Coach Ego Management

I’ve subscribed to and have been reading Erwin Verweij’s Agile Viking Galaxy Substack for months now, and I’ve enjoyed his writing. Mostly I agree with and enjoy it. But this one grabbed my attention, and I must reply…

Coach Ego, The Curious Case of the Transformation That Became a Photo Opportunity

Here’s a snippet from his post to give you a flavor for his positional advice—

This is where the trouble starts.

Because coaching is supposed to help the system grow. It is not supposed to become a parallel prestige economy where everyone wants to be the face of the transformation, the star of the town hall, the quote in the company magazine, or the human embodiment of “thought leadership” in a blazer.

A real coach works in service of the people, the teams, and the system. They may be visible at times, but visibility is not the point. The point is movement. Learning. Better conversations. More ownership. Less dysfunction. A healthier environment in which people can actually work without needing a support group after every steering committee.

The ego game flips that around. Then the work becomes secondary, and image becomes primary.

The coaches start competing, subtly or otherwise. Whose model gets adopted. Whose workshop gets praised. Who leadership listens to. Who gets invited to the right meetings. Who gets credited for progress that was mostly done by teams who were too busy working to write a post about it.

At that point, coaching stops being support.

It becomes branding with facilitation skills.

Disagree

I strongly disagree with this—

• Servant leadership

• From the back of the room

• Egoless

• Fading behind the team

View to Agile Coaching and Scrum Mastery. I realize where it comes from historically and the intent behind it. But I want to call it out as wrong. And this mindset has done a lot of damage to our agile community, our change agents, coaches, and Scrum Masters.

They’ve become too transparent, too invisible, too team-focused, and far too distant from the business. To the point that their value proposition is invisible. Begging that infamous and incredibly common question—What does a Scrum Master actually do?

And to this point—

It becomes branding with facilitation skills.

Yes, coaching is also about branding yourself.

Balance

The real point I’m making is that Agile Coaches need to balance their egos without getting lost in the impact equation. For too long, too many coaches have been told to fade into the background, get out of the way, or put yourself out of a job, and that’s good coaching.

It’s not. That’s the easiest way to misrepresent your value and lose your job. Don’t do that.

Instead, balance your impact with the team’s impact. And don’t be afraid to talk about your impact and value proposition. If you don’t do it, nobody will.

Wrapping Up

I’ll wrap up with this snippet from the end of the article—

Because real coaching should build capability in others. It should reduce dependency, not cultivate it. The goal is not to become the permanent oracle of the organization, sitting on a hill of canvases, maturity scans, and carefully curated status. The goal is to help the system grow up enough that it can function without constantly needing your ceremonial wisdom.

Reacting to these words, no, the goal of real coaching is to—

• Build capability,

• Mature the system,

• Increase value delivered by you AND the team,

• And increase overall joy.

As the coach of a team, so that both are equally recognized for adding value to the overall system.

Stay agile, my friends,

Bob.

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