Responsive Agile Coaching

Autorentext

Niall McShane is a coach at heart and throughout his career has applied coaching in many situations; sports, life, leadership and most recently agile and ways to work. There are two consistent themes in all of the coaching Niall has delivered over the years; performance (getting the outcome) and growth (learning to be better). These two elements are central to his work and life as a coach, consultant and person. McShane has built his agile coaching career through hiring, training, and mentoring others to be coaches. He has done this while delivering agile coaching to a broad range of customers (business and technology). In a recent role he was the head of a coach academy at a large (30,000 people) Australian corporation undergoing a full transformation to its way of working; he trained and established a mentoring approach for 70+ agile coaches from beginner to expert.

Klappentext

How to Accelerate Your Coaching Outcomes with Meaningful Conversations
With Foreword by Arie van Bennekum, Co-Author of The Agile Manifesto In Responsive Agile Coaching Niall McShane draws on over a decade of agile coaching experience to document a clear and well-researched model that lifts the lid on how agile coaching actually works. The book starts by defining what the role of agile coach has become in recent times before putting forward a field-tested and theoretically sound model for conducting agile coaching conversations. Packed full of real life stories from authentic coaching work you'll laugh and cry with the characters as you learn what it takes to be one of the best agile coaches in the current market. Drawing from areas such as neuroscience, mindfulness, behavioral psychology and unlearning theory this book is focused on when and how to have conversations that matter with clients during times of change. The central point in the book argues that agile coaches are more than the sum of their competencies; they need to execute the right "moves and steps" during coaching conversations. The model Niall outlines is built around one moment that matters in all agile coaching conversations; Niall calls this the responsive moment. Sensing this moment and responding in a way that best serves the needs of the client and the organization is what the book guides you to be able to do (consistently). The Responsive Agile Coaching model is a dynamic flow-based approach to delivering agile coaching as a service. It dispels the thinking that agile coaching needs to be delivered by a person with the title of agile coach and aims to "open source" it as a skill anyone can develop. This book puts the 'coaching' back into agile coaching by providing a model to balance the agile expert and coaching elements of agile coaching. Responsive Agile Coaching is part theory, part practical guide book and part story telling. The book has been written to cater for readers from all backgrounds who are looking to change the way they work; managers, leaders, change agents as well as agile coaches will find insights and inspiration in this book.

Leseprobe
FOREWORD: For more than 25 years, I have been working in this system we call agile. In the beginning, I was experimenting because everything was theoretical. Later, I was working on making these approaches solid and reliable and most of all, delivering value to the client. What has always been a big question mark for me is the fact that although the end results are initially successful, clients had always an excuse to step back into their old habitsthe old habits that resulted in non-delivery. Later on, I detected the power of old paradigms deeply embedded in the organizations in areas such as decision making, documentation standards, career paths, bureaucracy, job descriptions, evaluation and reward, and last but not leasthabits. Habits, once in position, are difficult to change (it does not work for us) and also define a person or company's reflexes under stress. These deeply rooted habits make it difficult to help people change; it is common for people and organizations to revert back to their old ways. People bump into an issue and instead of fixing it in an agile way forward, they regress backward by reimplementing old habits. This problem offered a massive opportunity: the professional domain of the agile coach. Now there are a lot of people who call themselves agile coaches; however, and I am so sorry to say this, I often meet coaches who don't know how to coach. Agile knowledge and experience is often already an issue, but the lack of coaching skills strikes me over and over again as a major issue within this professional domain. The question is: what exactly are those coaching skills? I do not claim I have the one and only answer, but for me it is clear that supporting people in finding their own way is not the way. For me, an agile coach is like a sports coach. Sometimes you have to be directive and strict on the dos and don'ts, and sometimes you have to let teams struggle a bit and move forward on their own. Collective change (to achieve collective benefits) and tailor-made team improvements are both part of the support needed, and this is what the book is all about. I recommend you read this book to learn. Read to see how this book can help you in your career. The help is out there, and a professional agile coach is always interested in the lessons and improvements forward that can be learned from another. Enjoy! Arie van Bennekum
Co-Author of Agile Manifesto
The Netherlands