Joe Krebs 9:51

Right. Is that Is that related? That comment you just made about these stances? Is that related to possibly the confusion also of The role of agile coaching, as you said earlier, right? So there are people in the field of agile coaching that might not possibly satisfy all these stances. What's like a typical path you observe when you work with coaches or see coaches on the ground? You know, I don't want to say shortcomings, but let's say the lack of visibility into those stances, right? Because my experience is that some some folks, they have one very, very strong skill, and they maneuver into the role of agile coaching, but might not have covered all the other stances.

Bob Galen 10:35

I see the same thing, Joe, it's I, I, it's that old joke of you know, if, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Right? And I see a lot of that in coaching, the predominant stance, I see a lot. And it's not a bad stance, is a can be is the professional coaching stance. So I see a lot of agile coaches who are, who are going to classes and things and really sharpening their skills in professional coaching. And, and Lisa did this in her book, she emphasized that in her book, The scrum Alliance, in their certifications emphasizes professional coaching stance, in my mind too much. Right? It's not so so they're over emphasizing that and they're not emphasizing enough some of the others so that you, the coaches are being influenced to get imbalanced words that and I think a good coach has the ability, the metaphor I use in the book is dancing in the stances or dancing with your client. Meaning depending on what your client needs, a good coach has a sense and respond mechanism, and should be able to dance and say, oh, you know what professional coaching is not serving the client? Well, I need to, I need to switch and dance to providing advice. Or I need to be I need to switch to provide mentoring. And then I may need to go back to perfect. So I'm not stuck in one thing. And I'm not I'm not deciding to do it. For me. It's not about my comfort zone. It's about am I serving my client, who the client in this case could be an individual that I'm coaching, it could be a team, it could be a leadership team that I'm coaching. So how am i How am I dancing with my clients in service to them? And a lot of coaches don't I don't think they get that very well. And therefore they're not developing that that nimbleness in multiple stances.

Joe Krebs 12:21

Yes, that's, that's interesting, right? Because like, for example, sometimes you just covered some of those dances like mentoring or professional coaching. Sometimes when I work with folks, what I've noticed is bring up the topic of teaching. And I will get feedback like, why would I teach? Coach, right, as you know, and it's like, well, it is still a teacher, we're not, we're not talking about necessarily a big classroom setup, and instruction, but some form of teaching. And there is this, this other thing that we're really talking about a lot of sayings here today. One of them is the first time you really understand a topic is the first time you explain it to somebody else when and so teaching is an integral part in, in that stance, too. So we do see some, you know, low covered areas, if you want to look like this is a map or like a radar or whatever, you know, is your book targeting, like, let's say, coaches, for the team level enterprise level. So if somebody wants to pick up that copy of that book, what is what's your primary audience? What are you trying to achieve?

Bob Galen 13:30

So, so there's, there's a mistake I made in the book. So the primary audience, and I didn't find it in the introduction is coaches, right. So it would be team. And it could be enterprise. I think any coach, any practicing coach, no matter how even if you're a big headed, you know, you're big headed and really experienced, I think you might get something from the book from some aspects of it. So it has a broad coaching audience. But probably the biggest mistake I made, and I'm trying to correct it by by doing some webinars and things that different groups, is the title has Agile coach in it, and which, which sort of aligns with a role or a job description. And, and I've actually want to, I'm trying to tease apart and say, it's not just for agile coaches, it's for anyone who wants to coach who wants to increase their coaching competency, to improve their performance in their role. So it's taken up for instance, a scrum master, right in could benefit a manager or a leader, and there's a lot of them in the world could benefit from from sharpening their coaching skills and looking at the world from an agile coaching perspective, not professional coaching only product owners I think could benefit. Having coaching skills in dealing with stakeholders and things like that virtually I team members, a senior team member, developer on a team could could benefit from sharpening their coaching skills, they're not becoming a coach. They are sharpening the skills to become a better developer or a better architect. So I don't know if I broaden the view I, I wanted, I didn't do a good enough job of teasing apart the role descriptions, from the competencies themselves. And I think the competencies have incredible value to everyone.

Joe Krebs 15:25

It's super interesting. It's an interesting angle to taking. Yeah, because I've just come back to the professional coaching conversation with the powerful questions, there's really nothing wrong for a developer to have that arsenal of questions, you know, in, in day to day work, right. So it doesn't have to be a fully structured, professional coaching arc. But powerful questions are still a powerful, powerful tool, in that it's an interesting angle, and that could benefit possibly, everyone. We touched a little bit on an agile coaches, you just mentioned the role? Even job description? How do you feel about having Agile coach as a job description?

