professional coaching – Page 5

Coaching

ICF Core Competencies: Acknowledging Client Responsibility

ICF recently released and updated competency model that will go into effect for credential applications in early 2021.

What does this change mean for coaches? It means that it’s time to step up our game and start focusing on what these indicators mean to who we are as coaches. The competency markers aren’t meant to be a checklist to make sure you go through every coaching session. They are intended to help you have a way to look at how your coaching mindset is being outwardly manifested. If these things aren’t showing, don’t create a list of questions to check off the markers. Instead, take a look inside and see what needs to change about who you are as a coach in order to reflect these things in your everyday life. Being a coach goes way beyond what you do inside a coaching session. It’s who you are and what you have become. It’s how you look at people and how you interact with the world that surrounds you.

Agile

Your Journey to ICF Credentials

While ICF standards are rigorous and extensive, their explanations are way too convoluted and complex for a lot of people to navigate. Aspiring coaches get lost in the multitude of priorities, requirements, and programs that promise quick and easy path to their desired ICF credential. Here we make them clear and simple to understand.

Coaching

ICF Core Competencies: Ethical Coaching Practices

ICF recently released and updated competency model that will go into effect for credential applications in early 2021.

Agile

A Fixer

While attending the Agile Coaching Institute’s Coaching Agile Teams class a while back the instructors read this poem to the class. It served as a powerful reminder that as an agile coach, or a scrum master/team coach, we must see people and teams as naturally creative, resourceful, and whole if we want to empower them to grow and move forward. As a coach I must be a servant to those I coach. I’m not here to be better than them or to have all the answers. I’m here to serve them in their quest for greatness.

Agile

Getting Unstuck ~ Lessons in Delegation

I spent some time coaching one of my clients* recently who was planning an event and needed to enlist the help of others in order to be successful. The problem she was facing involved feeling overwhelmed.

Agile

My Agile Journey to CEC

“If you want to be a CST, do something about it. Get out there. Join the Agile community. Go to user groups. Go to conferences. Speak at conferences. I want to see you and know who you are. And you can never stop coaching. You can’t be a good CST if you aren’t coaching. That’s where everything you know comes from. That’s where you gain your credibility and true expertise that can help people.”

Agile

Signal to Noise Ratio / Bottom Lining

A Few weeks ago while attending a Coaching Agile Teams class I heard one of the instructors (Lyssa Adkins) make a reference in passing to “signal to noise” ratio in reference to our ability to communicate with others. Her comment intrigued me because I’d never heard that phrase before, so I started to do some investigation.

Signal-to-noise ratio (abbreviated SNR or S/N) is a measure used in science and engineering that compares the level of a desired signal to the level of background noise.

Signal-to-noise ratio is sometimes used informally to refer to the ratio of useful information to false or irrelevant information in a conversation or exchange. For example, in online communities, off-topic posts and spam are regarded as “noise” that interferes with the “signal” of appropriate discussion.

Agile

Coaching – It’s more than just asking questions

A common belief is that the difference between coaching and managing is simply asking questions rather than giving orders. I used to believe this. Instead of making decisions for my teams and telling them what to do I would ask them questions and get them to derive their own solutions. I thought that meant I was coaching. But the more I got into coaching the more I really wanted to make sure I was doing it right and being effective. So, over the past two years I have invested in myself and in my craft. I have learned everything I can about professional coaching and gotten mentoring by master coaches.

Coaching

Coaching Skills for Scrum Masters – Deep Listening

The other day when working with a few scrum masters I recognized how important coaching skills are to this profession. I know that coaching is important and I teach new scrum masters that they are the coach to the team. But, when working with these new scrum masters it brought to light that coaching skills aren’t something that we just know – they are learned on purpose.

When I ask people about their coaching skills they often point to allowing the team to be self organized and make their own decisions. They view coaching as asking questions that help people figure out the answers. I agree. Those are aspects of coaching that are very powerful for teams. But there is an underlying skill that cripples the ability to ask powerful questions if it isn’t first mastered. In order to ask powerful questions a scrum master must first learn to listen.

I am realizing that the most powerful coaching skill a scrum master can learn to master is listening. It is foundational to everything else.

Coaching

The Power of Daring to be You

This past weekend I attended CTI coach training. For three days I was able to experience coaching from an entirely different perspective. This experiential training in a group setting was very powerful. During this weekend I didn’t just meet a new group of people – I met myself! It was amazing to experience the insight and deep intuition of people on a level that made me feel understood, seen, and heard. There were times when I felt like they knew me better than I knew myself – or maybe they were willing to pull out of me what I have spent so many years burying.

During one session, we did an activity where we took turns sitting in the focus seat and others called out what they were seeing in you. It was amazing and encouraging to hear the impressions that people had of me after just 14 hours together. Then, they shifted and identified what they caught glimpses of but really wished would emerge. In the next step, the class began to suggest metaphorical archetypes that captured the part of you that isn’t being fully embraced – who you really are deep inside that needs to be tapped into.