Arguing Agile

AA234 - When Teams Refuse Coaching, What Works, And When to Walk Away

• Brian Orlando • Season 1 • Episode 234

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What do you do when you're assigned to coach a team that clearly doesn't want your help? In this episode, we tackle the uncomfortable reality of coaching unwilling teams—from building trust with resistant groups to knowing when it's time to walk away.

🎯 KEY TOPICS:
• Why teams resist coaching (and what they're really protecting)
• The danger of "meeting teams where they are"
• How to handle power dynamics and surveillance concerns
• Coaching executives vs. development teams
• When coaching is actually meddling in disguise
• Setting explicit success criteria for coaching engagements

📚 REFERENCES:
• Trillion Dollar Coach by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, Alan Eagle
• Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins
• Management 3.0 concepts

💡 Whether you're a coach, manager, or team member dealing with coaching dynamics, this episode offers practical frameworks for navigating these challenging situations.

#AgileCoaching #Leadership #ProductManagement #TeamDynamics #OrganizationalChange #ExecutiveCoaching #TrustBuilding #ChangeManagement

LINKS
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@arguingagile
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/362QvYORmtZRKAeTAE57v3
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/agile-podcast/id1568557596
Website: http://arguingagile.com

INTRO MUSIC
Toronto Is My Beat
By Whitewolf (Source: https://ccmixter.org/files/whitewolf225/60181)
CC BY 4.0 DEED (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en)

You're assigned to coach a team that clearly doesn't want your help. The person that hired you insists it's your job to make them want coaching. So do you push forward, do you refuse? Are there hurt feelings go to go around? I would say the bad thing to do in this situation would be to just take the paycheck and cash it and nod your head and phone in the coaching. I'm not saying I've not seen that before. I was gonna say if I had a dollar for every time I've seen that. You can do it maybe one or two times in your career, then you. Known for that. Well, that's the rest of the agenda for today. So if you're not, that's a great agenda. If you're not interested in coaching thanks for coming to the podcast Like, and subscribe. There you go. Coaching unwilling teams like any team, right? Not just a software team. not just like a scrum master or agile coach. I'm talking about just coaching because there are books written by, I mean, probably the most famous book, sorry, I've actually read this book. I need to go look at it for a second. Coaching Agile Teams. No, no, no, no. Oh, good book. That's a great book. Good book. Good book. Bill Campbell, I've read the Bill Campbell book. What was the that book is not new. That goes back a long way. No, oh, A Trillion Dollar Coach by our, our friend Eric Schmidt, our friend Eric Schmidt. That's right. And Jonathan Rosenberg and Alan Eagle, the Trillion Dollar Coach. That was the book that I read. So people up in the Rarefied Air, Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt, our friend Eric Schmidt they have coaches. So you're gonna tell me. You're so awesome. You don't need a coach. And they have coaches. Yeah. So let's, let's kind of you know, take the, the layers apart on this flaky pastry here. I'm gonna need you to work on Sundays. Yeah. So listen, this is a really good topic. I feel like, not just for people that are in the coaching space, but people that are in the space where they've had coaching or, or they wish they're coaching, right? So let's talk about this. The book that I referenced earlier, by the way Lyssa Atkins book coaching Agile teams, mostly as a title suggests, talks about agile teams, right? But coaching. Isn't just restricted to agile teams. Right. So we're gonna start there. with the teams most people can relate to in the audience. And then we'll kind of go to other areas where coaching is also prevalent. So what happens more often than not is there is some sort of a trigger that somebody gets a hold off and says, Hey, listen, we need coaching here. Right. We're not doing things right. And so that takes a number of different forms. Mm-hmm. Typically it is not coming from the teams themselves because they are heads down every sprint. They feel like they're doing a good job. They don't know they need coaching necessarily. There are always exceptions to what I'm saying, but for the most part, that's true in my experience, at least. What happens rather is this. Somebody in management leadership, they look at the team that is doing what they're doing and say, we could do more. So we need coaching because I've just talked to my peers at a conference somewhere or whatever, and they tell me they have coaching for their teams. So we need coaching, right? So we contact a coach and ask them to come in, and that's typically how that happens. If you're in a large organization, you may have teams that are performing better than other teams for whatever reason. But they are every team's unique. So then it's the desire on the part of management to elevate the performance of the team that is in the air opinion at least, is not performing as well. So they reach out to a coach and it's a team coach in this discussion right now. And they say this team has great potential. They need to do better. Yeah. Can you come and coach them? If you come into a team, how do you know they need coaching? You need some validation upfront. Well, I think the implication of this podcast is more than like, you're not sure. I think it's the team actively tells you it's refusing coaching. We don't need this. So I think it's, up to the coach to figure that out quickly. Right. Take the temperature and say, is this team receptive of coaches or coaching in general or not? Well, let's start there just to get the agenda kicked off. The organization has decided that yes, they've identified yes, there is a need for a coach, whatever that