Coaching Entropy

I read this article on Lee Eason’s blog where he shared his ideas about detecting and avoiding skill entropy in software development teams and organizations.

It made me think about skill entropy in agile coaching contexts from two perspectives: individual coach entropy and coaching team entropy.

Taking Stock

It reminded me how important it is to regularly assess your skill sets, not only individually but also if you’re part of a team of coaches across the entire team.

Then, identify strengths, areas for growth, and any limited skill sets across the team.

One great way to do that is by using the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel as a coaching competency guide and the Comparative Agility Agile Coaching PI assessment to baseline your skills.

Mapping to Your Value Services

Beyond the skills assessment, you’ll also want to consider what skills your clients need in your value-based service offerings, and if there are gaps, you’ll immediately want to begin closing them.

For example, and using the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel as a competency / skills backdrop—

If you’re entire coaching team has strong Professional Coaching skills

But

Most of your coaching service requests are for Transformational and Advising skills.

Then

You might have a huge gap in delivering what your clients need.

Identifying and correcting this quickly is a key to effectively serving your client and delivering value. The critical point here is not to deliver the skills and competencies you are comfortable or skilled with but those your client needs.

Far too often, I see Agile Coaches delivering the former and suffering the consequences.

Stay agile, and highly skilled, my friends,

Bob.