PremierAgile

Out of the many responsibilities of a Scrum Master to create value for the team and the organization, coaching is one of the most essential. A Scrum Master coaches the Developers, Product Owner, and organization to bring the best out of them; and effectively transform the organization from a traditional way of working to an Agile way of working.

As a coach, a Scrum Master helps in unleashing the latent potential of the members of the Scrum Team. He helps the Scrum Team as well as the organization adopt an Agile culture by enabling individuals to learn to solve their own problems.

In this article, you'll learn about what is coaching, why is it important during Agile transformation, skills required for coaching, along with some good practices to provide coaching effectively and efficiently.

What is Coaching?

Coaching is a process of collaborative intervention where the coach helps the coachees (or individuals or teams receiving the coaching services) improve themselves, learn to achieve goals, and handle complex situations. Unlike traditional mentoring and training where the coach needs to be a subject matter expert, the coach in Scrum is responsible for creating a safe environmental structure where the coaches can be open, vulnerable, and adaptable to a growing environment.

While coaching, the Coach helps trainees clarify the challenges they want to be addressed. The coach stays neutral and holds the structure within which the coachee can go through the transformation.  During the process, the coachee develops the skills and capabilities to build a better future for one's own self as well as for the organization.

Why is coaching important?

Coaching the Developers and Product Owner helps them apply Scrum and related Agile practices to their best advantage. It further helps them fine-tune processes and team dynamics to achieve better cohesion with all stakeholders. Therefore, the gap between customers and various team members can be easily bridged.

The transformation of managers and leaders is another crucial cog in an Agile transformation journey for any organization. Hence coaching senior leaders is an important tool to be leveraged during the Agile journey.

The role of Scrum Master as a coach

As a coach, a Scrum Master needs to fulfil the following:

• Ask powerful questions, and empower the Scrum Team to find their own answers instead of giving the answers.
• Actively listen with an open mind to bring clarity to their thoughts.
• Help them look at their blind spots and save them from catastrophic failures.
• Enable culture and structure that promotes taking actions.
• Challenge the coachees, lead them out of their comfort zone.

Five must-have skills for a Scrum Master to become a great coach

1. Listening

2. Empathetic

3. Believing

4. Analytical

5. Critical questioning

How to coach leaders and management teams during Agile transformation?

A Scrum Master uses several practices, coaching models to coaches Scrum Teams, senior leaders, customers and middle management teams, to transform the overall organization. One of the successful coaching models is 'Expedia Coaching Model' -  created by a group of experienced Agile coaches during an Agile coaches Retreat in 2017. Some details about the model below. For more details, visit www.ExepediaCoachingModel.com.

The Exepedia Coaching Model

The Exepedia Coaching Model is a Scrum-based coaching model. Scrum Masters wearing the hat of a coach can use this model during Agile transformations while coaching senior leaders, managers, and executives.

This model entails three stages:

Know: Enable leaders to align on a shared vision of prioritizing organizational transformation.

Believe: Create a mapping between the Agile practices and perceived benefits to understand how committed the leaders are.

Achieve: Implement the practices required to help executives and leaders imbibe Agile practices in their ways of working.

Each stage is performed iteratively, comprises of few steps towards a successful Agile transformation. Each individual step details out the activities to be performed by the Scrum Masters, lists sample questions to be asked and provides templates that can be used throughout the transformation journey.

Final thoughts

As each organization is unique and has with its own set of challenges and complexities, there are no 'one size fits all' coaching practices or set of rules that can coach organizations during Agile transformations. A Scrum Master or an Agile coach uses own experience and skills to coach Scrum Teams. However, it is utmost important to coach senior leaders, customers and middle management teams, to help imbibe an Agile mindset rather than emphasizing on the practices alone. It is about 'Doing Agile versus Being Agile' - the latter yields a more sustainable results in the longer term.