Bob Galen 16:08

I, you know, I'm torn. It seems to be the out there, right? I don't know what to call it. So let's say we could go back in time, Joe, like 15 years or 20 years, when when people started calling themselves agile coaches. I don't know if it's a good title or not. It's it's, it's, it's become like a monetization device. It's become a hierarchical device. Rather than, like, at some point, I called myself a Sherpa, or a guide. And, and I liked this notion of I'm guiding folks I'm providing is multifaceted. I don't know if there was even a framework. But part of being a Sherpa was teaching and mentoring and providing advice. And there wasn't a lot of hoopla around it. And it was very egoless. It was very servant oriented. You were just trying to serve folks. I think going back, if I could wave a magic wand, I'd like to go back to that simpler time. I don't know if we can, and maybe, and maybe change the name to something that that is a little softer, a little less prescriptive. And now it's not just Agile Coach Joe, you know, this is a tactical agile coaches and enterprise Agile coach. There's an organizational agile coaches, leadership. I mean, there's this this entire industry that's been developed around coaching. Yeah. And I don't know if that's serving us well. But again, even in that sense, I think we should focus on the competencies.. Like becoming just like a developer should be focusing on becoming a well rounded developer. There's a lot of air competencies there. Over time. It's, it's Can we just focus instead of on the titles, and the hierarchy and the money? I know, that's all important, I guess, but focus on the competencies, and what does being well rounded look like? Remember, in XP, the idea of the developers was to become well rounded. It wasn't a job description, like interacting with the stakeholder or customer was part of, you know, it wasn't just sliding code under your door, there was an interaction, or there was a collaboration part. And getting better at that was something that we practiced as a team.

Joe Krebs 18:25

I want to add one more question to that. And I want to see how you react to that. So I think, the job description of an Agile coach, I think that's my prediction. I don't think we can turn back that time. I think that's that ship has sailed. Right? That that's going to be there. Same with Scrum Master. I think we'll see that are there too, as a as a job description. But let me just add one more. On top of that. How do you feel about a senior Agile coach? I see those prescription Yeah, I'm interested in

Bob Galen 18:58

that. Well, I mean, I see senior Scrum Masters now too, right. So there's, so there's seniors and there's principal. So folks are adding. I mean, I've been an internal leader. I remember at one company I was I was less outside focused and more insight focused. And we were building a scrum master team. And, and at some point, folks wanted a hierarchy. They wanted a growth path. They wanted to know what I mean. It was it was important to the Scrum Masters and we created we created a career track of Scrum Master. And so, part of me, you know, the Agile part of me, would like flattening of structures. It's not happy, right? The agile, the agile mindset, part of me says, why does it matter? But then the leader being inside, I couldn't sell it really demotivated, folks, folks were programmed to want that they wanted that. So we define that for them. It's I get sort of torn in a word. It breaks my heart a little because it seems like it's on both sides of the fence, and I wish we didn't worry so much about, like where we're at in the, in the pecking order,

Joe Krebs 20:08

right? I want to turn the conversation a little bit from the coaches to possibly people that are hiring coaches and agile code, agile coaches, I have to say, because it's our topic, and this is agile FM, right? So we all focus is agile. But with all that, let's say grayness and lack of definition, which is some positives, and obviously there's a background in that in the Agile community. But let's say there is somebody who is looking for an Agile coach, somebody who is interested in possibly bringing a coach on to improve something that is already in flight, or doing something under current business agility, or starting a transformation of some sort, like anything, or, you know, just introducing agile into an organization. How would a person and all that field and that grayness like not what would be a good approach? What would you recommend based on your experience here, to navigate the field and pick, pick an Agile coach out of this large, large pool of possible candidates?

