Role? Agile Coach! - Questions? Many!

Role? Agile Coach! - Questions? Many!

Terms such as agility, servant leadership and transformational leadership are making their way into German and international organizations. It is not uncommon for companies to actively seek Agile Coaches to manage the increasing need for change and the transformation of organizations that comes with it. What constitutes this role? What does such a person bring to the table? How does it differ from other roles, such as Scrum Master? We explore these questions and enable you to gain a comprehensive understanding of the Agile Coach role. 

To reduce complexity and facilitate the flow of reading, the feminine spelling is omitted. Please note that the term Agile Coach includes all genders.

What actually is an Agile Coach?

If you start searching for this term and read through the competencies and tasks of the role, you will quickly realize: The role and definition of Agile Coach is not that simple. The term is used differently in various contexts, and in some cases it differs from organization to organization.

So what is the intersection, the quintessence of the role? An Agile Coach can be described as a person who helps individuals and organizations become adaptive and self-learning. Only if an organization is adaptive will it survive in the long run. Self-learning means that the organization develops itself and its processes independently where it has identified a need for optimization.

An Agile Coach needs multi-layered competencies to be able to serve the organization. These include, for example, knowing and applying leadership styles, expertise in agile approaches and their combination, know-how regarding change management, and much more. However, the Agile Coach should by no means act as a lone wolf, but should pave the way for employees and the organization by providing them with helpful tools and best practices. The agile coach opens the door; the employees themselves have to go through it.

Why do organizations need an Agile Coach?

In our modern, fast-moving world full of instability, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA), it is becoming increasingly difficult for companies to keep up with the times and respond to change. The importance of readiness for change was already made clear by Charles Darwin: "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one most adaptable to change." If we cross out the word "species" and replace it with "organizations," we get the scenario in which we find ourselves.

What good are perfect structures and processes if they are only a representation of a brief moment in time and therefore already obsolete tomorrow? What use are the most detailed plans that we cannot keep anyway due to changing market or environmental conditions? In order to shape change, we need this one role, the Agile Coach. Change doesn't happen on its own, it needs support from someone with expertise that employees and the organization can rely on. And this is where you, the Agile Coach, come in.

What does an Agile Coach do?

The result of an Agile Coach can be well described with the Agile Onio. Visible to the outside world, the Agile Coach changes an organization's processes and tools while empowering it to evolve and change itself as needed. Introducing new tools, processes and techniques is easy. It can be implemented at the "command and control" level. Sure, these tools and processes are helpful and can support agility, but they are only the tip of the iceberg.

Much more valuable and often less considered is that which is not visible to humans: the change of mindset, attitude and lived values of an organization (i.e. what is "inside" the Agile Onion). The values of an organization need to be made sustainable and are part of the daily business of an Agile coach. Along with this, the beliefs, skills as well as knowledge of individuals will change. This forms the decisive basis for the success of change and agile transformation.

What are the tasks, competencies and responsibilities of the Agile Coach?

A role is made up of the tasks, competencies and responsibilities that the role must perform or bring with it. In the case of the Agile Coach role, one thing is immediately apparent: It is an immensely complex activity that requires both hard skills and soft skills. To give you an overview, we'll cover the "AKVs" of an Agile Coach based on eight aspects that define them for us.

The Lean Agile Leader

The Agile Coach as a Lean Agile Leader embodies all the requirements that agile approaches place on their leaders. People are (further) developed, a growth mindset is pursued and, above all, structures are managed, but never people. The Agile Coach empowers employees and the organization to manage and organize themselves.

As the driving force for agile transformation, i.e., for the introduction of agile approaches and ways of working, the agile coach should have competencies in various leadership styles - both theoretical, but above all practical. He advances as a role model in agility and passes on his knowledge of leadership to the organization.

The visionary

First, the visionary records the current state, which is often done in practice using agile assessments. He takes the still picture, places it in its overall context and then develops the picture of the future together with the employees of the organization. The Agile Coach always keeps this in mind and reviews the steps taken to achieve this vision.

Agile approaches live customer focus. The Agile Coach does the same: He always places his client in the focus of his activities and vision and does what is right for him. To do this, he should know his clients and stakeholders well. He also needs a feel for their needs and the way to fulfill them so that he can lead his clients to maximum success.

The coach

As a coach, the Agile Coach helps to reflect. He observes teams as well as the organization and reflects together with them. With this practice, he creates an awareness of their own blind spots and potentials. In this way, he develops valuable improvement measures.

