Handy Tools for Agile Coaches?

Handy tools for Agile Coaches to be employed, What are those which can readily support the coaches?

In my coaching to Scrum masters, most of the scrum masters always inquire, what are the few key tools as a coach they can apply to ensure coaching activities can be taken forward when Master coaches are not around.

Below are the few I have shared with the scrum masters.

All these tools I am also actively applying for my coaching engagement.

The expectations of life depend upon diligence; the mechanic that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools. — Confucius

• Spheres of Influence:

3 parts of this tool

1. Subjects we can control

2. Subjects we can influence

3. Subjects we can’t influence, either right now or at all times

Helping them determine what is within their control, what is in their sphere of influence, and what cannot be controlled.

Once we realize our own sphere of influence, we develop opportunities that produce beneficial rewards both professionally and personally. We need to pick up the needed steps to analyze those already within our networks who have the power and inspiration to be part of this influence.

Most of the time, I point out this tool to my scrum master to apply this and check if they can do anything about the situation. This tool will establish and break down the details of our present network, stimulating us to build up a better insight into the valuable contacts we already have, and how to tap into them.

• Journaling:

Having a journal can be advantageous for many diverse reasons as a coaching exercise. Daily journaling facilitates observation and can stimulate useful brainstorming about how to better strive toward the objectives. Coaches can help ensure that their Coachee journaling is essential by maintaining some guidance. When Coachee achieves certain milestones, it’s important to know what led up to that accomplishment.

Some of the points which really helped coaches are Progress, Challenges, Hurdles, Roadblocks, Fears, Setbacks, Observations, ideas, aha-moments, etc

We as a coach also maintain a journal about our observation about a team and reflect and help the team to become better. We also need to Document milestones and moments of success.

• The GROW model:

The GROW model is a simple method for goal setting and problem-solving in coaching. It includes for stages:

G for Goal: The goal is what the client wants to accomplish. It should be defined as clear as possible. You could combine it with the SMART method described earlier.

R for Reality: That’s the status quo, where our client is right now. The client describes her current situation and how far she is away from her goal.

O for Obstacles and Options: What are the obstacles (roadblocks) that keep your client from achieving the goal? Once these obstacles are identified, you can find ways to overcome them — the options.

W for Way forward: Once identified, the choices need to be translated into action steps that will take your client to accomplish her goal.

• Identifying Limiting Belief:

Compose a list of all your limiting beliefs; the beliefs that stop you from moving forward. You start questioning your limiting beliefs you will start to create doubt which will lead to you changing your beliefs questions that you can ask yourself to challenge this belief.

It’s essential to indicate that beliefs are not facts. However, intensely implanted beliefs can indeed be misinterpreted as facts. These beliefs are usually nothing more than conclusions we have carried based on our childhood encounters.

It helps team members to come out with many assumptions which were bothering them.

A team can write down when they indulge any negative thoughts, make excuses, jump to the conclusion, procrastinate, worry for failure, etc scenarios and think about these points. What are doing these and why are we doing these and if anything can be done around these?

• Wheel of life and how to balance it is :

All these are the below pillars of the Wheel of life

• Health
• Wealth
• Happiness
• Spiritual
• Mental

How balanced they are?

As a result of this exercise, our Coachee will have a visual map — which will look almost like a spider web. This visual map will give our coachee a general idea of their desired state of being in relation to their current state.

• SMART goals:

SMART goals bring structure and accountability into goals.SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. Therefore, a SMART goal incorporates all of these criteria to help focus your efforts and increase the chances of achieving that goal.

• Powerful question:

Why, What, How, When, and more open-ended questions.

Powerful questions are a reflection of engaged listening and finding out the other person’s viewpoint that is established through paraphrasing. This offers a progression from listening, paraphrasing for learning, and then asking powerful questions that provide clarity or mediation of thinking.

• Personal SWOT Tool.

Help clients analyze their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. A Personal SWOT helps clients think about careers in terms of their strengths — and identify potentially “transferable” strengths.

• Working Agreement :

A Working Agreement is a valuable tool to employ for installing a shared understanding and way of working for teams. Also called a Social Contract, this practice is an excellent foundation for building high-performing teams.

In a coaching engagement, it is essential we form the coaching agreement and contract with the client.

• Value Discovery and Purpose Identification:

Identifying your personal core values is an anchor or turning point. When there is a conflict or a boundary issue, it’s possible because someone has stepped on a personal value. Once we are connected with Value and a bigger purpose, we become self-driven and unstoppable.

I share this tool with the scrum masters to use this tool with their team members.

• Socratic Questions:

The Socratic Questioning technique is an effective way to examine ideas in depth. It can be used at all levels and is a helpful tool for all teachers. Question related to Conceptual clarification questions, Probing assumptions, probing rationale, reasons and evidence, Questioning viewpoints and perspectives, Probe implications and consequences, Questions about the question.

• Eat the Frog :

As Mark Twain once said “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.” Eating the frog means to just do it, otherwise, the frog will eat you meaning that you’ll end up procrastinating it the whole day. Take the most important item first.

A good tool improves the way you work. A great tool improves the way you think. Jeff Duntemann

• Collaborate or not?

Because no two individuals have exactly the same expectations and desires, conflict is a natural part of our interactions with others.

The Thomas Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument is designed to measure a person’s behavior in conflict situations. “Conflict situations” are those in which the concerns of two people appear to be incompatible. In such situations, we can describe an individual’s behavior along two dimensions: (1) assertiveness, the extent to which the person attempts to satisfy his own concerns, and (2) cooperativeness, the extent to which the person attempts to satisfy the other person’s concerns. These two basic dimensions of behavior define five different modes for responding to conflict situations: Competing, Accommodating, Avoiding, Collaborating, and Compromising

• Force Field analysis:

Force Field Analysis was created by Kurt Lewin in the 1940s. The idea behind Force Field Analysis is that situations are maintained by an equilibrium between forces that drive change and others that resist change. For change to happen, the driving forces must be strengthened or the resisting forces weakened. The tool is useful for making decisions by analyzing the forces for and against a change, and for communicating the reasoning behind your decision.

These tools are in brief and all these tools are very powerful. These tools need to be practiced and master for effective use.

It is essential to have good tools, but it is also essential that the tools should be used in the right way.

Wallace D. Wattles