Lean-Agile Coach Self-Assessment v3.2Simplified descriptions

A) Assess your skills

B) Plan your improvement

C) Track your progress

Guidelines

to self-assess your skills and traits.

Include levels and skills description.

Guidelines for self-assessing your skills level

1) The levels you are going to identify for each one of your skills are personal and relative to you.

Using radars to compare a skill level between two coaches makes no sense: it’s like comparing

velocity between two teams. Radars are placeholders for a conversation, exactly like user stories,

between you and a mentor.

2) When you assess your level of a skill, remember the purpose is to identify and visualise

opportunities for improvement and to track your progress over time. Rating yourself too high or too

low would defeat the purpose.

3) Tip: you can print or draw the radars on paper, or you can download the radars’ deck and edit

each radar’s chart adding your data and saving the deck.

Levels self-assessment

Lean-Agile Coach Skills Levels

Level 0: Tourist

Never heard about that!

Level 1: Just starting

Rule based behaviour, strongly limited and inflexible

Level 2: Improving

Incorporates aspects of the situation and context

Level 3: Capable

Act consciously taking into account long term goals and plans

Level 4: Expert

Sees the situation as a whole and acts from personal conviction, invents and

introduces small scale innovations, personal improvement is self-sustaining

Level 5: Globetrotter

Has an intuitive understanding of the situation and zooms in on the central aspects,

has an easy and creative way of doing things, invents and introduces large scale

innovations to deal with truly unique situations.

Professional

Coaching

Professional coaching helps unlock potential and fulfil talent. It makes use of deep listening, effective questioning,

empathy, non-violent communication, and professional coaching frameworks.

- It supports individuals in becoming the best that they can be: figuring out their goals and priorities, expanding

their awareness of the current situation, generating improvement options, and formulating and owning actions

for improving their performance and advancing in their career.

- It supports teams by improving team dynamics and by helping teams to autonomously and holistically identify

and prioritise improvements and obstacles and to carry out improvement actions.

- It supports organisations in improving collaboration dynamics and in becoming a learning organisation.

Facilitating

Facilitating helps a group or a team to collaborate effectively and to pursue their own goals, priorities, and

definitions of success during ceremonies, ad hoc meetings, and workshops.

It requires remaining neutral with respect to the content and outcomes.

- Facilitating ensures inclusive participation, mutual understanding, and effective collaboration. - It supports collective sense making and collective decision making.- It helps teams to navigate conflicts.- It can facilitate groups of all sizes, groups of people who know each other or of external clients and unfamiliar

attendees, and familiar topics to unfamiliar ones.

Lean-Agile

Mentoring

Mentoring is when a more experienced lean-agile practitioner guides someone less knowledgeable

toward lean-agile practice excellence. It uses skills of lean-agile practice and of professional coaching.

- Mentoring helps individuals to better understand their role in a lean-agile team and in a lean-agile organisation,

improving their own performance and consequently their team’s performance.

- It leads teams and organisations to a better alignment between:

- the way of working and the lean-agile approach and

- the organisation’s culture and the lean-agile mindset.

A good mentor does not merely provide the answers but builds capability in the mentee.

Lean-Agile Coach basic Skills Self-Assessment

Lean-Agile

Teaching

Teaching means offering the right knowledge at the right time in the right way, so that individuals, teams, and

organisations learn what they need to support their goals.

- Teaching can take place in classrooms, in workshops, as on-the-job training, and during pairing.

- It requires a focus on both why and how people learn and on a respectful, effective, engaging, and exciting

approach.

Lean-Agile

Mastery

A genuine and experienced practitioner deeply understands a variety of agile and lean frameworks and their

underlying values, principles, and practices. The practitioner knows the whats and the whys.

- The practitioner has many years of hands-on experience with agile and lean in different teams, industries, and

organisations, and has directly experienced what “good” looks like.

- The practitioner is a reliable, trustworthy source of experience, wisdom, and recommendations. Like a mountain

guide, the practitioner is someone you can entrust with your journey toward lean-agile excellence.

Lean-Agile Coach basic Skills Self-Assessment

Lean-Agile

Technical

Mastery

(current or past)

Technical mastery is expertise in agile technical practices such as

coding, test automation, simple design, refactoring, continuous integration, continuous delivery, etc.

It focuses on promoting technical craftsmanship.

- This mastery is achieved through several years of hands-on practice and personal experience in what “good”

looks like in agile technical practices.

Lean-Agile

Business &

Product Mastery

(current or past)

This mastery is the expertise in and the ability to apply management and business-strategy frameworks, product

innovation or other business process-management approaches, and other techniques in product innovation or the

business domain.

- This mastery is achieved through several years of hands-on practice and personal experience in what “good”

really looks like in lean-agile business and product development.

Lean-Agile

Organisational &

Transformation

Mastery

(current or past)

This mastery is the knowledge of traditional and modern organisational theories, backed by experience with a

variety of organisational models and especially with organisational agility.

- This mastery is also the ability to facilitate, catalyse, and (as appropriate) lead organisational change. This skill

draws on change management, organisational culture, organisational development, systems thinking, complexity

thinking, and other behavioural sciences.

- This mastery is achieved through several years of hands-on practice and personal experience in what “good”

looks like in lean-agile organisations and lean-agile adoptions.

