Team Coaching

How Leaders Show Up: Learning to Be an Agile Leader

At TeamCatapult, we believe that the single greatest predictor of high performance and successful change lies in who leaders are BEING in conversations and how they are ENGAGING. We don’t operate from lists of “do this—not that.” Instead, we hold the perspective that all behaviors are choices that either produce the intended outcome or produce an unintended consequence. From this lens, becoming agile is less about right and wrong and more about awareness and choice.

The Quality of Leadership Communication

Research consistently demonstrates that team effectiveness is highly dependent upon the quality of communication between team members. The quality of communication is how we explain why some teams are high performing and others struggle. It’s how we explain why some organizations are successful at large organizational changes and others are not. And it’s how we explain why we might have very engaging and productive conversations with some people and end up in complete frustration with others. What often inhibits a team’s potential is how they show up and engage (or not) in the conversation.

Being Agile vs Doing Agile

Organizations that are successful at agility did not get there because they implemented the latest best practices. It’s not that they figured out the holy grail of team development or that they took the latest Kanban tool and prioritized work. They are likely DOING these things, but that’s not why they are finding success.

It’s not WHAT they are doing, it’s HOW.

It’s how their leaders are BEING when they show up in the room
It’s how they ENGAGE when they’re talking with their teams

How we show up and how we engage makes all the difference. Who are we being when the bottom drops out of the stock? How are we talking when a delivery does not go as planned?

“As a leader, the single MOST effective thing you can do to change your organizational culture and grow agile leadership at all levels is to develop your ability to understand and to choose how you show up and how you engage.”

How Leaders Show Up

Awareness precedes choice, precedes change.

What kind of leader do you want to be?

In agile leadership, who we are being when we show up in the room can make or break a team’s dynamic, its ability to work through complex problems, and the quality of its solutions.

That’s why it’s important to understand the characteristics of who you want to BE as a leader—and feel at choice in how you show up to every conversation. In our work with leaders, we start by introducing 4 characteristics that we’ve seen modeled by successful agile leaders time and time again:

1) Leaders Show Up Focused

What’s your vision? What are you saying ‘yes’ to? And, more importantly, what are you saying ‘no’ to?

The choice here is focus. It is clarity for yourself and for others about what’s important—and what’s the most important thing next. Focus has a cadence. It means you’re maintaining just the right level of strategy, purpose, and intent. You’re not so detailed that your focus changes every minute, and you’re not so broad that you don’t have the benefit of clarity.

When you are choosing focus, you are committing your attention. You are choosing to feel focused over feeling frazzled, scattered, and busy.

2) Leaders Need To Be Creative

Zig Ziglar once said, “It’s not what happens to you in life that matters. It’s how you respond to what happens to you that makes a difference.”

You can choose to create; to focus on the future and away from a past whose outcome you can’t change. Being creative comes from a place of hope, vision, and taking a systems perspective. It’s about asking, “what do I want to create?” If you don’t like the current situation, what would your ideal be? What’s possible? What’s next?

Being creative is the belief that you can create what you want. And tapping into vision and creativity is far more productive than being fearful and reactionary.

3) Leaders Should Be Adaptive

Being adaptive means choosing to inhabit the space of emergence, to be okay with not knowing, and to be open to sensing what’s needed next.

Ron Heifitz, in his book The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, makes an important distinction between “technical problems”—problems that have a clear definition and are easily solved by experts—and “adaptive challenges.” Adaptive challenges are problems whose solutions require exploration, experimentation, new learning, and changes to beliefs, values, and mindsets.

Becoming Agile as a business is the very definition of adaptive.

There is no roadmap, only hypotheses and learning to determine the next action.

4) Leaders Choose to Be Dialogic

William Issacs, in his book Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together, defines dialogue as a shared inquiry—a way of thinking and reflecting together, particularly when the stakes are high.

Choosing to be dialogic is about seeking the collective intelligence in order to unfold new thinking and innovation that we would not or could not get to on our own.

Basically, it’s a way of being open and curious. Of joining with others in exploration. Of being aware of your own perspective and willing to share in a way that is not about convincing or influencing others.

There is a balance between having a clear opinion and perspective (advocacy) and genuinely seeking to understand others without clinging to our own viewpoints (inquiry). Being dialogic means choosing to find that balance.

Curious?

Read more in this next article titled “How Leaders Engage: Learning to Be an Agile Leader”

Your Job is to Unlock the Answers Within

Foundation of Agile Coaching

Asking powerful questions over giving advice is the foundation of a coaching approach.

The days of the rambling monologue are over. Thankfully. Agile team leaders today are expected to stimulate conversation and collaboration. As Forbes Magazine describes, “today’s great leaders understand how to unlock hidden value and unleash creativity and passion with the use of well-timed questions.”

Timing of Questions

Knowing when to ask a question is a useful skill.

Knowing how to ask a powerful question is a critical skill.

Asking powerful questions over giving advice is the foundation of a coaching approach. Whether the coaching is a one-on-one coaching conversation or a team-coaching conversation, the belief is the same: People have their own answers within. They are naturally creative, resourceful and complete. Leaders, like coaches, who hold this belief seek to unlock other’s perspectives, contributions and answers.

