5 ways to coach agile teams through change

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In today’s world the most common unit of creativity, innovation and development in organisations is the team. Individuals alone can do only what they know, but a team can achieve what everyone in the team knows collectively. Cross-functional teams are a part of our lexicon, we take them for granted. And as agile coaches, we encourage organisations to create such teams where they don’t already exist.

As coaches we already know a few things about how these teams are going to perform. They are going to learn new processes and practices at different rates to each other, they will have different levels of experience, including from other organisations, they will have different backgrounds, educations, cultures and beliefs. And all of these things affect how that team will perform.

In some teams there will be harmony and togetherness, in some each person will work more-or-less alone with little engagement with other team members. In some there will be one know-it-all who dominates every discussion, in some there will be silent resentment, in some open hostility, and in others a combination of these among various team members.

In all our focus on getting teams to do and “be” agile, we tend to ignore the fact that these teams comprise people. People are complex creatures, but collectively they create an even more complex entity, a relationship system that has its own identity.

Key to making that relationship system perform well is emotional intelligence. Specifically, relationship systems intelligence (RSI). EQ has been identified as even more important to organisational performance than IQ. Understanding and managing not only our own emotions but those of others too, can have a profound impact on how teams perform.

High-performing teams have common characteristics that the coach can help to bring to the team if they aren’t there already:

• Size — they should be small enough in number to convene and communicate easily and frequently
• Skills — they should have complementary skills, including technical, problem-solving / decision-making and interpersonal skills, the ability and capacity to improve those skills and the team collectively should have all the skills required to achieve the objective/s
• Purpose — a broader, deeper aspiration for the team that transcends short-term goals, that all team members understand, refer to and feel is important to them
• Specific goals for the team — not just individual goals, but collective ones that require co-operation and collaboration to achieve, that are specific and measurable, realistic but ambitious, that can be realised incrementally, with clear priorities that all team members agree with
• Approach — a clear, well understood and adaptable approach to getting work done that capitalises and enhances the skills of team members, requires all members to contribute real work and provides for open interaction and results-based evaluation
• Mutual accountability — everyone is individually and collectively accountable for the team’s approach, work products and achievement of goals, with members holding each other to account; a sense that “only the team can fail”

It is the job of the agile coach not just to teach, to mentor and consult. But also to help turn a collection of disparate individuals into a high-performing team, by helping them to look at these characteristics, and help them improve in each area by facilitating focussed discussions around each topic.

Engaged, enthusiastic, and loyal employees are pivotal drivers of growth and health in any organization — Patrick Lencioni

So how do we as agile coaches go about doing this?Agile adoption is a significant change for a team. And change is often hard on people. It has been said that no-one likes to be changed, but we like to be part of change. Well, that isn’t a universal truth. Some people thrive on the new and different, on experimentation and learning, while others prefer routine and stability.

Here are some things to bear in mind as your teams go through change:

Alliances

A team is an alliance, an alignment of people around a common purpose and approach. But that alliance does not happen by accident, it needs to be deliberately and purposefully created for it to be effective.

Most teams spend all their time, resources and effort on the doing part of their performance — the tasks they will perform. Very little time is spent on the being part — the behaviours and positivity needed for success. For this we need to identify the dynamics, expectations, attitudes and behaviours that will influence the team interactions. For it is how the team members interact that define how successful they will be.

As coaches, we need to help create two separate alliances:

• The Team alliance that describes the desired culture and atmosphere, how team members will be together, especially when the going gets tough, their agreed standards of behaviour and how they will be mutually accountable for sticking to them
• The Coaching alliance — an agreement about how the coach should work with the team. Depending on the team’s starting point for learning and their ability and motivation to learn, different coaching styles will be more or less effective.

Both of these agreements need to be generated by the team members with their coach. It is essential that each team member understands what the others need from them, and from their coach.

Edges

We can think of change as an Edge that we need to cross. On the left side is our primary or current state, on the other, our secondary or future state. Sometimes crossing an edge is easy, but at other times, a part of us resists the change, and different behaviours result. It is important for the coach to look out for signals that an edge has been found and the team (or one or more of its members) is having trouble crossing it. Things like nervous giggling, changes in posture or facial expression, unfinished sentences, feelings of confusion or being lost, withdrawing or ignoring the change.

To help people cross that edge, the coach can help them visualise what is over the other side, and then help them to cross safely. This can be by using imagination, “visiting” through experimentation, crossing progressively and other facilitative approaches.

Signals

Team members consciously or unconsciously provide signals that convey information about what they are thinking or feeling. These may be visual (smiling, frowning), auditory (laughing, grunting, even silence), proprioceptive (body sensation like blushing, goose, bumps, shivers), or kinaesthetic (moving or being moved).

The coach should be constantly looking out for signals but without interpreting their meaning. We might notice someone frowning and assume they are unhappy, but in fact they may just be deep in thought. The coach’s job is to identify and unfold that signal so that the team as a whole understands that voice of the system. This helps us discover what is secondary (over the edge) and what is preventing us from crossing.

Deep Democracy

To fully understand the team’s reality, there needs to be deep democracy. The coach needs to create a safe environment for marginalised or unpopular opinions to be heard. I have heard people say “this is a safe environment”, but that doesn’t make it so. There are numerous things that subtly erode the safety of a team environment, but team members must be able to at least raise concerns over safety, or little else can change. Leadership here is vital.

Team members must be able to speak with conviction while at the same time being open to influence. This is only possible when no-one speaks against another member, when everyone uses appreciative enquiry and there is always a positive atmosphere. Everyone is a participant, but anyone can be an Elder at any point, taking on a facilitation or leadership role moment-to-moment.

All members should be aware that their position on an issue is more than just an expression of their personal opinion or identity, it is a voice of the system, their position in the process is a role needed in the system. We ask “what does the system need?” rather than “what do you need?”

Toxins

John Gottman called them the four horsemen of the apocalypse in relationships:

• Blaming/Criticism
• Defensiveness
• Contempt
• Stonewalling

The coach needs to be able to recognise when these toxic behaviours, and provide antidotes, speaking to the system rather than the individual. When someone starts blaming another team member, for example, the coach can ask that the blame be turned into a request — a “dream” — a powerful way of turning negativity into positivity and creativity and bringing team members closer together.

As agile coaches we are hired for our expertise, for our ability to teach, to advise, to consult and to mentor. Too often we speak about coaching, but we mean something different. We talk about empowering teams, but we spend too long focussed on individuals, or we treat the team as a group of individuals, rather than a complex and adaptive relationship system.

There is so much more we can be doing to turn these groups of people into a high-performing, learning, developing and resilient relationship system, capable of minor miracles, and enjoying themselves in the process.

References:

• CRR Global course — Organisation and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC)
• Wisdom of Teams — Katzenbach and Smith
• Coaching the Team at Work — David Clutterbuck
• Creating Intelligent Teams — Rød and Fridjhon