Lean-Agile Coach Skills Extended Self-Assess.

Lean-Agile Coach Traits Levels

Level 0: The trait is absent or the opposite trait is present

Level 1: The trait is present in you as much as in most of the people around you

Level 2:

Some acquaintances, friends or co-workers would mention the trait when asked about your

traits. You can mention some events and behaviours where you exhibited the trait.

Level 3:You consistently exhibit the trait over time and consistently whenever it’s appropriate. You

can mention several events and behaviours where you exhibited the trait. The opposite trait

is not part of your coping mechanism even under stress.

Level 4:Almost everyone recognises it as one of your key strong traits.

Level 5:You are a role model for the trait.

Lean-Agile Coach Traits Self-Assessment

Initiative

The ability and tendency to assess and initiate things independently. The ability to act first or take charge on one's

own without first being requested to do so or before others do. The ability and tendency to initiate: to start an

action, including coming up with a proposal. The readiness to embark on a new venture. Having a fresh approach

to something; a new way of dealing with a problem.

Flexibility

The willingness to change or compromise. The quality of bending easily without breaking.

The extent to which a person can cope with changes in circumstances and think about problems and tasks in

novel, creative ways. Even in case of stressors or unexpected events.

Optimism

Hopefulness and confidence about the future or the success of something.

A disposition or tendency to look on the more favoruable side of events or conditions and to expect the most

favourable outcome.

Lean-Agile Coach Traits Self-Assessment

Resilience

The ability to properly adapt to stress and adversity.

The ability to recover from or adjust to misfortune, damage, change or a destabilizing perturbation in the

environment. The ability to become strong, healthy, or successful again after something bad happens.

Determination

The firmness of purpose.

The quality that makes someone continue trying to do or achieve something that is difficult.

Having the positive emotion that involves persevering towards a difficult goal in spite of obstacles.

Detachment

The state in which a person overcomes his or her attachment to desire for things, people or concepts of the world

and thus attains a heightened perspective.

The ability to manage emotional boundaries, to find the proper level of emotional engagement, in order to allow

the space needed to rationally choose, maintain integrity and avoid undesired impact by or upon others.

The ability to maintain neutrality, serve the coachee’s agenda, reduce coachee dependence, not colluding with the

coachee’s desire to accommodate their dysfunctions or limitations without attachment or judgment.

Lean-Agile Coach Traits Self-Assessment

Discernment

The ability to obtain sharp perceptions and to judge well.

The ability to see and understand people, situations and things clearly and intelligently.

The quality of being able to grasp and comprehend what is obscure such as hidden context, implicit assumptions,

intangible things, mutable and uncertain circumstances.

Supportive

Providing encouragement, emotional help and support. Being informative. Being sympathetic. Having and

showing concern. Appreciating present strengths, successes, and potentials. Recognizing and searching the best

in people and helping them to envision what they can achieve.

Lean-Agile Coach undesired traits

Directive

Preference to direct others, to assign tasks and supervise people and resources.

Propensity to define and enforce standards, guidelines and rules.

Predilection to positions of authority in a top-down hierarchy.

Defensive

Being concerned with guarding against threat of criticism.

Perceiving openness, transparency, fluid roles and responsibilities, honest feedback as threats.

Being anxious and avoiding to exit the comfort zone, to express opinions or take positions in public.

The feeling that one has to justify his/her behaviour and act as though questions are attacks on him/her.

Judgmental

Having or displaying an overly critical point of view.

The conviction that when there are 2 different opinions or points of view, one must right and the other must be

wrong; and that most problems admit one optimal solution.

The tendency to think that a truth, a value or a best practice does not admit exceptions and does not depend on

contexts, circumstances or personal preferences.

Low threshold to

frustration

Getting easily stressed.

Getting irritated or angry when facing small frustrations that would just annoy other people.

Reacting disproportionally to adversities.

Favouring immediate pleasure or avoidance of pain over avoiding long-term stress and defeatism.

Radars deck: in Slideshare, Link

Simplified descriptions deck (this): in Slideshare, Link

Detailed descriptions deck: in Slideshare, Link

InfoQ article about this self-assessment: Link

Links

Thanks for their precious contributions to:

- Malcolm Beaton, Head of Delivery- Jon Sleeper, Agile and Business Coach

- Laura Re Turner, Coach and Trainer

- Simon Powers, Adventures With Agile (AWA)

- Simone Zecchi, Scrum Master

- Robert Sprigge, Senior Agile Business Analyst

- Derek Winter, Agile Coach

Acknowledgements

LUCA MINUDEL - LEAN-AGILE COACH & TRAINER

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

ON TWITTER @SMHARTERLTD ➤

ON LINKED-IN HTTPS://WWW.LINKEDIN.COM/COMPANY/SMHARTER ➤

ON SLIDESHARE HTTP://WWW.SLIDESHARE.NET/LUCAMINUDEL/ ➤

CARLO BESCHI - AGILE-LEAN PRACTITIONER AND COACH

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

ON TWITTER @CARLOZ ➤

ON LINKED-IN HTTPS://UK.LINKEDIN.COM/IN/BESCHI ➤

ON SLIDESHARE HTTP://WWW.SLIDESHARE.NET/CBESCHI/ ➤