Cherie Silas shared this post on LinkedIn that I thought I’d share in its entirety—
As we look towards the future of the coaching field, I see a shift on the horizon. The focus is moving away from agile coaching to a more holistic approach centered on Organizational Change & Improvement coaching agnostic of Agile. This evolution stems from a realization that agile isn't the ultimate goal, achieving meaningful business results is.
Agile methods, while beneficial, often lead coaches to focus too much on tools and techniques, losing sight of actual business problems. Agile practices are a means to an end, not the endpoint. The objective is to drive business success and create tangible results.
In the future, coaching will need to pivot towards a deeper, more integrated understanding of what businesses truly need. This means shifting our focus to:
Strategy Coaching: Partnering with businesses in developing and delivering products that meet market demands, enhance customer satisfaction, and drive growth.
Technical Coaching and Consulting: Enhancing the technological capabilities of organizations to improve efficiency, innovation, and adaptability.
Organizational Change & Improvement Coaching: Facilitating effective change management and fostering a culture of continuous improvement. Helping organizations navigate change smoothly is crucial for long-term success.
Leadership Development Coaching: Without effective leaders, companies can’t be effective. We are helping new, experienced, and high potential leaders learn new ways of working that increase the effectiveness of their leadership through data driven coaching and MasterMind groups.
To prepare for this, those of us who have been focused primarily on agile coaching need to broaden our horizons:
Business Acumen: Learn the intricacies of running companies, including financial metrics, market analysis, and strategic planning.
Change Management: Understand principles of managing organizational change, including resistance and fostering acceptance.
Organizational Psychology: Gain insights into psychological factors that influence organizational behavior for deeper, more meaningful transformations.
In my coaching journey, I've seen how focusing too much on agile tools can cloud the bigger picture. To truly help businesses thrive, I needed to expand my focus and understand what drives business success. This led me to learn about running companies, change management, and organizational psychology.
My hope is that coaches will move away from solely focusing on tools and techniques. Instead, we should strive for a deeper understanding of what businesses need to be truly successful. By doing so, we’ll be able to provide more relevant, impactful coaching that drives business value and fosters sustainable growth.
How do you see the future of coaching evolving? What steps are you taking to prepare for this shift?
My Reactions
My first reaction is that this shouldn’t be news. This is how I’ve operated my Agile Coaching practice from the beginning (minimally for 15 years). And it’s how most of my successful and impactful coaching colleagues have also operated.
I’ve never been myopically focused toward—
Tools
Tactics
Methodologies
Frameworks
As a well-rounded and domain-skilled coach, I have an affinity for the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel.
So, I can't entirely agree with Cherie about a new shift occurring. That shift was always there for highly skilled Agile Coaches, or it happened years ago.
It’s happening now to the coaches who, while lacking these skills, focused on the wrong things. But also to Professional Coaching and coaches (life coaching, personal coaching). The point is that I hope that the evolution of agile coaches achieving ACC, PCC, and MCC designations declines because it was an over-rotation as well.
Cherie mentioned four areas that Agile Coaches need to pivot toward—
Strategy Coaching
Technical Coaching and Consulting
Organizational Change & Improvement Coaching
Leadership Development Coaching
I would argue that we need to remove the Professional Coaching from these areas, perhaps into the following—
Agile Strategy and Business Consulting
Technical (UX, Architecture, DevOps) Consulting
Organizational Change & Improvement Consulting
Organizational Design Consulting
Leadership Development Consulting
Agile Product Alignment Consulting
Lean & Agile Consulting
I find that changing the words coach and coaching to consultant and consulting is the more powerful shift, not dropping the word agile.
Wrapping Up
I want to thank Cherie for sharing her thoughts on this critical topic. I don’t directly disagree with what she wrote; I think of this post as augmenting hers.
Cherie did not directly say that Professional Coaching skills are not helpful in technical business contexts. I will say that. I will also say that Life Coaches operating in any technical business context are at risk of becoming extinct.
In other words, Agile Coaches (and any Coaches) must leverage experience and skills and have chops well beyond business acumen, positive psychology, and change management.
I agree that a new day is dawning for Agile Coaches who want to survive. Some have already made the pivot. It will be a long, hard, and humbling journey for others. And for most others, they should consider a new line of work 😉
Stay agile, my friends,
Bob.