The Role of the “Unlocker”

This starts with assuming good intent, i.e., the person is doing his or her best. Assuming good intent is inherent to effective listening. Effective listening will:

Suspend judgment and communicate curiosity and respect
Channel the attention
Bring to the surface any underlying assumptions
Invite new possibilities
Generate energy and forward movement

Ultimately, when done well, a coaching conversation using effective listening creates deep meaning and evokes more powerful questions.

Some skeptics doubt the value of powerful questions. It could be that they don’t hold the belief that people have their own answers within. As Peter Drucker, well-known management consultant, educator and author says, “Asking questions invites creativity, is empowering, and inspires us to consider alternatives…[it] helps us to calibrate and access our own capability to solve problems…building our self-confidence and self-efficacy.” Let’s look at what happens when we ask powerful questions.

What Makes a Question Powerful?

It’s short. It is only 7 words or less.
It’s open-ended. It cannot be answered with a yes or no.
It focuses on the future, rather than the past.
It starts with “What” or “How”.

What Makes a Question Less Powerful or Not Powerful At All?

It starts with “Why”. To some people, the word “Why”, sounds blaming (flashback to “Why did you spill your milk?!”) and they can take a defensive stance, even without meaning to.
It is closed-ended or seeks to gather data that the person already knows, and doesn’t require any reflection.

A: “How many people are on your team?”

B: “Ten.”

A: “How long have you been doing that?”

B: “Two years.”

These are not inherently bad questions, but they are stronger when followed by a powerful question.

A: “How many people are on your team?”

B: “Ten.”

A: “What is your pattern with this team?” *

B: “I tend to let the two most outspoken people dominate.”

A: “How long have you been doing that?”

B: “Two years.”

A: “What works well about using that method?” *

B: “Some team members have started coming to the meetings more prepared to speak up.”

Notice the two questions with * are open-ended and more powerful, especially when following a closed-ended or data gathering question. Other elements, tones, or unintended stances that a close-ended question reveals:

The question asker is looking for a specific answer or tone (even inadvertently).
The question asker stops listening and responds to his or her own question, sometimes not leaving any space for the other to respond.
“What could we do about tomorrow’s meeting? I’m only asking because I think we should…”
The question is not a question at all, it’s a suggestion or disguised opinion. We call them “que-gestions!” Beware of anybody who starts a question that way!
“Don’t you think you should pick this option?”
“Doesn’t it seem obvious that you are heading in the wrong direction?”

Instead, prepare to inspire a great conversation by having a few powerful and versatile questions in your back pocket. Here are some to get started, but remember, the best questions come from careful listening and deep curiosity.

Powerful Questions

What is important about that?
What’s frustrating you?
What’s inspiring you?
What help do you need?
What makes you see it that way?
How could that go wrong?
How will you know when you’ve achieved that?
How will you plan for success?
How are others seeing the situation?
How will this impact others?

Practice Asking the Right Questions

As you practice using powerful questions, notice how the conversation goes. Does it feel different than other conversations? In what way? Notice how much you can learn about the other person.

Did they tell you anything surprising? Notice where the other person takes the conversation…and remain curious.

As we coaches like to say… “Notice what you notice!”

Agile Coach: From Accidental to Intentional

From “Guide” to Coach

My first work as a coach came about accidentally in the late ‘90s while working in a fast-growing software company. Developers and system engineers were rapidly being promoted to management jobs without previous management experience. To help them through this transition, I was designated as their “guide.” The idea was to transfer my knowledge as a manager and developer of people to folks who were new to these roles. For me, this was an accidental opportunity to develop new skills, and started my path to become a professional certified coach. This eventually led me to my role as an Agile Coach and Trainer, where I work with organizations to transform their work process and team mindset.

Learning to Evaluate and Adapt

During my initial work as a “guide,” I evolved as I went, seeing what worked for one person and then applying what I had learned with the next. As I built expertise over time, I developed techniques and frameworks to apply coaching practices effectively. For example, I realized that the interview training I received as part of hiring new employees was useful here. It used a variation of what I now call “Powerful Questions,” and was an efficient way to get to the most effective agenda for me and the person I was coaching. The method focuses on what the client is concerned about, rather than teaching what the coach thinks the client needs to know. This approach worked with teams as well. Teams became more effective as they learned to listen and reflect on what had been said by teammates, rather than ordering each other about.

An added benefit of coaching individuals was that the process was transferable: I found that the new managers I had coached were often coaching their teams using the same techniques. I have seen this pattern since: just one person modeling coaching practices has a ripple effect and can help shape an organization’s culture. In those days, without calling it Agile, a collaborative environment emerged, often creating breakthroughs and “quick wins” for our customers. I like to think my coaching of the new managers was an important part of that. For example: leading meetings using Powerful Questions as the basis of the agenda, results emerged more quickly. Team members often learned these techniques “osmotically” as they engaged and became part of the organization.

Starting Your Coaching Journey

Being curious and interested is a big part of becoming an effective coach. Colleagues will naturally respond to your interest. Tactically, a key skill is your ability to pose open-ended (that can’t be answered with a yes/no), questions to “open up” a conversation. This can help a colleague or a team work through a problem and move them onto a path to solve their own problem.

Over time, you will develop a set of favorite questions that work for you. A few of my favorites:

What do you notice about this?
What will tell us when we are there?
What about this will be important in a month?
Using the right question for the scenario you are in can move a team, or inspire an individual to take the next step to a beneficial end result. And move you nicely along in developing your coaching skills.