need is, whatever the reason is they've identified. Could be legitimate reasons or not, we're not gonna get into that. in a lot of corporate environments, coaches are assigned to teams without that team's consent or input so you might be starting as a coach already behind in terms of developing a relationship because you've started in this power dynamic where like you, oh, they're bring, they're being brought in to help, but the team feels like it's surveillance. You're immediately gonna start with resistance. Everything you don't want. Right? You're immediately going. You're immediately going to start with. So if we're gonna break this into for and against, sometimes the teams need some sort of external intervention and they don't necessarily know it and also because they're so focused on the work. Like you started by saying they're not taking a step back to realize that like, oh, we are really blocked when we try to do this. Or, oh, we are really slow when it comes to deployment or whatever.'cause we don't have DevOps skills or whatever, whatever. It's like the team has blind spots basically that they're not going to realize and ask for help. While they're focused on the work of the team. And maybe because of the corporate way that we do business there's no opportunities to stop. Like the work it is just a continuous grind that there's no stops. You know? We we're maximize efficiency Om, there's no, there's no stops. Yeah. I certainly agree that the teams are just focused on the work of the sprint, every single sprint. But there's the other side of it is this, they genuinely do believe, at least as a coach, I've seen this, that they're doing things the right way, right? Yeah. And whatever they're doing becomes institutionalized. And then, so as you come in as a coach and say, whoa, why are you doing things that way? And they go, that's how it works around here. Yeah. We're unique. This is how it works. We've always done it that way. It's always there. A the team's never had input in selecting you as a coach of course, but at the same time, you were hired to coach a team. You didn't get to pick your team. Now both of these entities are in it together. Yeah. So one of the very first things that happens, like I think you started off with this, Brian. Teams will just have a natural re. And they, they feel like they're being spied upon. Yeah. This is the surveillance thing, right? Yeah. So as a coach, you need to be mindful of that, right? And you come in not saying, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? You come in and just observe. Oh, so the , you're observing until they ask you. And then it's basically pull based help. Not, not push base. It, it's, yeah. That's, that's ideal. What happens oftentimes is you're observing because you're not intervening or saying anything. Yeah. So then you need to know as a coach when to interject. Mm-hmm. Right. And often I found it's often beneficial to not just go in with a course correction. Immediately. Right. Or even after observing for some time. Don't do that. Build in the relationship and the trust first. So go in with just help me understand why you do things this way, and then that's it. That's it. You stop there. Even though you don't agree with it, which nine times outta 10 you don't. Because they're malpractices, but this is not the time to say, Hey stop doing this, start doing this. It's just understanding and empathizing with the team and then suggesting why don't we, have you thought about what would happen if, you tried doing something different for a sprint. What would you say if, if I said that well, if you're waiting for teams to ask for help like the high performing teams they're gonna get support because they're constantly trying to self-improve, whereas these teams obviously are struggling and can't get stuff across the finish line they're never gonna get help 'cause if we have a mix of on and offshore teams. The offshore teams in a particular culture, I don't even need to reference the culture. They won't ever get help because they don't wanna ask for help. That's just the culture. Yeah. So I agree with that. They don't wanna ask for help. That's the culture. And then there's another thing that gets in your way as a coach, and that is you can coach people and mentor them, et cetera, but not the contractors. We don't pay for that. Oh, yeah. So when teams start to kind of shut you out, right? Even if it's not explicit it's because you went into soon and you started to change things around. They feel like, well, this guy or person comes in here and is telling us to change the way we're working. But they don't understand. They don't understand whatever goes after that, dot, dot, dot. You know, they don't understand that we have. Corporate limitations. The way we work, our org design is geared up to working in this way. We can't deploy into any environment what we produce because we're matrixed and it's their job over there. And their plate is full. We just simply pass it over to them. It's a handoff. He doesn't, or she doesn't understand that. That's what I'm saying is go in with an open mind and just watch and listen. And understand these things. And then suggest one thing at a time. Just one thing initially that's small that you know you can get a win on, right? What if you broke down your eight point stories that you don't seem to finish in the last two or three sprints into smaller stories? Let me help you with that process, you are at this point, you're coaching, but you're also, in a way, you're also training. So you help out with that, get that win. And then pat them on the back for doing that, even though it was at your suggestion. That doesn't matter. Okay. That's your job. So you have to operate in the shadows as a coach. Right. That's, that's what I'm saying. Yeah. Operate. This is a clandestine job. Like operate in the shadows. Nobody knows their name. Small changes at a time without them looking like you are forcing them on the team. There's a million questions I wanna ask about. This is like, as a coach, are you tracking all the different things