• Agile Coach

Agile Coach: put yourself against the yardstick!

There are a lot of different flavors of coaches in the world. With lots of different good-sounding job titles. For lots of different issues. But 1 thing all good coaches have in common: they are constantly working on their own development. They never stand still. Always looking for new insights, not only to help others grow, but also to grow themselves. At least, that’s what all coaches should have in common. What about you as an Agile Coach?

A quick refresher; the basics of Agile Coaching

Before delving into your development as an Agile Coach, are you in need of a little refresher? No problem. In this basic blog on Agile Coaching , we briefly touch on the most important topics for an Agile Coach. What is the purpose of Agile Coaching? How is an Agile Coach different from other coaches? And what is the skillset of a good Agile Coach? By the way, the Scrum Academy basic blogs are also about the Scrum Master and Product Owner.

Put yourself against the yardstick with these 9 questions

As an Agile Coach, it is critical that you know yourself through and through. The better you know yourself and the better you know your qualities and pitfalls, the more value you add to another person. This applies to every coach, of course, but especially to an Agile Coach, because you coach from specific values. These flow through your veins all day long; a good Agile Coach inherently lives the Agile values and principles. That is why I think it is important for every coach to regularly reflect on himself. Make a short assessment of your Agile values and principles. Put yourself against the yardstick. In 9 steps you can focus on who you are as an Agile Coach.

Take an hour and fill in all the areas for yourself:

• What is your vision of Agile? And what does Agile mean to you? Why is Agile Coaching important to you?
• Who are you as a coach? What are your values, qualities? And what is your mission statement?
• What is your Moonshot? What ambition do you have?
• What makes you persuasive? What experience do you bring with you? What skills do you use to make a difference with others?
• Who do you want to be a coach for? In which organizations? For which teams? And who don’t you want to be there for? Do you work at the team level or do you prefer to scale up toward management? Do you prefer to be internally or externally employed as a coach?
• With what are you making an impact? And with what trait do you increase impact? With what actions?
• What will you do less of or even quit? And what are you doing now that contributes nothing to your role as a coach?
• What are you actually doing much too little or not yet? And what should you actually do?
• How do you put yourself in motion? What will you continue to develop in? How will you keep yourself sharp? What will be your first steps (your own development backlog) that you want to have accomplished within 1 day, 1 week, 1 month and 1 quarter?

See your development as an ongoing process

Of course, you don’t complete these steps once and then immediately be ready for the years to come. Your development is also a continuous process. You develop yourself, adjust the plan when necessary and develop yourself further. Having your own quarterly refinement is not so crazy. But everything starts with the first steps. So what will be your impactful steps? What does your plan look like? What will you conquer in the next quarter?

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