Bob Galen 21:11

I think the Agile coaching Growth Wheel is a nice discussion vehicle as a backdrop, or Lisa, and Michael's excellent model, whatever, to create discussions, what I would recommend is you one as an employer, you you do a little bit of research into figuring out what Agile coaching is, and what it isn't. So, for example, understand that agile coaching is a superset of professional coaching. Right? If they're not equivalent, professional coaching is an aspect of that not the only part of it. So just just create a mental vision of what it is. You could read my book, you can read some articles. So that's the least you you have an it's not just a word. It's not just in your org chart. The second thing is then tie a model to it. competency model where you where you understand we were talking about stances or competencies, where you understand that it's not just one thing. So for example, you can discern what I called a one trick ponies, right? You can, you can interview and you can unless you want a one trick pony. That's but but but if if you don't, if you want a well rounded, Agile Coach, you understand what that is. And you and you create conversations for this. The third thing I would say is then you move from situational interviewing to you have them coach. I think there's there's power in audition based interviews for certain roles, probably for all roles, but for, for certain roles. It's critically critically important. And I think agile coaching is one of those. So Coach, so coach me in the interview, how and don't have it, you can have a simulation question, but actually have a real problem. Right? I'm struggling with this scrum team. The team isn't taking accountability, they're not getting results, right? They're not accountable to their story points. Coach me, coach me on that in the interview and see see if you're compatible. So actually, have the coach deliver the goods have have, have them coach a team or whatever, wherever you're gonna direct them. And, and then critique that. The other thing is, I think, even if a coach is skilled coaches have unique styles that may or may not align with the organizational culture, or the leadership team culture. So make sure there's a styles connection as well.

Joe Krebs 23:43

Wow, interesting. This is a that's a that's a that's a great idea. For for an interview. It makes it very tangible, right, it makes it very concrete and also like what your what your possible challenges are and that would that would fit that approach would fit a full hire employee would also be for a freelance Agile coach,

Bob Galen 24:06

abslutely, what things we haven't talked about real quickly, it's there's this notion of am I a pragmatist? As am I a purist, you may have seen this. I'm a purist, Agile coach, I'm a pragmatic and digital coach. And not that either one of those is good or bad that say, but, but they're not for everyone. So part of the interviewing, when I say style, where is the coach coming from? Where are there boundary conditions? Where are they? Where are they flexible, and where are they? So for example, Joe the other day, someone I was interviewing with a potential client, and, and we're still talking and and I probably will coach for them. But they were talking to me about evaluating their product owner team. And they were like, Bob, you know, we'd like to get a report from you. So you'll come in, you'll do some coaching. We have a dysfunctional product owner team, you know, 40 or 50, product owners, product managers. And, and they didn't say it, but I was like, Oh, you want me to evaluate who's good and who's not? They're like, yeah, we will, we would like you to do that. And I was like, No, I will not. I as as a coach that's over my ethical boundaries. That's, that's your job to evaluate your staff, not my job. Now I can help you put together an assessment to identify what good product ownership maturity patterns and things like that. So you could assess your team. Certainly, I would welcome to do that. But I am not going to give you a red green yellow report on your on your product owner team. But that's, but there might be another coach who so part of that interview is now we're establishing those boundary conditions. So we know if it's going to make sense to work together. I would rather do that very early than do it late. After I've been engaged.

Joe Krebs 25:58

Well, I would say you would be definitely overstepping, I think your coaching, engagement would look very, very different. Everybody would be very agreeable with you. As a as a mentor, second teacher, if they knew you would be holding up the red green. Right. So silly stuff we still see today. I'm curious to hear like, because I was exploring that topic before with the great idea with the interview. Thanks for that. What is pair coaching? I saw I saw that as a poll as a topic in in your material. How does that relate to I keep pairing I see XP? How do you how do you see that relate to Agile coaching?

Bob Galen 26:43

I think it's I think it's a wonderful thing, if you can sell it, and if you can instantiate it, one of the challenges is selling it to clients. But I tried to go there. So anytime I'm in a multi coach situation, we talk about pairing. So I have some blog posts, I can send you links to it. But an example is one coach and I were working with a client. So he and I would have breakfast. So we had, we had coaching agreements, we had a contract with the client, we had goals and outcomes we were striving for and every day, in the morning, and we had planned our coaching activity, and we would have breakfast at the client site in the morning. And we would talk about our morning. And we would talk about hey, what are you going to do? What am I going to do? I was going to do some leadership coaching, he was going to do some team coaching. He's like, You know what, I really would appreciate it in a separate set of eyes. I'm like, Well, why don't we coach? Why don't we coach that session together? Or why don't we flip, and then we would meet at lunch. So we would plan our day. It wasn't always in lockstep. He and I weren't always coaching together. But we were we were planning the entire arc on a daily basis together. And then we were we were swapping based on what we were sensing Oh, you know what I don't I now I sense that you would be a better coach for this than I. So we were dynamically shifting based on that we were aligning with our outcomes. And we were doing pairing where it made sense. And pairing in the sense of two coaches, working with a client or team or an individual, we did a lot of pairing with the leadership team, actually, when we were coaching the leadership team. And it worked out pretty well. We would meet at lunch, and reflect and we would meet at the end of the day and have a retrospective and reflect. So we were sort of guiding the activity. Sometimes it was us as individuals sometimes. And it was all driven by what are the outcomes and goals of the client? And how are we how are we tracking towards those things? So that's at least my interpretation of pairing. It's not it's not mobbing or pairing in the in that rigorous sense where you cannot right? You cannot coach, you cannot ask a question without me being there. Right beside you. It's not that. But it was it's it's really a tactical and strategic because you really are adjusting your your sort of your your glide path on coaching plans. Does that make sense to that?