that you're trying and keeping them on a board or a report or something somewhere? Because at some point management is gonna come to you and be like, oh, I don't know about the ROI of coaching or whatever. And then you're gonna say like, Hey man, get outta my office anyway yeah. We can say the whole podcast, but I like, I wonder, I wonder there, there's some takeaways here that's valid point about tracking. Yeah, it is absolutely valid. But not necessarily because you're trying to justify to management, it's also trying to showcase to your team that whatever they just tried, your suggestion, albeit. Is actually working. I mean also a year from now, you can look and say like, here's where we were when we started. Right? Right. Because here's all the things that we did. And these are not the, they are work, they're not like software development features or whatever. Right. They are work of learning how to work more efficiently in the environment that we're in together with the people that we have. Which is crazy that people think that that's not Yeah. That's not working. It, it is. I'm a big fan of visualizing on the board, first of all and keeping something in the backlog for process improvement. Yeah. But when you do this to a team that is basically pushing back at this, yeah, we don't, we're doing fine. We don't need this. Right. Go lightly and say, these are improvement initiatives that we're taking on as small things in a sprint, however. Everybody on the team is doing this. So it's not like, okay, Joe and Mary over here have these things. It's for everyone. Second point is every so often, I'll just say that, right, because it's contextual. Again, not every day, at least every so often at the Daily Sync, raise that and say, this is what we're striving towards. Are we doing this? Just you're not saying, why aren't we doing this? We're simply saying, are we doing this right? And it can be symptomatic that you are addressing symptoms. So for example, if someone says, ah, well development's complete. We didn't have time to finish all the testing, so we'll just move it to the next sprint. You happen to know from previous sprints that this is a symptom that this team has right? And that's when you say, well, how could we have done this better? Ask the question and then wait. It's, it's wild that what you're proposing of like, how could we work together? Better or how can we handle our problems as a team better when like the product manager does this all the time here's the, here's where we're going in the future here, here's the goal of the sprint. Here's where we're going this quarter and I'm gonna bring it up every day just to keep everyone on the same page. But when you wanna do that for organizational design and, and the organizational development of like us working together, it's bananas. It's like no ROI, it's, it's people lose their minds and they revert back to the four point plan of startup cash in sell out bro down. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because there's no other plan. This is a frustrating category that I want frustrat, I wanna, I wanna move past because I'm so frustrated with this category. But, there are some actionable takeaways. That we talked about. I think about coaches a lot. When I think about like, people that are not permanent employees, I think about contract, type of consultant type of consult. If you're in one of those roles, if you're a coach and you're coming on, or if this is your first time doing it right, and you're looking for help, right? Maybe you found this podcast like, and subscribe. Then there I have a, IIII sketched out three points. When you, when you were talking has a team received clear feedback about how their work is impacting people? Do they understand why someone thinks they need help f for that work? So like, Hey, your work is important because, right. And then here's the things that I'm observing. And I think that you could get some outside help you know, to, to, to help you with. So I was trying not to say help in the same sentence twice. And then the other one is and ha have they been given an actual choice? In the, the way in which they received that help. So there's like a three point plan, not the Cartman four point plan. This is a three point plan which is like, if you're starting as a coach, it would be nice to know these things Hey, have you made this clear? Or is the first time they're gonna be hearing there's problems that management is observing? Or whoever decided to hire the agile coach or coach business coach this is the first time they're hearing that they have problems is like this coach comes in that sets a bad entry point. I just wanna make a couple of quick points, right? Yeah. So, so one is, I said earlier, start with something small, right? But one of the things you could do is also just say, look, here are three things that I've observed. Which of these three do you think you should pick up to improve on? Right. It'll give them the say in that. So it's like, okay, well they're gonna come, come in and say. You know what? We always move things from sprint to sprint. Maybe we shouldn't be doing that so that that's an improvement item or whatever it might be. Have them have a say in whatever it is that they're committing to improve upon that that's one thing. The other thing is when you have too many options, right? it's not a good thing to come in and say, well, out of these eight things, which one or two do you want? Because the underlying essence there is we're not doing so good. We've got eight things we can improve upon. But before this person arrived here, we're doing great. So that's gonna feed, it's gonna have that positive feedback effect, unfortunately in the teams resisting Your help basically. The focus on business value, that needs to be something that you always bring up because the teams could say, well. Before you joined, we've always been delivering pretty much on point, our velocity is fairly good. Like it hasn't really dipped much. You know, over the last five or so sprints, it's been consistent. So we're consistently, we