Back in days, when I was learning Coaching, I observed there are various types of coaches and coaching interventions. There are few dozen varieties of coaching and coaches. Some of the most commonly known coaches are Life Coach, Sports Coach, Business Coach, Leadership Coach, Behavior Coach, Strengths Coach, Career Coach, Relationship Coach, etc. I kept thinking and asking, which type of a coach is the Scrum Master? It turned out there was not a single type.
As a Scrum Master, you’ll find that the good Scrum Master’s coaching styles, approaches, and techniques are similar to and a combination of these coaches.
Team Coach:
Most common application for the Scrum Master’s coaching is to coach the Development Team. Usually, multiple team members are part of the intervention. This is pretty different from one-one coaching. The focus of team coaching could be for example to build a high-performance team. The Scrum Master acting as a team coach may help the team accomplish this by fostering collaboration, creating shared ownership and creating accountability within the team.
Individual Coach:
The Scrum Master has to be comfortable coaching the individuals in 1-1 sessions. Particularly the Product Owner, and managers that have a high influence on the team. Also, any difficult to work with team member and team member who may be finding it challenging to keep up with the team’s expectations may benefit from 1-1 coaching intervention with the coach.
Behavioral Coach:
I found this out very early in my Scrum Master career that without invoking positive behavioral changes within the people, my efforts to serve the team in creating a high performing team will yield only limited and short-lived results. The behavioral coaching may not necessarily be called so and may be embedded within the Scrum Master’s regular coaching interventions.
From my experience coaching Scrum Teams and Agile Leaders, some of the behavioral changes desired by coachees have been: Moving from traditional control style to self-organization, from plan-it-all to being comfortable with iterative planning, from can’t-fail to experimentation mindset, from someone will assign me the work to what can I do to help the team accomplish its goals behaviors.
Leadership Coach:
The Scrum Master as a coach to the managers and leaders is a key to bringing deeper changes within the organization and getting leadership support. If you as a Scrum Master have ignored this aspect, time to start thinking about it. Effective coaching for the leaders will significantly benefit your team see reduced resistance from the organization and increased support from immediate leaders.
The Scrum Master may help the leaders adapt Agile mindset, remove confusion about the changes, bring clarity to their role during and after the change, and help the leaders with improving their leadership agility.
Sports Coach:
Like the Sports Coach, the Scrum Master aka the Scrum Coach’s coaching is informed by her experience and expertize of Scrum Framework. At times the Scrum Coach may need to step in and share with the team about what is Scrum and what it is not. What practice may be added to the Scrum Framework and which practice may add waste to the process. Here the Scrum Master may take the mentor role and help the unaware people to become educated on a specific practice or rule of Scrum.
Being effective at coaching requires the Scrum Master to be able to find the most appropriate technique and style that fits the context and the Scrum Team’s needs.
