Professional Coaching for Agilists

Professional Coaching for Agilists

by Damon B. Poole, Gillian Lee
Released March 2021
Publisher(s): Addison-Wesley Professional
ISBN: 9780136741817

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Book description

Coach Individuals, Teams, and Organizations to Greater Success with Agile

As Agilists work to increase an organization's Agility, they will run into major obstacles with mindset shifts, moving to self-organization, and organizational adoption. Over the past decade, more Agilists have been using Professional Coaching to help individuals, teams, and the organization as a whole uncover these obstacles and move forward faster.

In Professional Coaching for Agilists, Damon Poole and Gillian Lee draw on their experience with thousands of Agile coaches and practitioners to show you how to use Professional Coaching to accelerate your Agile adoption. The authors' approach of "learning by doing" teaches by using well-honed exercises, real-life stories, and example coaching conversations.

This guide is framework-independent and has been designed for Agile Coaches, Scrum Masters, and any Agilist involved in Agile adoption. It teaches high-value coaching skills, step by step, from "coaching by objective" to managing mutually successful engagements.

  • Leverage coaching to create aha moments that lead to real change

  • Learn dozens of coaching techniques and more than a hundred powerful questions

  • Help people uncover blind spots and assess their opportunities more clearly

  • Offer your expertise while maintaining your coaching mindset

  • Help people improve performance by connecting them with their values, goals, and strengths

  • Blend professional coaching with group facilitation so both work better

  • Become a great coach by making coaching a natural extension of who you are

The coaching exercises and resources in the appendices are available as free downloads. Register your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available. See inside book for details.