our say do ratio is consistent, is what they're saying, right? And that's great. But as a coach you can come in and say, well, you're finishing the work every sprint that you're committing to, but is it really extending business value? How are you carving out the work? Is it, is it just some of it at least, it's just purely academic, you create these things, whatever they are, user stories, pbis, et cetera. Get 'em to done and say, pay yourself on the back. But what have you given the user, they don't necessarily balk at that. But if you don't bring it up again, not day one, but at some point soon then you're not really doing your job. And when you do bring it up. And something happens with that documented, right? Yeah. Because again, going back to your point about metrics for senior managers or leadership that got you in this, in the first place. So let's assume that the team understands the concerns and they're grudgingly, they're begrudgingly accepting. Begrudgingly, yes. Now what, so it brings us to the next category. Should coaches be assigned to teams or should teams choose their coaches? Whoa. So, so most organizations assign coaches to teams the same way they assign managers. Just structural decision making that's made above the team level. You were never asked, honestly, they don't even really know that you're even here, like you're a cell on a spreadsheet. But coaching is fundamentally different than management. Yeah. Just to be able to make progress, the trust that's required, the willingness to experiment that, that kind of stuff in your professional world, that doesn't really lend itself to this method that is like, we're just gonna assign you a coach kid and then get back out there on a, go back out there and play the role. Can that relationship work when it's mandated? So that, that's, that's this category and there's two sides of this category. There's teams have to have some kind of say in choosing their own coach on one side, and the other side is like the team's choice. It's better to just give them somebody that you know, can produce. And then let them figure it out, because like the team it's, it's not always practical or beneficial for the team to have an involved process to figure out their coach. Okay. I'll give you the against because I think this is gonna be a pretty quick category, sorry, I outlined this category in the teams having a say in who they. Bring on as coach. But the real discussion point I think is gonna happen in this category is should the teams have a say in getting rid of their coach if they end up not liking the coach. And so there's just two sides of this. The side is that like the teams have to have input into the coaching relationship and their coach in their, in their practices in general, right? Yeah. Obviously 'cause there's no trust that, that, that that relationship can't be established. They're probably not a good coach for the team. They're probably never gonna fit. And then that, that's one, that's one side. I'll lead that side to you on the other side, the management side. Yeah, we wanna make people happy and whatnot. We want their opinions to be considered. But however the team, they don't necessarily know what kind of coaching they need until we've given them an experienced coach. Who can, who's kind of seen it all to let us, us meaning us the management, know which path they need to go down. Point number one, point number two, like in large organizations like this, of course, everyone wants the best coach. Everyone wants the best NFL coach to work for their team. There's only one of them. They can't go around everywhere I just want to throw it in there. Yeah. Little salt and pepper in my little salt, salt bae. Little sprinkle. That's right. then teams might choose coaches that make them comfortable rather than actually make actual change. Ooh, that's, that's my spiciest one in here. That's my favorite one in here. And also the one I've seen the most by the way, is teams go get the coach that's just gonna rubber stamp all and be like, well, I'm just meeting you where you are. We gotta meet the teams where they are. That's a trigger phrase for me. That's right. So let's break this down into its components, right? The teams that need help. Often do not realize they need help. Yes. So we'll start with that one. If they don't need help, then management believes they need help. You can basically challenge that. Why is it that management believe they need help? What's the driving force here? Well we want team A to be producing, delivering the same as team B. Well, now you need a coach that understands and can coach management that every team is unique and they're dynamic. You don't compare teams in that way. So we'll start, we can start there. But let's assume that your coach. You're brought in by leadership management and you are basically told to go to the team and help them out. The team has had no say in this. I think in the previous carry we talked about Lisa, I, led with don't go in just guns blazing, say, change this, change that. I just basically observe. But here, one of the things you should do up front as a coach is to say, listen, I'm a coach. I'm here to learn about how you are working. When teams have no say in who coaches them, that is interpreted as a, management disguise as. Or coaching or whatever. And this often happens when there's another issue at play that is not, not dealt with, which is something like perhaps org design or the way the org is structured, there's a, there's a conflict. Nobody wants to change that. There's a conflict happen. You just stumbled on another like pet peeve podcast that I want to have that I, I don't know. I read a book recently about running better meetings and the main thing is to draw out conflict. Obviously you have to know how to draw conflict in a healthy way, but to always be seeking to draw conflict out into the open to talk about it. Because if you never had the skill to draw, like if you're always avoiding conflict. You deflect it or you take it offline or whatever, that kind of stuff. And you, you don't have a way to