A slightly battered coach. Can’t respond precisely to your requests, but could help. Will know how to find value if you mix them with your collective intelligence. Could bring a bit of salt. Opportunity to seize. Feedback fuel required.

A thought that’s been creeping through my conversations for a while: the wear and tear of our profession, the difficulty of feedback for “agile coaches”. Our job is difficult. Difficult because it’s complex, with no simple answers. Difficult because it’s wearing, passionate but wearing. I keep telling people I meet that feedback is essential to stay involved, engaged, even motivated. It’s nourishing to know what our actions, our choices, our decisions generate. Whether the result is good or bad, it’s always better than silence, ignorance or the absence of results. Yet our profession as “agile coach” is not suited to this feedback loop because it offers so many ramifications that the return messages are blurred.

I’m jealous of “craft coaches”

I was already jealous of “craft coaches” (those expert coaches who are craftsmen of code) because they had the ability to transmit their knowledge quite directly, if only through mimicry. Which seems to me already much more difficult for an organizational coach. Indeed, it’s hard to say: do as I do, because we’re all so different. The material isn’t the code, the tool, but the person themselves. And I’m not talking about individual coaching, but I’m talking about communication, about group dynamics, etc. So it’s not as easy to transmit as in many other professions. You can show how you go about it, explain your approach. But each person will work with their own nature and context. The result will inevitably be different. No repeatability.

Uncertainty is exciting but it’s not restful.

We are starved for feedback

Not content with being unable to easily transmit our knowledge, we can also be quite blind or worried about our ability to bring value. We are starved for feedback. Actually no more than others. But feedback is essential to our motivation, to our engagement, like everyone else. So we need it. For an agile coach, to use the label that people stick on us, it’s difficult to have that feeling of progress, feeling of having an impact. Beyond all the ego-related aspects which aren’t my subject, it’s still pleasant to have some feedback on which to rest. Being an agile coach is wearing. I’m not complaining. It fascinates me. But it’s wearing. Our material is collective intelligence, organization, group dynamics, etc. All this is quite intangible. We don’t shape our material, we accompany it and never alone. When it works it’s never exclusively or even mainly thanks to us, it’s the fruit of a combination of people, meaning, luck, opportune moments. It’s not a question of ego, it’s a question of knowledge, improvement, introspection.

I’m jealous of the florist, the lumberjack, the coder, the trader, the lifeguard, the surgeon

They sell flowers or not. The plants grow or not. The tree falls or not. The code compiles or not. You refactor the code or not. It works better or not. The stock sells at a better price or not. Someone drowns or not, someone learns to swim or not. The lung is stitched up or not. I’ve looked for professions close to ours. All the intellectual ones, I’m told. The novelist, the teacher, the journalist, the actor, the philosopher. But the journalist and the novelist face themselves. They may be tortured but they have the cards in hand, just like the actor. The theater actor has a more complicated material: it fluctuates. Their concern is more about being or staying inspired, talented. The teacher has a more bidirectional relationship with their class. They remain the teacher. We work with group dynamics that encompass us, in a systemic world, holistic, global, which cannot be reduced to sub-optimization.

For the love of God

A few scraps of feedback? Crumbs of encouragement? I’ve received some, quite often actually, but in the mass of my activities they get lost. Aren’t people who do my job the champions of introspection and self-questioning? Surely and all the better. So bring them your feedback.

Oh yeah, baby, I’m not a florist, nor a lumberjack I am the vampire of learning I’m not a surgeon, nor a watchmaker The bottleneck of my guitar jams the org, bebabelula, I’m not the great swimmer who became an actor I’ve got the agile coach blues, the facilitator’s spleen, my drug is feedback, tchtchi chak