Comment by psunavy03
1 day ago
This is a main reason why Agile Coaches often end up with such a bad rap, and the role is on the outs.
They're supposed to be people who can work with leadership to ensure the right people are on the right teams working on the right stuff at the right time. And turn around and be able to help teams untangle their QA and CI/CD processes to speed delivery.
Instead, the damn "life coaches" got their foot in the door and started infecting everything. The only time "coaching" is a valid approach is when both you and a coachee agree that the person has what they need to solve the issue and just needs a sounding board or a rubber duck. There's nothing more infuriating that needing help solving a problem and being told "well how would YOU solve the problem?" Idiot, if I knew that, I wouldn't be asking!
Also makes for a poor metaphor, because coaches in sports are supposed to be absolute experts in absolutely everything about the sport without the physical ability to implement it.
Imagine if a football player told their coach "I'm not sure how to deal with this specific opponent's strategy" and the coach was like "Well have you tried thinking about it more?"
there are lots of sports coaches that were not good players, but they are absolute experts in their sport. For some reason we've let agile/life coaches convince us that "management" is the event and someone with customer service management experience has a lot to say about software development management. Ted Lasso is a great show, but it's not gonna happen IRL.
Though the Diamond Dogs would be a great peer group for Engineering Managers...
https://larahogan.me/blog/manager-voltron/
They might suck at the sport, but then they think about it and learn why they suck, then they can be a good coach, compared to someone who is very good and thinks the reason is because they're smarter, rather then being on the right place on the right time, with the best genes.
And plenty of great coaches that WERE very good players. Steve Kerr for instance had 5 NBA Championships as a player and is up to 4 as a Head Coach.
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