At first, it astonished me how many people wanted to be coaches without any desire whatsoever to, you know, interact with people. It was some time before I figured it out: these were people in highly creative technical positions, i.e. geekery, who wanted so badly the benefits of XP that they were even willing to pretend that they liked people.
To be a successful coach, in XP or any other endeavor, you are going to have to like people. A lot.
And it’s not good enough to like them when they’re quietly doing what you told them. You have to like them when:
- …they are sad;
- …they are argumentative;
- …they are confused;
- …they are freaking out;
- …they are catching you doing something you shouldn’t;
- …they are too quiet or not loud enough;
- …and yes, in any other conceivable mode, too.
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See, coaching people who do highly technical work — geeks — is not possible if you’re a misanthrope. (Note: I’m not restricting your persona here. I have known several successful coaches whose shtick was misanthropic. The discussion of persona will wait for another day.)
The interplay between technical practice, group psychology, and just plain folks-as-they-are, is staggeringly complex. Way way too complex for humans to grasp. This means way more than can be summarized here, but at least one thing it means for sure: you are going to make mistakes. For the philosophically eager, see the description in Winograd & Flores of ‘thrownness’. In a single sentence, throwness means being permanently in a state of wildly partial understanding of the people you interact with.
Now, given that you are going to make them, what kind do you want them to be?
There’s a gazillion possible answers to this question. I’m not going to list them like I was pretending to give you a choice. I’m just going to blurt it out:
You want your coaching mistakes to be the kind that the team around you can recover from.
I leave the reasoning from “liking people” to “making recoverable mistakes” as an exercise for the reader.
Mike,
Have you seen places where managers or scrum masters are coaches? Do you think it’s a better fit for this role?
I find that depending on the coach’s background, her/his contribution to the team varies.
If you get a technical person, she/he can show you how to pair, write tests, help you check your code in at least twice a day. That’s great. But maybe planning or retrospectives are not this person’s forte.
Get someone from a project management background, and planning is great but the team really does not understand why pairing is important or how to write tests.
It’s difficult to “walk the talk” and show by doing at all levels of coaching.
What would you recommend for coaches that want to get better at all stages?
Sebastian makes a good question. IMHO, good managers and scrum masters area leaders and good coaches. It must be this way, otherwise, you are micromanaging, telling people what to do, instead of letting them decide, make mistakes, learn and become team. In contrast, all too often, corporations make so much pressure in managers (and scrum masters) that they cannot avoid micromanagement. Personally, I think this is as classical mistake, and sign that the corporation didn’t really buy in the idea of agile (or lean or pragmatic or whatever).
Sebastian also has a point on how the coach can help the team. Surely, there are several levels and expertise, but a good coach can really help when he realizes how to make the correct thought-provoking questions 🙂 A good XP coach has XP values and principles in his heart, and is able to make questions that lead the team to accept XP practices and to adapt them when they are not working well.
I would recommend any wannabe coach, or scrum master, like myself to read a lot about coaching. I am currently reading David Clutterbuck’s Coaching the Team at Work (http://www.amazon.com/Coaching-Team-Work-David-Clutterbuck/dp/1904838081/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1250645318&sr=1-7) which is very insightful. Although it is not about Scrum or Agile, each page is making me think back and realize why some actions of mine did’t quite produce the desired results.
Cheers.
Thanks for the book link! It’s winging its way to me as I type.