Agile Coaching Roles

One of the things that differentiates agile coaching from pure professional coaching is that professional coaching (as a role) is only one role in the arsenal of the agile coach.

This causes confusion in the agile community because folks equate “agile coach” to a single focus or view. When in fact the better coaches can assume a wide variety of roles or stances to meet the client’s needs.

Here I want to expand it to include 9 possible roles as in the figure, with coach being one of the nine.

I find this model useful to understand the variety an agile coach needs to bring to their individual, team, and organizational coaching.

I find that the notion of (consultant) probably maps to Technical Advisor and Hands-on Expert, in that clients are looking for us for answers and to be prescriptive in telling them what to do. In that regard, the Counselor role is probably the least prescriptive of the roles. And Hands-on Expert is probably the most prescriptive.

Moving from Role to Role

One of the ways I find these roles useful is in planning and then navigating a coaching session. For example—

• For any coaching session, I usually pre-plan the journey I think I might be taking using the roles. How will I enter? And what shifting do I anticipate (1-2 roles) during the session? And how will I close? Of course, this isn’t fixed, but it does help me pull a “game plan” together given my understanding of our shared goals.

• I usually enter a coaching session in the Coach role. This is where I establish our coaching agreement and goals. It’s also where I ask questions (usually lots of questions) to explore things.

• But often the questions uncover something and I often choose to switch roles. Of course, in service of the session goal. It’s common for me to switch to a Partner, Modeler, Teacher, or Consultative role.

• I usually oscillate between 1-2 roles beyond my initial/entry role while the client and I search for the goal.

• I then usually land the coaching session back in the Coach role.

Having this model or metaphor in the back of my mind gives me some guidance on how I’ll be showing up.

Sharing with the Client

I often find it useful to share these 9-roles with the client. Not only share them as part of my initial coaching introduction, but also in each coaching session as a switch from role-to-role. I often look to explain the rationale for the switch and ask them if they’re ok with me switching directions.

I’ve found that this level of transparency is really appreciated by the client and it certainly helps them better understand my intentions.