I recently received two interesting questions:
- How do you educate yourself as a coach?
- How can our company recruit dozens of experienced coaches when few have practical experience with Agility?
When we slowly started the Tietu coaching team in 2006/2007, from which RainFellows grew, we quickly realized that Agile experience and expertise are one thing, but the ability to pass on that experience is a completely different discipline. How to fill this “competence gap” as quickly as possible? We accelerated our learning in an agile way: regular retrospectives, coaching in a couple and learning from each other (peer learning) in a team.
Phase two followed: we needed to pass on knowledge outside of our team. So we created a community across the company and countries. The whole concept was still fairly unstructured and loose. But these experiences were the basis for the following shift: when we left Tieto and founded RainFellows s.r.o., our first steps led to the Entrepreneurial Club BforB. This is where we understood the importance (and could not have done without our own experience) of an effective club/community meeting structure. Followed by our project BusinessConby which we, together with others, have taken this concept to a new level. We focused on learning from one another (peer learning) over practical cases, or Case Clinic in the case of innovative solutions.
We have translated this verified structure into the Agile Coaches' meetings (Guilds). What does such a first meeting look like?
Kick off
0,5h Presentation
1h Competence map — key competencies of the Coach (put together by the group itself), converted to gamification elements (levels, achievements, example: hereunder) — sharing experience in meeting challenges from the Compensation Map.
1h Needs Exchange — what do I need in terms of my role and competency map? What, on the other hand, can I offer as my “strong skill”? Coaches offer to help each other.
1h Values and our common manifesto — what agreements does our group follow?
0.5h Prioritization of the Backlog of Topics (Lectures) + Choice of Core Team
What such a needs exchange looks like you can see, for example, in the program RBEConnectedin which we are as guides. The point is to transfer responsibility and activity directly to the members, not to leave it to the leader or external lecturer. The needs exchange, together with the gamification element, nicely visualizes the coach's journey, which is again one of the principles of Agility applied directly to the development of the coach.
All further meetings take place regularly according to a common scheme:
Community (Guild or Guild)
1h Introduction + selected lecture
1.5h Case study/Case Clinic
1h Visualization of completed quests, achievements and new Needs Exchange
0,5h Prioritization of the Backlog of Topics and Arrangement of Follow-up Events and Meetings
Case study, or Case Clinic is prepared in advance based on the request of someone from the community. E.g. “Retrospectives don't quite work in my team. Who wants to help me with that?” Two other members (typically senior + junior) will prepare documents for the next meeting together with the sponsor (what the team looks like, how the retrospectives are conducted so far, what the problem is, etc.). During the meeting, everyone then comments on the problem: what they think about, what they have a good experience with, what they do not recommend, etc. In this way, there is joint sharing and sometimes innovation with the help of the collective intelligence of all involved. Everyone carries something for themselves, of course, most of all, the one that came with the assignment. Relationships are built between coaches, who subsequently help each other beyond meetings.
The method of education thus addressed is the application of Agile principles: MY culture, regular reflection, learning from each other, maximum focus on value, etc. Including the principle of a Learning organisation that can be scaled across the entire company — it doesn't just have to be a community of coaches! Tribe Leaders, Chapters, and Guild Meetings have the same structure.
That's how I educate myself. In truth, I don't read books much, I'm not the type of reader. But I enjoy learning from others. That's my personal growth.