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. About This eBook
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright Page
  5. Contents
  6. Preface
    1. What Is Professional Coaching?
    2. Who Is This Book For?
    3. What Makes Professional Coaching Valuable for Agilists?
    4. What Is in This Book?
  7. Acknowledgments
  8. About the Authors
  9. 1 Basics of Professional Coaching
    1. What Is Professional Coaching?
      1. Supportive Behaviors
      2. Professional Coaching Defined
      3. Coaching Terminology
      4. Professional Coaching Is Not the Only Tool
      5. People Do What They Want to Do
      6. Focus on the Person Instead of the Issue
    2. Our Coaching Toolbox: Principles, Objectives, and Techniques
    3. Objective-Based Coaching
      1. Starting a Coaching Conversation
      2. Objective: Rapport Building
      3. Objective: Identify the Session Purpose
      4. Objective: The Aha Moment
      5. Objective: Forward Motion (aka Planning)
      6. Objective: The Associated Goal
      7. Identifying the Session Purpose versus the Associated Goal
      8. Objective: Learning and Growth
    4. An Example Coaching Conversation
    5. Powerful Questions: The Primary Tool of Professional Coaching
      1. Your Mindset Determines the Kinds of Questions You Ask
      2. The Seven Characteristics of Powerful Questions
      3. Powerful Question Anti-Patterns
    6. Applying Professional Coaching to Teams and Organizations
    7. Chapter Summary
      1. Self-Assessment
      2. Suggested Next Steps
  10. 2 Professional Coaching in Depth
    1. Professional Coaching Starts with Permission
    2. The Session Purpose
      1. The Session Purpose Is a Specific Outcome for the Conversation
      2. The Coachee’s True Session Purpose Is Probably a Surprise to Both of You
      3. An Example of Determining the Session Purpose
      4. Success Criteria for the Session Purpose
    3. Exploring the Coachee’s Mental Landscape
    4. Forward Motion (aka Planning)
      1. Excitement, Motivation, and Resolve
      2. Real Next Steps
      3. Accountability
      4. A Coaching Approach versus Managing and Project Managing
      5. Looking for Discrepancies
    5. Closing a Coaching Session
      1. When You Are Running Out of Time
      2. Turning Loose Ends into Coaching Assignments
      3. Moving Wrap-Up Actions Earlier in the Conversation
    6. Coaching Techniques
      1. Coaching Technique: Personalizing
      2. Coaching Technique: Depersonalizing
    7. An Extended Example of Professional Coaching
      1. “The Standup” Take 1: No Assistance Requested
      2. “The Standup” Take 2: The Scrum Master Reaches Out to an Agile Expert
      3. “The Standup” Take 3: The Scrum Master Reaches Out to a Coach
    8. Chapter Summary
      1. Self-Assessment
      2. Suggested Next Steps
  11. 3 Acting as a Mirror
    1. Neutrality: The Absence of Distortion
    2. Fully Absorbing Information
      1. Presence
      2. Patience
      3. Going with the Flow
      4. Emotional Intelligence
    3. Consider Your Response
    4. Reflecting the Coachee in Your Response
      1. Create a Space That Invites Inner Reflection
      2. Coaching Technique: Notifying
      3. Maintain the Coachee’s Point of View
      4. Avoid Paraphrasing When Coaching
      5. Use Reiterating Instead of Paraphrasing to Move the Conversation Forward
    5. Helping the Coachee Focus
      1. Invite Prioritization
      2. Coaching Technique: Summarizing
      3. Keep the Session on Track without Taking the Coachee Off Track
      4. Coaching Technique: Orienting to Session Purpose
      5. Orienting to a New Session Purpose
    6. Using the Team to Augment Your Coaching
    7. A Complete Summary of Professional Coaching
      1. Shaping Your Coaching Self
    8. Chapter Summary
      1. Self-Assessment
      2. Suggested Next Steps
  12. 4 Offering Expertise
    1. Resisting the Urge to Provide Unsolicited Expertise
    2. Handling Explicit Requests for Expertise
      1. Proactively Raising Awareness of the Value of Coaching
      2. Coaching Technique: Redirecting
      3. Coaching Technique: Highlighting
      4. Sharing Expertise with a Professional Coaching Mindset
    3. Sharing the “Minimum Viable” Amount of Expertise
      1. Feedback Is a Form of Expertise
      2. Giving Praise and Criticism Is Like Playing a Game of Hot and Cold
      3. Return to Professional Coaching as Soon as Possible
    4. We All Have Blind Spots
    5. Applying a Coaching Mindset to Teaching
    6. Creating a Self-Serve Knowledge-Sharing Environment
      1. Using Agile and Modeling Agile
      2. Publishing Your Capabilities
      3. Catalog of Services
    7. Guidelines for Sharing Feedback and Expertise
    8. Additional Considerations for Sharing Feedback and Expertise
      1. Embrace Not Knowing
      2. Acknowledge the Coachee’s Contributions
      3. Encourage the Coachee’s Learning and Growth
      4. What if Their Approach Is Not as Good as My Approach?
      5. What if They Make a “Bad” Decision?