pull it outta people and then put it on the table and then look at the facts and actually deal with it like you're never gonna make progress. and that, that's sort of this same thing is like there's a conflict going on. Nobody wants to address it. They're bringing an outside person and hopefully that outside person is good at Right. You know what I mean? Like Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully, and the conflict could be anything, but you're right. You know, but also there's a hu real danger here, and that is the outside person is basically a pawn in this game. Right. And, and you know, management bring them in just to say, look, this team is beyond help. Right. We even got them an outside consultant to help out. Mm-hmm. And they didn't improve. So there was a. Premeditated agenda already in place. It's still a conflict. It's just not Oh, it's a conflict. Not you, you just introduced that the manager is like shirking their responsibility. Yes. Which is not that, again, all these are not, that's not part of this podcast. I agree. Are you arguing on the against side? Because I, you're supporting all my points here is like I've seen all of this before. It's supporting all my points is like you now they're bringing you in as a coach. We welcome to the organization Om. They're bringing you in as a coach now as like the scapegoat.'cause when you don't resolve the conflict that none of us want to deal with Sure. No, because we have political capital and it needs to be spent elsewhere getting us our director promotions or whatever. Right. We bring you in. And now any like, failure to address a conflict. Well, that was Om's conflict. That's not good. It's very scary. But that happens a lot. If trust is a foundation for effective coaching. And the team knows their challenges better than anyone like you. I would expect the four category here is the team needs some say in the feedback for their coach. I don't even know if that avenue's open in most organizations, but they need some say to at least get feedback. I don't know where the feedback goes. I don't know how it works. This avenue is definitely not open in most, if not all organizations. Right. Because the team is simply assigned a coach. But then it's up to the coach to say, look, I'm here because And then open the door and invite the team in and say, what is it that you're struggling with? Instead of, well, okay, I've been told that you are, you have these challenges. Like that's just like, it's a bad position to go in and just. You know, throw the hammer down and say, these are, get the teams to tell you that, and then have them rank those and vote on those and say, well, what should we work on first? What do you think you should be worked on first? Pick that and then go with that all along, what you're doing, whatever timeframe this takes. Could be two, three sprints, whatever it is. You're building the relationships and the trust with that team. Lemme ask you a question. Would you, because the category here is, should the teams have a say in choosing slash firing coaches. I'm gonna give you a preview of my takeaway in here 'cause I already have it written it says, if you're, if you're a coach and you're assigned to a team I would hope that you can negotiate a trial period. Like you, you have a trial period. I don't know what the trial period is. Maybe it's different for every organization, but I figure if you've done it enough professionally, you know that if you're not meshing with the team after x, what, 90 days? You spend the first few sessions getting to know them, understanding their challenges, kind of what you talked about. I would say like there's a trial period at the end of that trial period. Like you need to sit down with parties involved and discuss this is, this is, these are the things we, this is what I observe. This is where the team thinks they need to go. Which you, they could use your method. You just said, Hey, they ranked what they need. Here's what I think they need.'cause now I assume you're talking to the person that is paying for you to be their coach. Correct. And this also like, I guess this sort, this sort of like, we're pigeonholing ourselves to development teams. Like if we take a step back how do you do this with an executive? They have to be open enough to discuss like, this is where I think I need to go. And then the coach has to be open enough to be like, I know that you say that. But here's where your real shortcomings are you know what I mean? Like, you're real terrible at sales, you're cur with people, you jump straight to solutions. You know what I mean? Like a lot of feedback that might be hard to hear. Yeah. And, and again, like you read the Trillion Dollar Coach, there's a lot of examples in there about the coach in that book holding people accountable. Anyway, the point here is you sit down with everyone, you talk about what they want to get, and then kind of your assessment of where they are going to, because at some point you have to agree like, Hey, we're going in the same place. Yeah. So I wanna break this into two different areas, right? One is the development team. So when you come in, they don't know what challenges they even have. Sure. So you have to kind of. Flesh those out. And then, like I said, invite them to figure out which ones they need to prioritize, et cetera. And Alex sorry. I wanted to jump in because you said the development team, and you're referencing this from the coach perspective. Yes, but when I'm hearing this, I, I've started with many new development teams as a product manager, and there is an element because I've worked on development teams so long and I can see these patterns very quickly it's part like a player coach when I join with these teams. I can see like, oh, you guys are real bad at estimating, or, oh, you guys don't know how to deploy. There's only one person on the whole team that can deploy or whatever. Or, oh, here's another one. There's only one person on the whole team that has real QA skills. Right. That thinks about testing, like there, obviously there are skills, they