Guidelines to hiring a professional Coach

Let’s face it, today, finding an experienced and credible agile coach, is not easy.  If you disagree with this statement, you are either very lucky and have special access to some great talent (e.g. referrals or networking) OR …..your perception of the role may need to change.
There is no need to be ashamed of not being able to find a good coach. You are not alone, many companies face the same challenge.
Truth be told, unfortunately, the industry has changed significantly  over the last few years and it became the source of many problems (some very classic problems are described here).  Today, the term “Senior Agile Coach” has been grossly diluted. 🙁
But fortunately, there are still great standards and guidelines you can follow, when looking for an agile coach, irrespective of the industry’s trend-down.  Please, consider the dimensions below, when looking for a professional agile coach, for your organization.  The original sources of these requirements are listed at the bottom of this page and you are encouraged to explore them for additional details.
Please, do not reduce, simplify or trivialize some of the key expectations of a professional agile coach.  Because, if you do, the following two problems will follow:
  • Industry coaching quality (average) will be further decreased,… and even if you don’t care about this fact as much…you will care about the next fact:
  • Quality of service to your own organization will be also low

…with that….


“Must-Have” for Professional Agile Coach

Quantitative Assets:
  • Has significant hands-on experience in at least one of the roles on Scrum Team
  • Has coached multiple organizations, departments, or programs
  • Has, at least, 1000 hours of experience coaching at the enterprise/organizational level or a combination of enterprise and multi-team level coaching
  • Has diversity of coaching experience that can be demonstrated, using different client engagement examples that include experience at an organizational level
Demonstration of deep knowledge:
  • Has formal and informal education about coaching and strong mentor relationships
  • Has good working knowledge of Agile and Lean values, principles, and practices.
  • Has helped individuals, teams, and leadership to understand and apply Agile and Lean values, principles, and practices effectively
  • Understands dynamics, patterns, and development of multi-level teams and how they interact at an organizational level
  • Knows the difference between consulting and coaching and knows when to take each stance
Ability to clearly articulate and substantiate one’s own:
  • Coaching Career Overview (coaching, agile history and how a person got where he/she is today. Include key milestone years)
  • Coaching Focus (summary of a person’s professional self today, including a coaching approach and/or philosophy to coaching)
  • Coaching Goals (personal development goals in coaching)
  • Formal Coaching Education (formal education activities which have contributed significantly to your coaching journey. This includes a wide range of courses on topics, including facilitation, leadership, consulting, coaching, process, tools, techniques, frameworks, and other related activities which have influenced our coaching practice)
  • Formal Mentor-ship Education (coach mentor-ship and significant collaboration activities where a person has DEVELOPED a skill or technique or RECEIVED guidance to his/her coaching approach and mindset.)
  • Informal Coaching Learning (significant topics you have studied outside of the Scrum literature which has impacted his/her coaching approach or coaching philosophy)
  • Agile Community Participation (agile community events, such as user groups, gatherings, retreats, camps, conferences, etc. in which a coach has participated)
  • Agile Community Leadership (leadership contribution to agile communities (e.g. writing, publishing, presenting, facilitating, organizing, training and other activities) through events, publications, courses, blogs and forums)
  • Agile Community Collaborative Mentoring & Advisory (significant collaborative agile mentoring, advisory activities, where a person was mentoring, advising other individuals to increase their competency or in development of a specific goal)
  • Coaching Tools, Techniques or Frameworks known (coaching tools, techniques or frameworks which you have implemented, customized, co-developed or developed in one or more client engagements)
Skills, Tools & Techniques:
  • Has contributed to significant improvements in organizations or departments through coaching techniques
  • Has helped organizations and teams beyond the basics of Scrum theory and practice
  • Has enabled organizations to find their own solutions to business problems through application of Agile principles
  • Is familiar with, promotes and embodies the mindset of Servant Leadership
  • Uses a rich set of facilitation, training and coaching tools, and models
Personal Qualities:
  • Coaching Mindset Coaching skills/practices and frameworks
  • Evidence that a coach has taken both their Experience and Learning and synthesized these into definitive practices, frameworks, approaches, and strategies)
  • Self-awareness: Able to reflect on their own contribution to the coaching by virtue of their own ‘being’
  • Constant Learning: Has and continues to acquire Coaching oriented learning through multiple dimensions
  • Diversity of Experience with different types & sizes of organizations
  • Participation in the Agile community

Note: Your company needs to have internal expertise to validate a person, based on the above.


Resources:

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