Everyone needs coaching, from the employee to top management to the entire organization. Change means letting go. And that is never easy. Therefore, employees need to have someone to talk to in order to find a way to deal with this change. In doing so, the coach guides his clients through questions to the solution and trusts that it already lies within him. A core competence here is "listening and understanding". In addition, the Agile Coach should master techniques and intervention procedures in order to act as profitably as possible for the organization.

The goal of this aspect is to sustainably change the mindset and behavior of employees and pave the way for agile approaches.

The expert

In agile approaches and accompanying practices, the agile coach should be absolutely fit. When does which framework fit best? Which methods can we use to accompany it? Scrum, Kanban, OKR and SAFe®should not be buzzwords, but lived reality of the Agile Coach.

The expert should have answers to questions that arise in the agile environment: What is the shape of agile governance? How do we do reporting? What metrics can we use? The Agile Coach analyzes root causes, evaluates solutions and shows his clients concrete ways to solve the problem.

The Facilitator

The Agile Coach is an organizational and facilitation talent. He or she brings this to specific events in particular, whereby the Agile Coach supports decision-making, communication and the focus of the teams and the organization, for example.

Interacting with people is the daily business of an Agile Coach. Different people require different communication styles in order to speak one language and achieve the goal. Therefore, the facilitator has excellent communication skills. He also ensures result-oriented communication in the team, which he supports through skillful facilitation.

The trainer

Teams that want to become agile usually bring no or little knowledge for the next steps. In that case, it is up to the Agile Coach to guide employees and the organization and teach new ways of working so that everyone is on the same level of knowledge. The training can cover many areas, from teamwork to agile approaches and communication to feedback culture.

The change agent

In order to enable change and bring the employees of an organization along with them, a structured approach and processes are needed that can be integrated into the organization. A new organizational design is not possible overnight, but follows a long process based on what the people within the company need. At the same time, however, the process should pay attention to the economic and strategic goals of the organization. This interface is served by the change agent.

The mentor

This is a task that is related to coaching. While in coaching the counterpart finds the solution to his question himself, the Agile Coach stands by his mentee as a mentor with advice and support. He acts as a kind of consultant and finds solutions that would otherwise be unattainable. The mentor also has a strong partnership aspect, as he is the point of contact for obstacles and problems and has a trusting relationship with his counterpart.

For this, an Agile Coach needs empathy and good judgment as to which of the tasks he needs to perform at a certain point in time - appropriate to the situation and his environment. In the Agile Coach we thus find a whole range of different skills and competencies, all of which he uses to introduce agile approaches into an organization with maximum success.

Agile Coach vs. Scrum Master - which is it?

The Scrum Master is certainly the role model of the Agile Coach, and indeed both roles have much in common. For example, on the way to a career as an Agile Coach lies the step of performing the role of Scrum Master.

However, there is already a significant difference in the naming of the roles: While the Scrum Master is active in the Scrum environment and for his Scrum team, the Agile Coach acts across organizations and not only in the Scrum environment, but wherever agile practices are applied. Being proficient in the activities of a Scrum Master does not make you a good Agile Coach. However, an Agile Coach should definitely also be a good Scrum Master.

Agile coach vs. management consultant - what's the difference?

Many management consultants solve a client's problem by presenting them with specialist concepts, i.e., by actively proposing a solution to a challenge to the client. Depending on the context, this can be helpful.

An (agile) coach, on the other hand, develops the solution concept together with his client and provides help for self-help, so that at the end of the collaboration (if it is an external agile coach) the client knows himself how to shape change. As a self-learning organization, the client knows exactly how to act in which situations after the collaboration.

In contrast to consulting, coaching places the responsibility for the solution and implementation of action measures with the client. Coaching is usually more valuable for developing agile collaboration in a sustainable way. Results and concepts that are developed together show a higher commitment of the workforce and have a higher success rate in achieving goals.

The Agile Coach at SERVIEW

Is the information you have received so far not enough? You want to speak plainly? In the Agile Coach training you polish your competencies to a high gloss! Here you will learn in a short time, using gripping scenarios, how to perform this role in practice and which tools you need to do so.

How else can SERVIEW help you?

Are you facing a challenge in the agile environment and have done a lot but have no solution at hand? Our top-class Agile Coaches actively support you in finding solutions and are ready for you with open ears and rolled-up sleeves. Just get in touch with us!