 Agile Coaches have a big job.
"Support the
team but not too much and not too little."
"Be
available but don't be overbearing."
"Offer ideas
but don't get too involved."
"Coach,
don't manage."
All this advice can be confusing, even
contradictory. No wonder Agile Coaches
fall into less-than-desirable behaviors as they try out new things to help
teams. The problem is that these
behaviors can subtly undermine a team's ability to organize, improve and,
eventually, reach high-performance.
That's why they are called failure modes.
After a few years of coaching aspiring Agile
Coaches and observing many practicing coaches in action, I have noticed a
handful of common failure modes. Some coaches temporarily exhibit one or
more of these modes when under stress. Others exhibit them all the time,
to the point that the coach is not aware of them, or their effects on
teams.
In this article, the term Agile Coach is used synonymously with ScrumMaster. To enable high-performance teams, ScrumMasters
and Agile Coaches must go deep into Scrum, past the practices and into the coaching
aspects of the job. Therefore, this article uses the term Agile Coach
only. Know this: the failure (and recovery) modes presented in this
article apply fully to both ScrumMasters and Agile Coaches.
What are these failure modes?
The Failure Modes, Defined
Here are the seven failure modes, expressed as
personas. Each is followed by a defining characteristic.
The Spy
The Spy spends just enough time observing the team to pick up topics for the
next retrospective.
The Seagull
The Seagull swoops in at standups, poops all over the team (with
well-intentioned observations or advice) and flies away again.
The Opinionator
The Opinionator expresses opinions during team discussions, getting so attached
to their opinions (or others') that they lose the objectivity needed to help
the team have great discussions.
The Admin
The Admin undermines team ownership by becoming an unnecessary middle-man for
meeting logistics, access requests and other administrator-type jobs.
The Hub
The Hub acts as the center of the universe for communication between team
members and for task-level coordination.
The Butterfly
The Butterfly flits around from team to team, landing just long enough to
impart a pearl of wisdom or pose a philosophical question.
The Expert
The Expert is so involved in the details of the team's work that only the trees
are visible. What? We're in a forest? Huh, does that mean
there's a way out?
All the failure modes have the same effect on the team. They sap the team's ability to become truly
high performing because they spotlight the Agile Coach. When the failure modes are in operation, the
coach has somehow become a focus of the team's work. Maybe the coach is too invasive, like the Hub,
for instance. Or, equally as damaging,
the coach could be too evasive, like the Butterfly. In either case, the coach is in the center
and that's the wrong place for a coach to be.
Where do they come
from?
Ego or continuous partial attention, or both, are often present when a coach is
in the grip of a failure mode.
Egos are normal,
right?
Of course. The ego is where
judgment, intellect, planning, perception and reality-awareness meet. It allows you to be confident enough to risk
speaking your ideas. It is normal, and
needed. The ego is, however, "I"
centered. What do I think? What should I do?
What ideas do I have to
contribute? What will people think of me?
This "I" thinking can easily slide down the slippery slope into a deeper
expression, however, when coaching teams.
Why can't they see what I
see? What will I do if they don't do well?
What will people think of my
team? What will people say about me, as their coach?
What's behind all of this "I" thinking is fear. Fear that the team really won't know the
right way to go. Fear that they will
fail or not be good enough; culminating in fear that this will reflect badly on
you. The problem with this cycle is that
fear breeds fear to the point that you may not give the team enough room to see
what would happen, what they would come up with, how good they really could
be. This is where the Hub, the Admin, the
Opinionator and the Expert come in.
These failure modes are all ways to insert yourself into the team's
operations so you can ensure they won't go too far astray. The problem is that this also ensures the
team won't come up with amazing results, either.
Multitasking is
normal, right?
Well, not really. Multitasking, and its cousin, continuous
partial attention, are fairly new and the human nervous system may not be built
for them. [1] You're
probably well acquainted with multitasking - doing more than one thing at a
time, usually with one task being a simple on you can do on auto-pilot. Continuous
partial attention is a more recent term, but you probably know what it is, too. It's like this: "I'm going to answer this
e-mail while you tell me about your problem and while I look at my Blackberry
because it's chirping at me. Now, tell
me again, what did you want to talk to me about?" It's like multitasking, but with a twist - the
feeling of being "on" 24/7, constantly scanning for who or what wants your
attention next.
Continuous partial attention arises when the coach is
coaching more than one team, which is fairly common. However, it often
leads to the Seagull, the Spy and the Butterfly. These are all some version of doing just
enough to make one's presence felt, to make it look like you are coaching when
you are really just barely there.
The reality of the situation is that coaches spend much of
their time waiting. Being with the team,
noticing what's happening and waiting.
Waiting for what? Waiting for
precious teachable moments.
Teachable moments are "those unique transition points where
there is the maximum opportunity for imprinting new learnings." [2]
These are the moments that crystallize an Agile principle and make it real or
move a team into greater insight and creativity resulting in a remarkable
product. They are the "aha!" moments, bringing it all together and
laying the foundation for the high-performance team.
