Agile vs. Professional coaching: Mastering the Coaching Dance

In recent years, coaching has emerged as a vital tool to foster personal growth, enhance leadership capabilities, and drive organizational change. Among the different types of coaching, two significant forms have gained prominence: professional coaching (especially as defined by the International Coaching Federation, or ICF) and agile coaching. While both types share common principles, they differ in their objectives, methodologies, and target audiences. Let’s explore these differences in detail, along with potential challenges that might arise when using both approaches simultaneously.

Professional Coaching Approach

The ICF defines coaching as “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.”

In professional coaching, the coach is expected to remain neutral, avoiding direction or suggesting solutions. Instead, the client can expect the coach to ask powerful questions and share observations. In rare cases, the coach may offer advice, but only as a last resort.

The typical ICF-certified coaching process involves setting an agenda based on the client’s goals, exploring challenges or limiting beliefs, and co-creating action plans to achieve the desired outcomes. Coaches use techniques such as powerful questions or reflection to guide clients in achieving their objectives.

Professional coaching usually occurs in one-on-one sessions. During the first session, the coach and client establish a coaching agreement, which defines how the coaching relationship will work. This is a crucial step since each client may prefer a different coaching style. For example, some clients like to be challenged, while others seek support, want to focus on personal issues, or prefer to avoid them. Although the coach cannot cover every scenario, it is vital that clients understand they drive the conversation. They are in control and can stop the coaching or decline to answer any question they find uncomfortable.

At the start of each session, the client – often with the coach’s help – defines the session’s goals. If a client’s coach was assigned by their manager, a separate coaching agreement should be established, involving the client, the coach, and the sponsor (the manager). They must define the scope of the coaching, the number of sessions, and agree on confidentiality (the coach typically cannot share what was discussed in the sessions).

Throughout each session, the coach acts as a sparring partner, challenging the client, helping them discover different perspectives, supporting their ideas, and refining their thoughts. This process continues as long as the client perceives value in the coaching engagement.

Agile Coaching: Less a Coach, more a Consultant? 

Agile coaching, on the other hand, is a specialized form of coaching aimed at helping organizations drive improvement. While particularly prevalent in the software development industry, agile coaching has expanded to other sectors. An agile coach works with teams and organizations to implement agile and lean methodologies, enhancing collaboration, workflow, and productivity. Depending on the scope, agile coaches may operate on various levels – team, inter-team (or inter-department), and strategic.

Agile coaches bring experience and a set of best practices to the table, such as:

• Visualizing work through Kanban boards
• Implementing feedback loops (reviews, retrospectives, daily standups)
• Adopting an iterative and incremental approach to delivery
• Redesigning organizations to optimize value streams and improve flow
• Enhancing team dynamics and autonomy
• Facilitating more productive meetings
• Introducing technical practices like pair programming, code reviews, automated testing, and continuous delivery

But what happens when a client is resistant to these practices? What if they prefer not to visualize work, only release once a year, or wish to separate business and development into different departments while claiming they want to “do agile”? In such cases, the client may be stepping outside agile constraints. Here, the agile coach adopts a more consultative role, offering advice and sharing expertise based on experience.

There are certainly times when an agile coach operates from a neutral coaching stance, such as during one-on-one sessions with team members or leadership, or when facilitating discussions and brainstorming sessions. However, even when coaching, agile coaching typically stays within the scope of agile values and principles.

Confusing Agile and Professional Coaching

Agile methodologies emphasize self-organizing, autonomous teams that are empowered to make decisions on how to meet requirements independently. This requires motivated individuals who strive for continuous improvement and technical excellence. They should feel responsible for delivering value and take pride in their work.

However, it’s not uncommon for agile coaches to encounter teams with little motivation or desire to improve. This lack of drive could stem from organizational factors, management styles, or simply a lack of individual maturity. For instance, imagine a team that fails to meet Sprint goals for 10 consecutive sprints, produces subpar code, and demands “perfect requirements.” Would you coach them, or would you advise them to adopt best practices that improve code quality and reduce defects? If you choose not to intervene, remember that they are likely operating within agile frameworks such as Scrum or Kanban, which impose certain constraints.

On the other hand, I once worked in a highly effective team that didn’t follow any particular framework. We were close to the customer and operated with short feedback loops, with a team lead who knew when to allow more autonomy and when to adopt a more directive leadership style. Imposing a framework like Scrum could have been counterproductive in this case.

The key takeaway here is that agile coaches must learn the coaching dance – knowing when to coach, when to mentor, when to teach, and when to advise. Some coaches stay in coaching mode even when it frustrates team members or leaders. While coaching is a valuable tool, for agile coaches, it is just one of many tools in their toolbox.

Professional Coaching as a Subset of Agile Coaching Skills

Using professional coaching tools as an agile coach can sometimes confuse clients. One day, you might be telling them to implement a certain practice, and the next, you’re asking open-ended questions. Clients need to understand when they are being coached and what coaching stance is being used.

In this context, individual and team coaching are just tools to drive productivity. While a strictly neutral coaching stance can be helpful, it’s usually not enough. Moreover, an agile coach is unlikely to match the skill level of a professional coach simply because their broader skillset covers more areas.

As Bob Galen explains in his book Extraordinarily Badass Agile Coaching, only using coaching, especially with leadership, can sometimes come across as too passive. To avoid the “death by a thousand questions” trap, it is crucial to set clear expectations with leadership and teams from the outset.

Managing Expectations as an Agile Coach

At the beginning of any client relationship, I explain that as an agile coach, I will often be more directive, challenging the status quo, and providing advice on best practices. However, I also clarify that during one-on-one coaching sessions, I adopt a different approach – one more aligned with professional coaching. Interestingly, I have several received comments that, even when they understand the difference in approach, it still comes as a surprise to some of them.

This is why it’s essential to explain the difference between teaching, mentoring, advising, and coaching “hats” to the client and explicitly state the change of the “hat” if it’s happening in mid-conversation. When working with teams, I make it clear that in the initial stages of coaching, I will take on the role of teacher, helping them apply theory to practice. As time passes, I shift to more mentoring and coaching stances. This transition requires a solid foundation built on an explicit coaching agreement, so clients understand what to expect throughout the engagement.

Conclusion

In summary, professional coaching is centered on empowering the client to take control of their personal growth and transformation. It is highly neutral, supportive, and non-directive, making it a powerful tool for individuals seeking personal or professional development. The client sets the agenda, and the coach’s role is to guide without imposing any predetermined solutions.

On the other hand, agile coaching operates with a focus on empowering teams and organizations. It is more directive, as agile coaches bring best practices to help organizations improve their processes and outcomes. Agile coaching comes with certain constraints and is often initiated by the organization to drive systemic change. Because of this, agile coach must balance between coaching, teaching, mentoring, and consulting to help organizations implement good practices while respecting the whole organization as a system.

Ultimately, understanding when to apply each type of coaching, and how to blend them, can significantly enhance both personal and organizational success. 

Professional vs agile coaching cheat sheet: