Hustle and Heat of Professional Coaching in Agile with Susannah Chambers

Unlock the transformative power of Agile coaching as I sit across from Susannah Chambers, an Agile Coach Lead with a flair for guiding professionals through the intricate dance of development and growth. Her wisdom cuts through the fog, dismantling the myths that often cloud the understanding of professional coaching. Get ready to shift your perspective on the role coaching can play in both your career trajectory and personal evolution. Susannah, with her in-depth and vast expertise, illustrates the unique ways that professional coaching diverges from therapy or mentoring, and stresses the importance of maintaining an environment of ethical standards and psychological safety.

Our conversation with Susannah ventures into the adaptable world of coaching models like the GROW framework, demonstrating the necessity of tailoring these strategies to the individual's journey. Like easing children into sports by modifying the rules to foster enjoyment before competition, professional coaching too starts with creating a 'container' for growth—a space where safety and structure allow for clients to explore and expand. Susannah encourages a playful, experimental approach to coaching, crafting an experience as unique as the individuals involved. Tune in for an episode that promises to challenge your assumptions about coaching and inspire a fresh, agile approach to personal and professional development.

Connect with Susannah on LinkedIn!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/susannah-c-27a01518/

Transcript

Mark: 0:06

Welcome to the Agile Within. I am your host, mark Metz. My mission for this podcast is to provide Agile insights into human values and behaviors through genuine connections. My guests and I will share real-life stories from our Agile journeys, triumphs, blunders and everything in between, as well as the lessons that we have learned. So get pumped, get rocking. The Agile Within starts now. Welcome back to the Agile Within. This is your host, mark Metz. I want to say that we are very excited to have a special guest and consider a friend by the name of Susanna Chambers. Susanna is a respected Agile Coach lead at a Global Fintech Corporation, but she's also a leadership coach, an education strategist she teaches coaching at the University of Cambridge a vocalist, a double bassist and she's even a basketball mom. So, susanna, welcome.

Susannah: 1:16

Hi Mark. Thank you so much for inviting me. It's fantastic to be part of this.

Mark: 1:21

Thank you for being here. So, susanna, that's a lot of hats to wear. I imagine you juggling. How do you keep all those balls up in the air without dropping anything?

Susannah: 1:32

Well, I live Agile, Mark. I mean it sounds very cliche, but it's true. I mean I approach every aspect of living life very much in the Agile spirit, you know, and that does sometimes require careful consideration about tooling and planning and adapting as things change, which, with that many things going on, clearly is a constant opportunity to develop and evolve in my life. And, yeah, I just relish the opportunity every day to navigate those things.

Mark: 2:06

Very cool With so much going on, we just consider it a definite pleasure to have your time here on the Agile within. So thank you very much. So our title for our podcast today is Hustle and Heat of Professional Coaching. So, susanna, tell our listeners. What do you mean by professional coaching?

Susannah: 2:26

What is that, and maybe what is it not also, Sure, well, as with most things in life, the definitions can be interpreted very differently by people. For me, I take the lens of professional coaching as being primarily that that can impact on an influence one's career domain. So, whatever that might look like, whatever sector and I hasten to add, of course, that within the Agile X-Wing model that Lisa Radkin's developed, there is actually a section in that Agile X-Wing model dedicated to professional coaching. So professional coaching definitely has a place within an Agile coaching sphere, very much looking at how can we really mobilise and optimise the best out of the human element of the teams that we're coaching. But then beyond Agile coaching into the wider domain.

Susannah: 3:22

So, for example, when I'm coaching C-suite executives, some people might call that executive coaching, but I try and use that more generic term of professional coaching.

Susannah: 3:35

And the reason that I do that arc is because when I'm actually engaging with a client one to one through professional coaching rather than in the context of Agile coaching, I might use a blend of different types of coaching, such as life coaching, executive coaching, public speaking coaching, confidence coaching, personal branding coaching, all of those things and blend it together in a way that is very bespoke for that particular client. And in the same way as we know when we're coaching Agile teams. In any given moment in time, you can have exactly the same team, but because of that unpredictable, complex human aspect of that, we might need to adapt our approach for individuals, even within those teams. So certainly the professional label is also not to suggest that you can't get benefit from that in other areas of your life too, but that the focus of that primarily is with the view to improving outcomes and day to day experience in the workplace or career or wherever. In terms of what professional coaching is not. Professional coaching is definitely not therapy.

Mark: 4:50

I will put out there.

Susannah: 4:51

There's a very common misconception A about professional coaching being fluffy in some way and not really very impactful. Now, of course, the literature for anybody who takes the time to look at the literature on professional coaching will see that is far from the truth. Right, you know there are some very deeply profound impacts that are possible through professional coaching. However, some people do get confused. You know. They hear things around professional coaching, they perhaps see depictions of what they believe is professional coaching in TV series and that type of things, and they might think that it's either therapy or that it's mentoring or counselling, for example.

Susannah: 5:36

So professional coaching is none of those things and certainly, you know, one of the big responsibilities actually, which is why it's really important that professional coaches really stay on top of professional development you know and uphold, you know, the ethical standards in the field is it's essential to actually know when you're actually approaching that line between professional coaching and therapy or counselling, for example, in order that you maintain a psychologically safe environment for both you and the client and you don't tend to pinadvertently triggering some conversation that might actually not only damage the client's prospects of fulfilling their potential and break the relationship down, but also potentially backfire on you as a coach. And as for what professional coaching is also not, it's not mentoring right, whereas mentoring, you know, would be expected to have a particular level of understanding of the field in which the person you're mentoring is experiencing. With coaching, the idea is that you're very much tuning into empowering that client to unlock the answers that are very often there within themselves, but you don't need specialist domain knowledge in order to support them with that.

Mark: 6:56

Which is much different from a sports coach For those of us that grew up, like myself, where sports were very ingrained in my formative years. You start thinking about coaches and you start thinking more about instruction. You think more about, like you say, the mentoring. Let me show you what you're doing wrong. And that's different from professional coaching, right?

Susannah: 7:26

Very much so, very much so.

Susannah: 7:29

I mean don't get me wrong I mean I will find very often, in any variety of coaching that might make up that professional coaching umbrella that I use, whether it's within an agile context or otherwise I will definitely find myself at times drawing, with permission from the client, on moments of mentoring.

Susannah: 7:52

Okay, for example, there's a field called psychodynamic coaching, which very strongly influences the way in which I interact with others through coaching, and one of the elements of that and I'd encourage anybody as well that's involved with agile teams to also think about this in terms of how they interact with other colleagues, because one of the ideas is that you're actually opening up a little bit about yourself in a way that you hope is going to be helpful to encourage the other and also open up and with professional coaching, historically, in the same way as we think of the scrum master as a servant leader, okay, we're there to serve.

Susannah: 8:35

It's about the people that we're supporting and coaching and therefore, sometimes we actually do a disservice to the client or to those we're coaching, because if we can actually really genuinely see that they are feeling stuck or they ask for help and, with a bit of encouragement, if they're still really stuck particularly if it's a business critical situation or a really important life decision for them to actually ask for permission to share some of your own experience if it's appropriate, and, by virtue of that, sometimes slightly dip into some of the mentoring territory, that can actually be exactly what is needed for somebody to feel like they can move on and fulfill the potential. However, the art is in actually energetically sensing when that moment is in the conversation.

Mark: 9:31

So I have this visual, susanna, of being on a cruise ship and seeing someone out in the ocean, in the water, and struggling to stay afloat and taking a coaching stance of Tell me about what problems you're experiencing. What are you feeling right now? I don't think that's what they're looking for right. They're not looking for a coaching stance.

Susannah: 9:57

That's. That's a fantastic metaphor. Mark, I love that. Yeah, exactly, I am. I think that's a great metaphor. And this is where, again, you know, when we think around very purist stances on professional coaching, and again I'm talking in the broader sense, not just in the context of agile, but it would be a little bit like when we're talking about the scrum guide, for example.

Susannah: 10:25

okay, as we know, and I won't take us down that rabbit hole- but, you know, there are very, very Varying views of the degree to which something like the scrum guide should be followed to the letter. Okay, and in the same way with professional coaching. Inevitably, when you read the literature, you could be forgiven for thinking. Well, actually, you know, with models, for example, like the grow model, you know, from From Sir John Whitmore, from coaching for performance, which you know its origins.

Susannah: 10:58

We're in to your point around sports performance. You know some of those techniques tend to be looked at as being very, very structured and linear and they must be applied in that order and If you are not applying it in that order, that you are doing a disservice to the client or that somehow you can't actually Achieve the results and the outcomes of the coaching properly. I Disagree with that. I Think that, again, provided that techniques are applied within the constraints of the global code of ethics and you know there are obviously a number of Societies that that you know have a lot of information that people can access around the standards and that kind of thing I I see absolutely no harm whatsoever, not only of Using those techniques as a guide.

Susannah: 11:55

Hmm goes to you in a very purest way, in a way that is responsive and respectful to the context of the client. But, as I've mentioned before, I would actively encourage people to have fun. You know, be playful, be experimental with those techniques and mix it up a bit. You know who who says you can't, who says you can't mix up grow with psychodynamic coaching. You know who says who says you can't mix Gestalt theory with Psychodynamic coaching. You know, try all these different blends and to anybody that might be listening, that perhaps you know is only just stepping out, starting learning around professional coaching, or maybe it's something that you've not looked at before. And as with agile, I would really encourage you to dive right in because it's so exciting when you Discover the breadth and the depth of the literature out there and all the different schools thought it's absolutely fascinating. Hmm.

Mark: 12:56

Hmm, so reminds me of another metaphor, so I'm going to share this.

Susannah: 13:02

Okay, I'm waiting.

Mark: 13:04

So what it makes me think of, because you're a basketball mom, this will resonate with you. So for our, I'll try to make sure I describe for our non sports listeners out there. So I think about when my son was very young, like, let's say, five, six years old, and he went out to play on his first little basketball sports league, the first game of the season. The referees are out there and so for those of you who don't know, in basketball you have to dribble the ball and if you try to walk without dribbling the ball, that's called a travel and it's a foul. You know you get turned over. So the other team gets the ball, you stop play if you're caught for walking without dribbling the ball.

Mark: 13:49

Well, at the first of the season the referees are a little more lenient toward the little five and six year olds and letting them run without having to dribble the ball. Right, because if they did call it, like you say, by the letter, you know we're not playing basketball. If you're letting the teams, if you're letting the players run down the court without dribbling the ball, not even one step not allowed, because it's not basketball right. But as the team starts learning more and starts getting more comfortable than the referees start. Ok, we're going to start blowing the whistle a little bit more frequently now so that they actually are accomplishing something. So for me, I see that a lot of times that where you know the goal is not to follow agile or scrum or by the letter of the law, what does that really benefit you? That's not an end goal, right? So if you've been the rules when you're getting started, that's OK. You know it's all about the progress you're trying to make, not about how well you're following the rules.

Susannah: 15:00

Totally agree with you, Mark. It's really refreshing to hear that perspective and we're fully aligned on that. I mean, I think there can be some exceptions to what we're both saying.

Susannah: 15:12

For example, whether it's in a team coaching context or whether it's with a one to one client, I do believe that, either in times of conflict or in times where the goal perhaps is ambiguous, that you're using a more purist approach to those techniques as scaffolding and creating that sense of the container. That's a phrase we use in coaching. Right, you know a container within which it feels safe for people to explore, and you know there are frameworks that can be very effectively used, with varying degrees of vigor, let's say, to create that container. And then, as you said, you know, and I think of it also, as you know, we're both parents, right? You know, when I think around, when your child is learning to ride a bicycle and they've got stabilizers, and you gradually let him go right, and I think of the frameworks very often as being like that, you know, and if you've got it, if you've got a kid as well that actually just really enjoys riding around on their stabilizers and they're doing good and they're having fun and they're having the experience, right, you might not feel the urge to take the stabilizers off, but actually the time will come right, when there's a different destination, they want to go faster, etc. And that's when the stabilizers come off. So I think of it like that.

Susannah: 16:42

And the other interesting thing in terms of what you've described, mark, is, I think, a real missed opportunity. That is very common in coaching and it's also common in professional coaching is where we almost can self-sabotage as coaches or indeed as scrum masters. I mean, obviously, as you know, I've got a background in scrum mastering. That's how I got into agility, you know, as a scrum master and we sometimes, I think, self-sabotage, even subliminally by telling ourselves that everybody else that we are coaching thinks that we are the authority and we have the answers.

Susannah: 17:25

And actually what I found is the most powerful turning points in many of those conversations is when you've built the rapport with the person that you're coaching to the point where, a they are not relying on you to give them the answers or a steer although they should always feel safe to ask for that if they need it but B, that actually we as coaches can say to people I'm actually not sure about that. I'm not sure what to say. And in the same way as with Scrum, we talk about teams co-creating the sprint goal in terms of the business value. It's actually exactly the same principle, in my view with that co-creation between the client and the coach. Whereas in Scrum you might be talking about business value, right For the client, what you are co-creating in those moments where actually you might show your vulnerability, that you're on the journey together, you're co-creating the journey together is you're actually navigating what is their value and what is your shared value that you're trying to co-create as a result of the coaching conversation.

Mark: 18:47

So that vulnerability it has to be genuine Right. So, as a coach, if you're forcing yourself to come up with some situation, I think it shows right. I can read people fairly well and so you can tell when people are just. Oh, susanna's just throwing me a bone on this one. She's just trying to make me feel okay.

Susannah: 19:14

Yeah, exactly Exactly.

Susannah: 19:17

And again, I mean, one of the fallacies around professional coaching again is that coaches almost have a monotone energy level, inevitable, consistent performance.

Susannah: 19:37

So to your point around the basketball stuff right, we all know, we all know, right, with the exception of some of the most incredible kind of NBA standard players, right, the vast majority of players, and I don't have scientific proof for this, but thinking about seeing my own sons playing basketball, even if you've got skilled players, you're probably going to see some kind of normal distribution across the season and it's absolutely ridiculous to imagine that coaches would not be the same.

Susannah: 20:14

And yet there seems to be this almost self-imposed expectation as well that even as coaches where we've had thousands of hours of practice, we've worked with hundreds of different people, I think sometimes it's very easy to put pressure on ourselves that we somehow need to be absolutely at that kind of NBA standard of coaching every minute of every session, which might be fine if you're only doing a one-hour coaching session every day or whatever, but if you're doing eight to 10 hours of coaching conversations per day, it would probably end up being pretty robotic. I think if we did, as coaches, allow ourselves to use those techniques to lean into the more human side of that, and hence the reference to hustle and heat as well, because that kind of summed it up for me.

Mark: 21:12

So, susanna, I've got so many thoughts in my mind, but I think it's time for us to wrap up One of the things I'd like to discuss with you in a future episode, if you'd be willing to come back and be another guest is how to avoid the trap of being too overly empathetic to the mentee. So I wear my heart on my sleeve and it's very easy for me to.

Mark: 21:40

You know, I get teared up when a dog gets hurt or a cat gets hurt in a movie. So, yeah, how do you maintain that balance of not being robotic but at the same time not being so invested emotionally that it gets in the way? Right, let's save that for another episode.

Susannah: 22:00

Sure Sounds great. I look forward to that, Mark.

Mark: 22:03

Susanna, thank you so much. So for our listeners out there, how might they get in touch with you?

Susannah: 22:10

So I am on LinkedIn at Susanna Chambers and I would be delighted to connect with fellow Agilis or coaches. And you know, just to sign off to say I am a big believer that wherever we are on our journey, it's always so great to learn from other people as well. So always happy to share but also very willing to learn from others as well.

Mark: 22:35

Well said Well, susanna. Thank you again so much. This has been another episode of the Agil Within. We'll see you next time. Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Agil Within. If you haven't already, please join our LinkedIn page to stay in touch, and please spread the word with your friends and colleagues Until next time. This has been your host, mark Metz.