My friend Peter Fischbach and I have had many conversations about how I coach. That is, how I practice, teach, and show or model coaching. We’ve also explored how I speak about self-mastery, situational awareness, and the stance dancing associated with Agile Coaching.
We’ve spoken about how seemingly natural it is to me and how hard it is to teach others to do what I do. Why? Because I instinctually do it.
In this case, much of the magic is in switching stances from coaching to advising to leading and mentoring, with my agile/lean, leadership, and transformation experience as a foundational backdrop.
When I thought more about it, I realized there are three layers to it—
My Self-mastery (presence, EQ, self-awareness, and mindset) as a foundation,
My overall Agile/Lean, Leadership, and Transformational experience as a strong foundation,
And my sense & respond stance switching (coaching leading to—mentoring, leading, advising, and then again, coaching) as my primary situational dance moves.
Let me be clear. I am not saying that I am unique as a coach. I am not. That said, I have been doing this for quite a while, and I’ve gained a level of experience and tacit knowledge that I’ve centered on, and that seems to be effective for my coaching approach and my clients.
Recently, I came across a post about explicit versus tacit knowledge. This post made me reflect on the current profession of agile coaching—the classes, certifications, and overall practices.
Our training systems have mainly focused on teaching and testing explicit knowledge and ignored tacit knowledge, primarily because it is not easily teachable. But before we go, let’s define it.
https://outfluent.blog/means-of-transferring-tacit-knowledge-into-explicit-knowledge/
Definition
Tacit knowledge refers to the knowledge, skills, and abilities an individual gains through experience that is often difficult to express in words or otherwise communicate.
Other equivalent terms—
Experiential knowledge
Tribal knowledge
Instinctual knowledge
Innate knowledge
One problem is that we focus 90% of our time on discussing, exploring, documenting, and learning explicit knowledge, and because it’s so amorphous, we hardly talk about gaining tacit knowledge.
To become or emerge as an effective Agile Coach, I think that ratio needs to be turned around a bit, and we need to refocus our learning discovery toward tacit knowledge.
My EBAC book
I hadn’t thought much about it when writing my Extraordinarily Badass Agile Coaching book, but upon reflection, I think trying to convey or inspire tacit knowledge was the reason that I—
Included so many stories in the book.
Asked Mark Summers and Jennifer Fields to share their scenario-based coaching dialogues.
Created so many canvases for reflective learning.
Made the case for Pair-Coaching for paired learning.
Tried to keep real-world coaching and mentoring in mind as I wrote it.
How do you gain tacit knowledge of Agile Coaching?
It’s not by reading, studying, or watching videos. It’s not by certification class or filling out an application that details your coaching experience.
Instead, I think it comes by doing some of the following—
Engaging in collaborative groups sharing experiences and stories.
Being a coach and mentor; having a coach and mentor.
Getting Supervision (in the ICF sense).
Pair-coaching as often as possible with a wide variety of coaches (skills, experience, domain, etc.)
Practicing continuous reflection.
Having a focus on broadening your Self-mastery.
Observing people (not necessarily coaches) operate in all the ACGW stances.
Getting comfortable with the uncomfortable; adaptive learning & failing.
Practice, Feedback, Practice.
Coaching by Not Coaching (modeling).
Attending and participating in—Agile Coach Camps, Agile Coaching Retreats, Coach Clinics, Dojo, Communities of Practice, Local Meetup groups, etc.
Becoming
When you finish a class, you feel you’ve achieved a discrete level of competence. And you have an explicit knowledge perspective. However, acquiring tacit knowledge can be frustrating because there are no finish lines. Instead, I like to think of it as you are constantly—
Learning,
Growing,
Emerging,
And Becoming in your Tacit knowledge growth.
So, don’t get frustrated if you don’t achieve demonstrable milestones. Continue to persevere, and you’ll see the growth (and impact) over time.
Wrapping Up
Remember our definition—
Tacit knowledge refers to the knowledge, skills, and abilities an individual gains through experience that is often difficult to express in words or otherwise communicate.
While it's difficult to define and communicate, I’m convinced it’s what will distinguish you as a Badass Agile Coach.
I’d also say that finding your unique coaching persona in your tacit explorations is essential. Don’t copy others; instead, find your inner coaching superpowers and lean into them.
Another way to grow them is to work on your tacit knowledge in your reflective practices to increase your self-awareness.
It’s why I’ve valued the awkward conversations that Peter Fischbach and I have had 😉 as they’ve forced me to have those challenging tacit reflections myself.
Stay agile, my friends,
Bob.
Follow-up References—
I love the depth & breadth of these articles—
Part 1 – https://commoncog.com/tacit-knowledge-is-a-real-thing/
Part 2 – https://commoncog.com/how-to-learn-tacit-knowledge/
That said, they are a bit…dense.
SECI model of knowledge dimensions (or the Nonaka-Takeuchi model)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SECI_model_of_knowledge_dimensions
The SECI model is another model for envisioning the navigation between Tacit and Explicit knowledge. There are 4 modes of knowledge conversion in the model—
Socialization (Tacit to Tacit) – the process of sharing knowledge.
Externalization (Tacit to Explicit) – the process of others sharing knowledge.
Combination (Explicit to Explicit) – where knowledge is organized and integrated.
Internalization (Explicit to Tacit) – where learning by doing occurs.
I found this excellent post by Dan Mezick that aligns nicely with this one. It's a short post with a very interesting comment stream.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/danielmezick_understanding-the-distinction-between-explicit-activity-7295527514376941569-KL1z