are on the team, but they need to be spread and adopted as like a holistic solution or systemic, what I'm trying to say. Yeah. Trying to get to a self-managing center team. Yeah. What I'm trying to say is I've joined teams many times where I have, I'm sort of like a player coach, as a product manager and I'm trying to get team, I never want to tell teams about the process of developing 'cause that's not why I'm there as the product manager. Sure. So I try to get them to come to the learnings by constantly repeating these things over time. This is, this sounds very much the same. Is that it, it, it is the same. It is a little bit different when you talk about executive level. Teams. Right? And that's because of this. There's a lot of power dynamics at play. Did you say a lot of power dynamics? Meaning the most dysfunctional teams I've ever seen in contact? Indeed. The most dysfunctional teams. Yes, indeed. So you brought into to coach an executive team. Right. And here the same principles that I, that we've talked about thus far, you need to rethink because it's no longer about just sitting back and observing for a while. Right?'cause you think about what we just said about the team coming in as you come in as a coach and the team saying, wait, we're doing great. Yeah, well magnify that now by the number of people that you have on the exec team and then double it because that's how it works. Every person on the exec team rather, has their own opinions and beliefs, and they also have an ally on the team. So your work is cut out for you, right? So one of the things you need to do going in is align yourself with the person who has brought you in and the purpose behind them bringing you in. It doesn't matter if you're curing cancer or whatever, nobody cares. Nobody really cares On the exec team. The only person is the person who's brought you in and is paying for you to make a difference, right? At the expense of some other things that you know need to be done, right, let's say operations, you can see some efficiencies that could be gained there or effectiveness, whatever. But that's not why you were brought in. I would document it but not necessarily publish it. Right. Just keep it. But also keep coming back to the, one document hopefully that you created or co-created with the person that hired you as far as why, why are you there? Keep coming back to that and focus your coaching around that. Yeah. And you will have people that will always poo ppo. You are you are being there. Hr, for example, if you're coaching a, an executive HR would say, well, this is all good, but you know, we have to, we have to abide by these regulations. So this is how we've been doing things and we're not changing. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. There's, there's no, how can we perhaps change? No, there's none of that. It's, we're not changing. Same thing could happen with finance. Any, anybody else. It doesn't matter. So as a coach on the exec team, what do you do? Right? That's not a battle you want to fight. You wanna now go back and say, why was I brought in? Why, why did the person who's paying for me bring me in? Yeah. You've had that interview with them upfront. Go back to those notes. Ignore all of these things that are being pushed at you and focus on the things that you can make a difference on, no matter how small they are. If you're not doing that, guess what? That coalition I mentioned earlier will only get stronger. You know, one person will say to the other person on there, why are we even here? And the third person, I agree. Before you know it, there's gonna be descent, overt, or covert. Right. And you'll find yourself swimming against the tide. So we've established a baseline of consent and now we're gonna move on to the, to the messy part, the where the team says that they don't want coaching.'cause they, they genuinely don't think they have any problems. They're, we're all awesome. That's what I'm saying. So that leads us to who, who gets to decide if a team needs help or not? Which is sort of the executive category that you were talking about. Everyone's pointing fingers like, no, they need the help. No, they need the help. So one of the most common scenarios a coach faces is the manager says a team is underperforming or a product team has poor stakeholder relationships or isn't collaborating well with other product teams or other program teams or whatever. When you talk to them, they don't see it. Right. Oh, that person just doesn't like us. Or, oh, these people are always late. Or, oh, it's this other program or whatever. some of which might be legitimate reasons. It's a fundamental question. whose reality matters? Who has the authority to define quote the problem? That is a really good question. So if you're at the team level, right? And you come in, somebody told you why they need you to be there personally hired you, maybe, but somebody said, Hey, come in and help us with this team. So first of all, have a chat with them. Figure out why they believe they have issues. Yeah. And then talk to the teams and say. What are some of the challenges that you have? And you're not necessarily pointing at anybody in particular, right? So again, what really helps is the usual things that we all know open sessions anonymized feedback onto a whiteboard, whatever, right? And then have people look at those and say, yeah, I like this one. Or I like mine better. So have 'em vote on it and out will come. One or two things that the team collectively believes they have challenges with. They may not be the same challenges as what management had when they told you to come in. If they are, then it just validates management's assumptions if they're not, guess what? You go back to management and say, yeah, I hear you. However, this is what the team thinks that they're struggling with, so. I'm gonna focus on what their needs are, unless you tell me otherwise. I've, and here's how I know what their needs are. I did this survey, et cetera. Right, right, right. If they tell you, no, no, no, just, just do what I say. Well, that's one message.. If