An Agile Coaches Guide to Asking for Help
Three common hurdles to overcome
I was talking about the craft of agile coaching the other day to a colleague. We discussed what coaching services to offer to organizational and individual agile coaches to assist their personal growth and development. A few of the questions were—
Was there a market need for coaching to/for agile coaches?
What sorts of service offerings were successful in meeting any of those needs?
Were there gaps in their needs versus services?
What about the quality of the coaching (competency models) and the coaches (skills)?
One of the things I thought about was the question—
Is there a fundamental impediment to coaches asking for help? That is, to coaches getting or being mentored and coached.
As I thought more about it, I believe a fundamental set of obstacles needs to be navigated. I want to explore those obstacles next.
But before I do, I want to share a related article from Gustavo Razetti. In January 2024, he published an article entitled—Too Scared to Collaborate? Why Teams Struggle with Asking for Help?
In the article, Gustavo shared three collaboration (asking for help) barriers—
Recognizing Your Need for Help
Embracing Vulnerability to Acknowledge Your Need for Help
Trusting that Others Can Help You
Jessica Farquhar commented on the article with this—
“I love this post so much and I don’t think vulnerability is written about enough. As an executive advisor, I see a huge need for getting to the root cause of collaboration resistance. Often, vulnerability is written about in women’s leadership circles, but when it seems to me, as you say here, everyone will benefit when we crack this nut.”
I couldn’t agree more with Gustavo and Jessica. One of the root causes impeding us from acquiring help is discomfort with showing vulnerability.
Now, let’s get back to coaches asking for help…
The first step is looking in the mirror.
Believe it or not, the first hurdle seems to be having the self-awareness and egolessness to become aware of and better understand your weaknesses, followed by permitting yourself to ask for help.
I’ll give you an example of each.
Mark Summers and I developed an Agile Coaching Personal Improvement (PI) assessment for Comparative Agility when I released my EBAC coaching book. After a year, we looked at the aggregated data from ~700 coach assessments. On a 5-point scale, the entire group averaged about 4.1 in the assessment.
(Note: I’m generalizing here, but the trend is the point)
Mark and I were amazed. I thought I might not have evaluated myself above 4, yet the group of coaches was there in their minds’ eyes of experience.
Now, part of those high marks was probably related to our questions and the newness of the assessment itself. However, I also think a part of it is the coaches' lack of self-awareness regarding their actual skill levels relative to the depth and breadth associated with the craft of agile coaching. Perhaps consider this a hubris factor based on their lack of self-awareness.
A second example is from the many coach clinics I’ve helped facilitate at Scrum Gatherings and Agile Alliance conferences. The volunteer coaches are highly credentialed and experienced, so if they were to coach you for a day, their charges would be $2,000+. So, from an experience vs. cost perspective, this is an incredible resource for the conference attendees.
Given an example conference attendance of 1000, we might see 100-150 coaching clients in the clinic over 2-3-4 days. My point is that the offer is “free coaching from fantastic coaches.” I think that everyone should be in the clinic. They’d be beating down the doors to avail themselves of this incredible and free resource, but they don’t.
Why not?
Do they lack organizational challenges?
Do they not see a need for coaching, considering their skills “good enough?”
Are they too busy with other conference activities?
Do they not see the importance of skill development?
Or do they view the conference as a boondoggle?
While those might influence things, I think the hubris factor might be present here.
Hurdle One: Understand that we all need help from someone with different or more experience than we have. This is part of getting better every day. So, get comfortable with looking in the mirror, admitting your gaps, and asking for help.
Second step, considering your context
As in all things, your coaching context matters and can sometimes be a hurdle for you. Critical aspects of context include—
Are you an external coach (consultant, contractor) or an internal coach (employee)?
How have you “entered” the organization—as a seasoned expert or entry-level coach? What is your privilege as a coach?
How do your strengths relate to your client’s goals? Conversely, how do your improvement areas relate to fulfilling your client’s goals?
All of these questions lead to insight into how experienced you are as a coach. It’s predicated on my belief that the more experience you have, the harder it is for you to ask for help. Another way of saying this is thinking in terms of risk.
If you’re an incredibly seasoned coach, the good news is that your client has probably hired or engaged you because of it. The bad news is that, the higher the role or perception of your capabilities are, the harder it might be for you say…I don’t know. And there’s also the risk associated with saying…I don’t know, and I need help.
Reflecting on and better understanding your context and the external perceptions of you as a coach can help you realize how that might be getting in the way of your asking for help.
Hurdle Two: The more experienced you are, the more you have a responsibility to be self-aware and context-aware and be a role model in asking for help when you need it. No matter the context!
The third step is navigating the investment.
Another significant hurdle to asking for help implies that your client needs to invest in more coaching because of your experience gap. Often, these are unexpected additional expenses where the client thought you might be more skilled than you are. So, the conversations can be uncomfortable and risky. Nonetheless, these conversations should happen.
One of the most helpful things you can do is offer your client “options” for raising your and the coaching teams’ capabilities.
Those investments can take the form of—
Funding training class(es) for you and other coaches.
Funding short-term or longer-term outside mentors and/or coaches to assist you and your team’s journey.
Funding a Coach Camp or other event to collaborate with peers and practice your craft.
Funding an internal Community of Practice.
Fund and staff your internal coaching team so that they can pair for increased learning and support.
Funding a diversified recruiting and hiring strategy for your coaches that emphasizes alignment with Agile Coaching Growth Wheel’s breadth and depth of competency.
Encouraging and allowing time for coaches to engage in community-based coaching groups and practice sessions.
A common term in all of the above is…funding. And this might be the most significant hurdle because it exceeds your current compensation levels. The client or stakeholder probably didn’t anticipate these additional costs. Nonetheless, they are regular and ongoing, and agile coaches must become adept at explaining, justifying, and expecting these sorts of finding levels and support.
I think the critical terms to navigating these conversations with your internal stakeholders are—
First, share with your stakeholders the complexity of the craft of agile coaching. Sharing its nuance and how it’s a longer-term development play in gaining growth experientially. Just as organizational leadership is.
Second, they should show their vulnerability and dare to have them. This will increase the psychological safety of all coaches to have these conversations.
Third, you should speak to the positive impacts on the coaching team and the business by adequately investing in and building increased capability in your coaching teams.
Hurdle Three: Agile Coaching is a profession, and, as with any serious profession, it takes a continuous investment to recruit, hire, develop, and grow this craft that can have such a fundamental impact on the company’s business agility and bottom line.
Wrapping Up
In a nutshell, I believe the three primary hurdles to asking for help are—
Knowing Yourself
Understanding your Context
Navigating the Funding
Becoming a professional and seasoned Agile Coach takes years, and I would argue a decade or more of focused growth to become an expert. That’s one of the reasons I love this profession so much—the depth and breadth of it and the challenge of continuously learning and growing your skills. It’s certainly not for the faint of heart, the complacent, or those who want a quick path to prestige and money.
It’s normal for inexperienced to experienced coaches to have gaps in their competencies and skills. Normal! Given this, we need to normalize helping coaches and create a safe environment for them to seek help, request help, and receive skilled help.
Simply put—there’s not enough asking for help in our world, and you’re leading by example will go a long way toward improving the craft of Agile Coaching.
In our next post on this topic, An Agile Coaches Guide to Finding & Getting Help, we’ll explore my recommendations and options for just that.
Stay agile, my friends,
Bob.