    9. Receiving Feedback as a Coach
    10. Chapter Summary
      1. Self-Assessment
      2. Suggested Next Steps
  13. 5 Coaching toward Performance
    1. Connecting People with Their Best Selves
      1. Personal Inventory
      2. Creating a Personal Inventory
      3. Our Differences Shape Our Choices
    2. Shifting from Obstacles to Goals
      1. Coaching Technique: Orienting to Goals
      2. Coaching Technique: Determining Goals and Vision
    3. Providing Feedback on the Coachee’s Journey
      1. Coaching Technique: Encouraging
      2. Coaching Technique: Acknowledging
      3. Coaching Technique: Challenging
      4. Coaching Technique: Celebrating
    4. Rewiring Our Thought Patterns
      1. What We Do Now Is How We’ve Succeeded So Far
      2. Coaching Technique: Reinterpreting
      3. Coaching Technique: Reevaluating
      4. Coaching Technique: Repatterning
      5. Coaching Technique: Reflection
      6. The Role of Emotional Intelligence in Rewiring
      7. More Opportunities for the Coachee to Rewire Their Thought Patterns
      8. Opportunities for Coachee Self-Improvement
    5. Team Self-Coaching
    6. Supporting Coachee Improvement Efforts
    7. Chapter Summary
      1. Self-Assessment
      2. Suggested Next Steps
  14. 6 Being the Best Coach You Can Be
    1. Bring Your Whole Self to Coaching
      1. Building Rapport with Humor
      2. Coaching Technique: Lightening
      3. The Practical Application of Intuition
      4. Coaching Technique: Intuition
      5. Metacognition: Translating Your Experience into Coaching
    2. Leverage Your Emotional Intelligence
      1. Social Awareness
      2. Self-Awareness
      3. Self-Management
      4. Relationship Management
      5. Emotional Intelligence in Action
      6. Responding to the Coachee’s Feelings
      7. Coaching Technique: Releasing
    3. Experiment and Take Risks to Grow as a Coach
    4. Consider Specialized Tools and Techniques
      1. Visualization
      2. Role-Playing
      3. Interrupting
    5. Incorporate Coaching Skills into Your Everyday Interactions
    6. Pursue Excellence
      1. Self-Coaching
      2. Self-Retrospectives
    7. Chapter Summary
      1. Self-Assessment
      2. Suggested Next Steps
  15. 7 Leveraging Group Facilitation
    1. The Best Results Emerge from Self-Organizing Teams
      1. Growing a Team toward Self-Organization
    2. Facilitation Structures and Practices That Maximize Coachee Choice
    3. Powerful Activities—Powerful Questions for Teams
      1. Example: Team with the Best Results Ever
      2. Example: Shared Visioning
    4. Additional Opportunities for Team Coaching
    5. Case Studies
      1. The Nonviolent Communication Retrospective
      2. A Tale of Two Teams
      3. An Organization-Level Coaching Conversation
    6. Chapter Summary
      1. Self-Assessment
      2. Suggested Next Steps
  16. 8 The Coaching Engagement
    1. Discovering the Work That Needs Doing
    2. Doing the Work
      1. Growing Agility
      2. Using Agile and Coaching to Become Agile
      3. Managing Coaching Work via a Backlog
    3. Measuring Agility
    4. What’s Your Coaching Engagement Model?
    5. Coaching Contrasted with Other Services
      1. Coaching versus Therapy
      2. Coaching versus Consulting
      3. Using Professional Coaching as a Consultant
    6. The Coaching Agreement for the Coaching Engagement
      1. Creating a Coaching Agreement
      2. Creating a Coaching Agreement with a Team
      3. Creating a Coaching Agreement with Leadership
      4. Creating a Coaching Agreement in the Moment
      5. Coaching Behaviors That Require a Coaching Agreement
      6. Turning Verbal Agreements into Written Agreements
      7. The Path to Creating a Coaching Agreement
    7. Chapter Summary
      1. Self-Assessment
      2. Suggested Next Steps
  17. Appendix A: Exercises
    1. Guidelines for the Exercises
    2. Exercises for Chapter 1
    3. Exercises for Chapter 2
    4. Exercises for Chapter 3
    5. Exercises for Chapter 4
    6. Exercises for Chapter 5
    7. Exercises for Chapter 6
    8. Exercises for Chapter 7
    9. Exercises for Chapter 8
    10. Additional Exercises
  18. Appendix B: References
    1. Our Coaching Principles
    2. Coaching Objectives
    3. Behaviors to Do and Avoid
    4. Professional Coaching Starting Reference
    5. Guidelines for Creating Powerful Questions
    6. Additional Powerful Questions
    7. Guidelines for Sharing Feedback and Expertise
    8. Guidelines for Staying in the Coaching Mode as Much as Possible
    9. Example Descriptions of an Agile Coach and Professional Coaching
    10. Example Coaching Agreements—For Individuals, Teams, and Organizations
    11. Example Service Offerings
    12. Coaching Techniques
    13. Recommended Resources
  19. Index

Product information

  • Title: Professional Coaching for Agilists
  • Author(s): Damon B. Poole, Gillian Lee
  • Release date: March 2021
  • Publisher(s): Addison-Wesley Professional
  • ISBN: 9780136741817