they say, this is good, go ahead and do this. This is why you're here. That's another message., And part those thoughts for a minute, because I'm gonna come back to those in the second half of this. Which is, should teams be able to fire their coach? Take the happy path. Let's say management says this is good. The team say these things and that's where they need help. So go for it. Now you have validated the need with the team. You've endorsed those through management, but that's kind of the, by the buy it doesn't really matter as much. Yeah. Now you go back to the team and say. Off these challenges, like it is a repeat of what I said earlier. Which ones do you want to focus on first and stay with that right? For a bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And ITE and repeat. When you're doing that, you're building trust because you're asking for their input and not coming in after two or three sprints of observation and say, Hey, you're not doing this well. That's just, that's more of an edict from you as opposed to. Your stats say this, like you're basically being evidence driven.. But also asking their intuition, let me salt bae out some salt and pepper out some against points here. External perspectives are necessary. Yeah. That got, I'll be on the against side of this one. Sometimes I'm on the against side because that's the way that the dice roll out when we roll them beforehand, but sometimes I'm on the against side because I think it's just a better arguing point. And this one is like sometimes you need to get an external perspective. I'll give you three points. I would give you four points, but the four points would be startup cash in sell out, bro, down out. And I'm not giving you those points yet anyway yet. So teams. I tend to normalize their dysfunction. So they, they develop defensive routines around these dysfunctions. They don't see them as dysfunctions. It's just the way we've always been doing business. And they need an outside perspective because this has become institutionalized. Exactly. Number one, number one. Number two if the team's work is causing pain for external customers or even other teams like a consuming teams, which I would consider customers, right?'cause again, I worked on teams where they're platform teams and the internal developers are your customers. So like I consider anyone that consumes your stuff, you're quote customer Sure. Internal or external. If your work is causing pain to those customers those customer's perspectives, or I guess I should say the stakeholders perspective matters. Yeah. Regardless if the team isn't really determining like, well, they're internal, they don't have much impact, blah, blah. You know, they, or if we do the stakeholder management two by two matrix. Yeah. Yeah. They're like, oh, well there you don't, they're low interest, low power yeah, you're causing a lot of issues even if it's not a big thing for you. It's a big thing for other teams. And while you technically hit your deadlines or whatever, you're not looking at the impact. Like the people impact of how that's affecting other teams. And the last one is feedback loops in most organizations. Even feedback loops of like how we determine if we're doing good or not like we're doing, we do retrospectives every sprint Om. We are great. Okay. You're doing retro retrospect is every sprint, but it's the same as, as, the same as that person that comes in as like, I am working on this thing today. I know it's not the highest priority because the highest priority that I was supposed to work on yesterday, it's blocked because I can't do X, Y, Z, and I'm just not gonna work on that. I'm gonna work on this other thing. No blockers like it, it's that kind of like, yeah, the feedback loops in so many organizations are just so inherently broken and teams don't even know how to get them unbroken. That again, you need all three of those points. you need an external perspective to come in and say, wait. Why aren't you fixing the feedback loops? Why aren't you having better relationships with other teams and customers? Why are you settling for this dysfunction? Why don't you keep pushing? Somebody from the outside should be able to look at those things immediately , and say,, this is a big problem. Why are we not treating it like it's a problem? That's how we work here. We unique, agile doesn't work here. I thought I just sling that one. Yeah, that was a good one. It doesn't work here'cause we are special. That's right. New team members that are onboarded to the team, they see it. But 'cause they say something, they're basically told, listen, you knew. You understand one day . This is how it works around here. That's . Right. An external person on the other hand,. Could say, wait, that's not how other companies do things. That's right. So external perspective is welcome. The counter to that might be our culture the way we work, all of those things that people bring up and say, yeah, but that, that's all good, but it won't work here because Right. So that's the counter to that. But as a coach, you can come in and say, I've seen. Way too many times these sorts of things. And this is what really works out there. Mm-hmm. So why don't we try something in a safe environment? Maybe try it like for a sprint. Treat it as an experiment. See how it works. When it works, go back and pat them on the back and say, you did something for a sprint. Do we continue or not? And if it worked, people would say, continue. So we continue. Now that's done. You know, I'm interested in a tool like that for the takeaway of this category. When we were putting the agenda together, I was having a hard one with this one. But I think a takeaway for this category, and I don't think I've ever seen maybe one company I've ever been at. Did something sort of like this in the form of, it was more like presented like a 360 feedback type of like your peers review you oh, this person thinks this, but how are they perceived? Trying to put your evidence with the perception, put 'em together to try to get you to kind of see past your own