Although teachable moments often come for individuals at
typical transition times such as the start of a
new job, all bets are off when you're dealing with teams. In the context
of an Agile team, teachable moments come seemingly at random. You can't
force them and you don't know when they will emerge. Waiting seems
unproductive, but if ample time for the coach to just "be" with the team is not
allowed, the moments will be missed, along with the learning. When the learning is missed, the team's
journey to high performance slows.
What
might an Agile Coach do?
There is a recovery mode - a way to avoid or, at least, recover from the
failure modes. The recovery mode is to
replace fear with trust. It's important
enough to say it again: replace fear with trust. Trust that the team really does know the
right thing to do, even if it's different than you would have them do. Trust that they can and will bounce back from
blind alleys and approaches that don't pan out, so you need not save them from
these disappointments. Trust that they
will rise to the best in themselves to surprise and delight their customers
(and you). Trust that if they fail, they
will learn and be even better for it.
It's no small feat to get to a place where you trust. This is a tall order, with a big payoff. One nifty side effect of trust is this: to
make trust work, you have to offer your full attention. To make room for trust, you need to pay
attention to what's actually happening on the team and also, what's trying to happen.
Trust + Attention =
Good Coaching (Or, at least, the
foundation that makes good coaching possible).
Although
there is no one right path to "get to" trust and offer attention, here are a
few things you might try: cultivate
mindfulness, get curious, go easy and pair. They all work well together
and each works fine by itself, so do what feels right.
Cultivate mindfulness
Anything to help you cultivate mindfulness will help avoid the failure
modes. Practicing mindfulness, you may learn to be fully present to teams
and you may find your self-awareness increases. Presence and
self-awareness are two keys to help you notice when a failure mode has arrived
so you can adjust. Any books from John Kabat-Zinn [3]
are a good place to start with mindfulness practice.
For me,
mindfulness means silencing the noise in my head. The noise may be worry about what the team
will do next; judgment about the product owner being too directive; aggravation
about a team member not truly participating; elation that the team just
released a new product; and so many other thoughts. They
are all in there, jumbled up and trying to elbow their way up to the front of the
attention line. They are loud and distract
me from doing what I need to do as the coach: tune in to what is going on with
the team right now. Not what happened in the past, not what I'm
worried about will happen in the future, but what is happening in the present
moment. This is why mindfulness is often
called "getting present." When I get
present, I am able to notice what is really happening with the team and then help
them move forward in a constructive and positive way. Looking back, I often see that the path they
took was perfect for them, and very different than I would have suggested if I allowed
myself to be driven by worry, judgment, aggravation, elation, and more.
Get curious
When you are
observing a team as they work, get curious about what's going on. Ask
yourself questions such as, "What's trying to happen here?" "Where are
they headed?" "What might they find useful?" Then, notice
what's going on some more. Take time to see what's really there, to get
the clear view of the team - the view that is not colored by your judgments and
assumptions. Then, notice what's going
on with you. What failure mode is happening for you? What are you feeling? Is fear motivating you? Where is the trust? Where is your attention? And, then, when you see clearly what's going
on with them and what's going on inside you, you can begin to *think* about
coaching them.
Go easy
Maybe noticing that a
failure mode is in operation for you is enough right now. Maybe just
becoming aware when you slip into a failure mode is a big leap forward.
Go ahead, be aware. Be gentle with yourself. This is a new
muscle. Of course you are going to rely on time-worn reflexes when
stressful situations come up. The
secret, here, is to know that the stress behavior need not become your everyday
behavior. And then, eventually, even in
stress, you will be able to avoid the failure modes. But for right now, know where you are. Just notice and pause. After a while,
you can decide if you want to continue this way or
change.
Pair
Pairing is good for coaches, too. Maybe even essential. Cultivate a group of colleagues you can call
on when you feel a failure mode start to take hold. These are people who can commiserate with you
and remind you: you're going for
high-performance; for a self-monitoring, self-adjusting team. And, with that renewed goal firmly in mind,
you can put the ego in check, focus your attention and get ready to coach from
a place of trust.
About the Author
Lyssa Adkins is passionate about deepening the Agile Coach
role so that organizations can activate Agile as the competitive advantage
weapon it was promised to be. She teaches and coaches individuals, teams
and organizations in Agile, specifically Scrum.
She blogs about Agile at www.cricketwing.com.
[1]
See, for example, John Kabat-Zinn, A.D.D. Nation in Coming to our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World through
Mindfulness, Hyperion: 2006. Also,
Linda Stone, Continuous
Partial Attention - Not the Same as Multitasking, Business Week, July
2008. For a recent example of disastrous
results when multitasking, see articles on the California train crash that killed 25, like this article
on CNN.com.
[2]
Noel Tichy. The Cycle of Leadership, How
Great Leaders Teach their Companies to Win. Harper Business: 2002. 161.
[3]
Any books on mindfulness meditation by John Kabat-Zinn are a great way to start
a mindfulness practice. Wherever You
Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life (Hyperion:
2005) is a winner, as are John's audio books and meditation tapes. One such
audio book is Mindfulness for Beginners
(Sounds True: 2006).
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