Examining the coaching side of agile coaching

About this Workshop

In this workshop we'll examine what’s meant by the term 'coaching' when used within the context of agile coaching. We’ll examine its activities, principles and characteristics. People who don’t work as agile coaches are encouraged to join.

I'll introduce some principles from the psychodynamic school of thinking on coaching. You’ll get an opportunity to examine your own thinking and beliefs about coaching through taking a closer look at the activities, principles and characteristics you associate with it.

The workshop will be broken into 4 sections:

1. Overview of the session.

2. A facilitated discussion about what we mean by the term coaching within the context of agile coaching.

3. A presentation of some of the principles from the psychodynamic school of thinking on coaching, which is taught at INSEAD. I'll introduce principles like:

• before trying to modify the behaviour of others, I must first modify my own
• a sensitivity to the unconscious dynamics at play in leaders and groups
• containment and the holding environment
• using my own emotional experiences as an instrument for understanding an organisation
• the client as the expert
• listening
• to understand a system, you must try to change it

4. An opportunity for questions as well as integrating the topics discussed in the first part of the workshop.

You're welcome to bring in coaching frameworks that you find helpful, but I will request 2 things:

1. That an effort is made to go beyond the words of the framework and into a deeper conversation about what those words mean in practice. So if a framework juxtaposes mentoring and teaching with facilitating, what exactly does that mean in practice? I will emphasise the experiential over the intellectual.

2. When discussing frameworks or coaching activities, we use the first person. So we are not speaking in a theoretical abstract, but in terms of what this framework means to me in my work.

Additional resources on the psychodynamic approach to coaching will be made available online.

About the Speaker

John Young is an executive and team coach. He primarily helps leaders and organisations transition into the effective use of agile and lean startup practices. His clients are primarily in the financial sector, but now include VCs and start-ups.

John has conducted research and led workshops on the relationship between strategy, organisational change and agile initiatives. Most recently he was facilitating an agile transition at Deutsche Bank.

He is an alumnus of INSEAD’s Executive Master in Consulting and Coaching for Change (EMCCC) and is developing a start-up accelerator that integrates agile and lean startup practices with material from the EMCCC programme. His writings on leadership and strategy can be found in INSEAD Knowledge. His work has also been published through INCOSE's agile systems working group.

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