9. When to Coach Teams
• Retrospective items
• Overall process improvements
• General communication
• Issue/opportunity is team wide
• Conflict
10. When to Coach Individuals
• Conflict
• Helping a lower performing team member
• Sensitive issues—like hygiene. Eek!
• Onboarding a new team member
• Strengthening an emerging leader
11. Preparing to Coach
• Prepare yourself
• Practice on yourself
• Establish a coaching relationship
– Trust
– Care
– Authority
• School yourself (field trip!)
34. A team member has a series of
unexplained absences.
Why?
What do we coach?
35. A team member clips his nails
during a team meeting.
Why?
What do we coach?
36. A team member is intoxicated at work.
Why?
What do we coach?
37. A team member explains even very simple
things to his/her teammates.
Why?
What do we coach?
38. Coaching Methods
• Casual drop-bys
• Scheduled sessions
• Reminders in meetings
• Suggested training
• Forward relevant articles
• Encouragement
• Be available – constantly remind your teams
that you’re there to help
39. Coaching Phrases
• “I noticed that it went well when you…”
• “I’ve noticed that you’re more stressed than
normal. What’s going on? Can I help?”
• “I’m not sure if you noticed, but I think you
upset Fred during our standup this morning.”
• “I know we’ve been having trouble with X. I
read this blog post where a team tried A,B,C.
What do you think?”
41. Team Goals & Needs
Engineering Practices
• Wants to try pairing
Communication
• Needs to use email alias more often
• Work on not interrupting each other
User Stories & Planning
• Make smaller stories
• Better prepare for planning
Needs
• More reliable builds
• Better organized product backlog
42. Individual Goals
Team Member Goals Notes
Josh Needs to understand & live
team empowerment
Seems very stressed lately, need to
make sure he stays at a sustainable
pace
Camille Need to work on not letting
perfect get in the way of
done
I’ve worked with Camille on setting
quality expectations up front. I’m
hopeful for improvements this
sprint.
Jaime Jaime’s part time, so I’ve had a
hard time getting to know her—
especially since she’s quiet. I need
to work on that.
Nick Work on test strategy more
upfront
Has been stepping up as a team
leader the last two sprints—love to
see that
43. Working with Others to Coach
• Meet with your team members’ managers
• Talk about the goals, things you’re noticing
• Ask if there’s anything you can help with
• Don’t be afraid to ask for them to hold off on
an issue if you’re working it
• Make sure some of it’s positive
• When? At least sprintly. ASAP if it’s a big issue.
44. Coaching To Coach
• Encourage self-management
• Grow an emergent leader
• Help more experienced team member feel
valued
• Get help in areas where others have more
experience
When you hear the term coaching, your thoughts may go to basketball, football, or some other sport, but when the term was originated, it meant instructor or tutor. This is much closer to the type of coaching we’ll talk about this afternoon.http://www.flickr.com/photos/psycho-pics/2630163338/sizes/l/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/heraldpost/5169295492/sizes/o/in/photostream/Coaching is helping someone grow through a mix of challenging, questioning, instructing, and supporting. More often than not, when you’re working with teams, this coaching has to do with how to work together & function as a team.
Spectrum of informal to very formal, in most situations, I recommend informal but trackedIf you're initimidated by the idea of coaching someone, you may be surprised to realize that you have probably coached someone in the past--without using the word.
Isn’t agile supposed to be about the team?
A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. A team is only as strong as its weakest member. While there are plenty of ways to strengthen a team as a whole, you will get the most return on your time investment by coaching your weakest team members--or by coaching your stronger team members to coach your weak members. We'll get that in Section 2, but first, let's learn about how we can help individual team members directly.
Establish trust with the individualMake sure that they know that you care--at some level. It's best if they feel like you care about them as a person, but if you can at least let them know that you care about their professional growth, that's a great start.Establish authority in the area you're coaching them in. For some people, that means knowing about certifications, but for most people and most areas of coaching, it means practice what you preach.School yourself—starting now—on what people need to be happy & productive at work
You may have seen this in a health class once upon a time
http://www.flickr.com/photos/amanky/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/catdonmit/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/benjamingolub/Leave time for socializingImportant to help new people feel like they belongHave a lunch with the team or do happy hour during their first week on the job
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alanenglish/
www.flickr.com/photos/benjamingolub/
Keeping all of those attributes & Maslow’s hiearchy in mind, let’s do some exercisesI will talk about tools & how to do this first, but I want to get you in a state of mind
Trick question. This isn’t about coaching anymore. This needs to be reported to the person’s direct report and/or HR.
At the end of the day, it’s about providing the information that your teams need in a supportive & useful way. Whether it’s engineering practices or how to talk to a teammate.