Tag: coaching

Change agents and coaches often ask me how to overcome resistance. The coach wants a team to adopt a practice or technique that he/she “knows” is good. Why won’t the team members consider his/her suggestions? It’s possible that they just don’t see any pressing need to change the way they work.

It turns out that experienced professionals aren’t slumped in their offices in a puddle of their own drool, dazed and defeated, surrounded by the smouldering remains of failed projects, hoping a savior will appear and teach them a magic trick that will make them better at their jobs. Notwithstanding industry studies that highlight general problems in software delivery, development teams aren’t “failing” left and right. Software development organizations do deliver results. Few of them deliver results as effectively as they could do, but they aren’t necessarily aware of this, or they don’t see it as especially important because it isn’t causing them any real headaches. People have settled into a comfort zone where they are respected, they feel successful, and they are well paid. When a change agent comes charging at them with golden hammer in hand as if they were in need of rescue, insisting that they change the way they think about and approach their work, why should they listen? The truth is they shouldn’t listen. They’re doing exactly the right thing when they “resist.”
Continue reading Beware the golden hammer

When we function in the role of coach, our primary goal is to bring the client to the point of self-sufficiency with respect to some aspect of their work. Whether we are engaged as a technical coach or process coach, we want the client to internalize some set of values and practices that are presently unfamiliar to them, to shift their mindset in some way, and then to carry the new approach or new skills forward independently. We want to make ourselves unnecessary.

The same can be true when we are engaged as management consultants. In that role, our function is usually to advise and consent. We will be one source of information among several, or many. We may not be privileged to know all the details of the decisions the client needs to make. We are only asked to apply our best professional judgment to the situations the client wants us to address. The advise and consent function is different from the coaching function.
Continue reading Warning signs of client dependency