Hey Reader,

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Today’s edition is about an insight for maximizing your effectiveness as an agile coach or consultant.

True, Start With Why, Simon Sinek’s book is very famous and very inspiring.

Yet what I learned in the business and coaching world is that the single most important thing for results is uncovering what the very next step forward is. And in order to move forward you need to know where to. And this is defined either by desire (towards something) or by pain (away from something).

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And that’s why I like to

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START WITH WHAT, NOT WHY.

When you start a new coaching gig, either as a contract or internal employee, treat this as the great opportunity it is: a blank slate.

Start by asking simple questions:

• What do you want? What are you looking for?
• What seems to be the problem?
• Where does it hurt?
• Where are you now (compared to) and where do you want to be?

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Get a sense of what they are trying to accomplish and what you can support them with.

Only then ask why _if you must. And that is because

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“WHY” IS EMOTIONAL.

People might tell you a sob story and be drawn into negative feelings and emotions. They might go into the past and relive all the good stuff that “is no more” or the bad stuff that keeps happening.

Keep in mind that whenever the conversation goes to dark places and feelings and the likes, you might not be skilled to bring it back to a place of hope and action. Chances are you are not a licensed therapist. So do yourself a favor and minimize damage in the emotional arena.

As human beings, it’s important to empathize. But empathizing is not commiserating. And as the coach, you want to lift your client to a solution-focus mindset. Gaining distance is important for perspective and effectiveness as a coach. They might be in a messy spot, but you can't afford to be.

And that brings me to

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“WHY” IS IMPRECISE

If you ask why something is being done, you might get lost in details. You might hear a long story on how it all came to be, or a long or very technical explanation that you can’t really use. It might be interesting, but it’s not uncommon the answer won’t lead into insights for the future.

Instead of asking:

• Why do you do that process?

To be helpful you want to acquire precise information:

• What are your assumptions in this process: Are you trying to go faster? Are you trying to reduce hand-offs? What is it?
  • Uncover a wrongful assumption or understand the system of beliefs behind how people work.
• What exactly are you trying to accomplish in this process?
  • Broader, but still let’s you understand the results they want that process to achieve.

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WHY not only carries emotion and imprecision, but also

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“WHY” IS DEFENSIVE

Sometimes when you ask “WHY”, despite your best body posture, tone of voice and overall attitude, you still get people to feel defensive, as they wrongfully interpret your curiosity as a judgement. Maybe you were the 10th person to ask them WHY this week, and the person is now tired of justifying themselves.

WHY asks for a rationale behind things. While people’s tolerance to WHY can vary, most people don’t care to be criticized on what moves them, be them a parent, a teacher, a CEO.

And ultimately,

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SOMETIMES “WHY” IS IRRELEVANT

A thing to remember is the brain is smart. When you ask people a question, the brain tries and answers because it loves certainty. Even if the question does not make sense or is plainly wrong.

That means it’s possible the answer to WHY will be artificial. People might invent one as they must start with BECAUSE and try ad make sense of things.

But my personal favorite is that often, at least from my perspective as the coach, it doesn’t really matter. While the WHY might matter to the individual or team, even if you never get to know their WHY, you still can help effectively. In fact, I’d argue you can be more a effective coach due to not caring for the WHY, since YOU won’t be judging THEIR reason for things.

George Mallory, great mountaineering conquering many great peaks across the globe answered this when asked why he climbed them: “because it’s there”.

JFK, when asked about the challenge to go to the moon said: “it’s one we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone”.

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Companies and products solve problems. The objective WHY… is solving that problem. Because they can. Because they believe now is the moment, now they have the energy to tackle it.

It feels plain, but it’s a powerful stance to operate from!

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What must be clear from day one is the direction, the WHAT, whether a dream or simply the next step ahead. Don’t get your clients spinning their wheels trying to look for an inspiration to answer for a WHY. Whether they have it or not:

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And if they are unclear on that, THAT is the #1 thing you want to help them gain clarity on.

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From the Blog

If you are curious about bringing coaching to your team or organization, considering becoming a coach yourself, or simply looking for better ways to explain some of what you do, you might want to check a post I wrote about how coaching can help organizations.

​https://allthingsagile.co/post/what-is-coaching-for-your-organization/

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And if you are pushing the reset button right before we embark on the upcoming deconstruction of what agile frameworks do and what Simple Agile brings to up your agile coaching game, take a read https://allthingsagile.co/post/what-is-agile/​

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Stay curious, stay agile!

Cheers,

P

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