Joe Krebs 29:08

Also, like looking at this coaching framework, right, we mentioned earlier and like, we could basically navigate and pair our through the stances Right. So there's a lot of things we could learn while navigating through the stances as pairs, you know,

Bob Galen 29:20

so part of the job was strengths and weaknesses of the coaches are we're developing each other. So again, we were it increased our self awareness of what we were, you know, what we brought to the table, what we didn't, what the challenges were, so we were sort of pairing to me in a coaching sense. You're doing some mentoring there, and you're doing some collaborative training as well. And the client has benefited from that.

Joe Krebs 29:45

clients, employees.

Bob Galen 29:47

Exactly, exactly.I mean, it'd be perfectly to cut to the chase, if I can. What I just described this open sort of, you know, sort of collaborative pair coaching That's my preferred model nowadays. Yeah, I would prefer not to be a lone ranger coach. Yes, you know, and let me define, I'm part of a coaching team, but we never co-coach, that, to me is not the same. I really want to establish this notion of finding pairing opportunities is part of a coaching team. I just think it benefits the team, the coaches, the coaching team and the client so much more.

Joe Krebs 30:26

Yeah. Because you do I mean, you know, honestly, that there are certain questions you might be asking more commonly than others. And all of a sudden, you pair with somebody Exactly. That was an awesome, powerful question or whatever, right? And I'm gonna, I'm gonna take that into my toolbox. Next time I do something, and I'm, you know, I, you know, it's just like, it's a learning environment while like coaching this, you're revealing a lot from yourself in that coaching session?

Unknown Speaker 30:51

Absolutely. Or take that powerful question. Or what about the critique, it's like, you missed an opportunity, you were driving with your ego, you were problem solving for the client too much, you really didn't listen to the so getting that feedback. As as an individual coach, it's really, it builds your self awareness and your and your own personal reflection and improvement.

Joe Krebs 31:14

Yeah, this is awesome. Bob, I do want to thank you for sharing some of your thoughts around your new book Bad Ass Agile Coacing Book. And we're gonna have the journey from beginner to mastery and beyond. And I hope that listeners saw the beyond piece. In this particular recording that there is a lot of beyond there is the Growth Wheel people can pick up on in the book plus plus many, many, many other topics. So all those links will be provided on the Show page, you can just click on it, check out your material, or just go to the website, rgalan.com. You're also podcasting at the meta-cast.com. That's a podcast, I understand there was a short break he just recently had in 2022 for a few months, but you're gonna pick it back up. So if you're looking at the episodes in the log a little old, yeah, there's some new ones coming. So I just want to say thank you for joining and maybe down the road, we can have a follow up conversation and see where that professional agile coaches is going.

Unknown Speaker 32:18

So I want to land Thank you, Joe. Let me land it this way. For everyone who's listening. Going back to that question of why write the book. Another like a meta reason why is I think the profession of agile coaching the competencies is incredibly broad and rich, like some people think you can take a class and you become a coach. I've been coaching for 20 years, I'm not done. I can study coaching for 20 more years and still still be challenged and have areas to learn. So the book, and I hope this discussion inspires you if you want to coach don't look at it as a one shot thing or a one week thing or a one year thing. This is this is this is an area where you can continue to grow for decades. Yes, continue to serve people for decades, and you can continue to make a difference to your clients and to the world of agile for decades. Right? So so it's it's really that kind of look at it that way, and then become humble and they just become a continuous learner.

Joe Krebs 33:22

I maybe to close out I heard somebody say like, who was very, very experienced Agile coach, based on my conversation with that person. And I said, you're very experienced as an Agile coach and said, I consider myself a junior Agile coach, because there's so much I don't know yet and that kind of humbleness. To take that into a job description right where it's going so much knowledge. There's just a, there was an interesting example for that. Thanks, Bob was an awesome.

Bob Galen 33:54

My pleasure.

Joe Krebs 33:58

Thank you for listening to Agile FM, the radio for the Agile community. I'm your host Joe Krebs. If you're interested in more programming and additional podcasts, please go to www agile.fm. Talk to you soon.