biases. Biases, biases, biases. That's right. So my, the, my takeaway in this category is create something called a perception mapping session. I've never used a perception mapping session. I've seen it more of like a 360 feedback, that kind of stuff, putting it together to say you're doing interviews. Basically you're doing one-on-one interviews and it's along the lines of three questions. It doesn't have to be three questions, but basically is what challenges, what's your biggest challenge? What do you think others in the organization think about your team and what feedback have you received about your work? So I'm trying to understand your perceptions, how others perceive your work. But then I would try to get the external side of that is like, hey, when you're interacting with this team, and you probably could put together, some kind of like real high level scoring. A like the Likert scoring of like a one through five, one through seven or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It is Likert. Yeah. You could put together some kind of survey like that about the team. Hey, when you work with this team, how much do you agree or not with these statements? Right? And you could kind of do that to develop this kind of I'm trying to think of like the most fair way to develop some kind of coaching scorecard. For you to, for a coach to start with, to say like, this is how this team perceives itself.'cause a team would take that survey Sure. And then other teams would take that survey about that team. And if it really is anonymized, I mean that would be the, that's a problem right there. But if it really is anonymized, you can get an excellent starting point, whereas, oh, I talked to your manager and he thinks this, or I talked to team X, Y, Z and they think that those are discreet data points that matter even be valid. So what you're describing is, I think what Management 3.0 has in there as, oh really, where every team member. Looks at every other team member, and this is typically not anonymized, but it can easily be sure and say this person you know, is, does the job adequately? Or goes above and beyond the call of duty. Or really doesn't really go out of their way to help out and so there's on the liker comment you made it, it, it isn't really about giving a numeric score. It's, it's like, well, yeah. They go above and beyond. I'll give 'em a plus. Or a minus if they don't or I don't know them, or about their specific contributions in this way. So I'll just put a question mark Now that can be extended to the team's level, when you are working with this other team, you can do that, again, this is up to the coach. To come up with instruments like this, start small and then scale up. What you're doing is you are avoiding the blame game here by saying on the whole, as a team, we tend to fall short here. You can do other things too, like heat maps and things like that. Yeah. You can do that as well. But, so there are various techniques available that a coach should have at their disposal. The point of all this is build trust first, and then talk about why you're doing it with the perspective of, this isn't about casting blame or admonishing anyone. It it's more about how can we collectively raise our game. And that includes working with the leadership specifically there, because you really want to avoid the blame game there, even if it's like, it is not, it's not even about the person at that point.'cause when you're coaching at that level, it isn't about how are we doing things in. I dunno, DevOps or whatever. It's not. It's about finance. Well, there's like one finance person, right? Yeah. On the leadership team. Yeah. So you've already all but named them already. You gotta avoid that. There's some skill involved in doing that, right? But you can do that. There's skill involved, but this is the wonderful thing about being in the scene at all business is your turf war is. I mean, when you come in as a coach and you obviously see a bunch of turf wars or this and that, like that, that's why I, I'm, I'm trying to look for a takeaway in this category. Let me build evidence of the perception. Even if the perception is just perception once you run wide surveys across the whole company or customer base or whatever, other teams, whatever it is. Yeah. Like you get solidified evidence of that perception and now your task is changing. Changing the perception by actually changing the perception, right? That's the hard work. How are you gonna do that? You don't know what you need to change until you see like, this team is perceived as delivering slowly. This team is perceived as being difficult to work with. This team is being perceived as being combative. If you tell the team, Hey, you guys are perceived as being combative. Obviously a combative team is gonna be combative. Combative. That's all they know. Hey they're not gonna believe you whatcha are you talking about we're combative? No, everyone else is combative. I don't understand what you like, what the hell are you talking about, Brian? There there's, there's some, some, some facts like presented with a fa some facts. Yeah. You can begin on a neutral playing field. Anyway, the, the, once you've surfaced these perception gaps, which is what these really are, they're perception gaps. Once you've surfaced these gaps. You come to another challenge that I want to talk about. So even when you get the team to agree, okay, look, we are seeing the evidence, we see all your, like you, you ran a bunch of Likert surveys. is coaching always a solution. Is a tool of coaching being over applied. There's a lot of people this drum right there. I remember like about two years ago, if you remember on the podcast, the product people who were real big on product growth or whatever, like they were banging this drum is like, coaching is nonsense. It can't help you at all with our, and you know, but that was before all the people were like, sure. You need AI or a blockchain or whatever else to, yeah, yeah. So team, not collaborating, get them coaching team missing deadlines, get them coaching. Poor quote, code quality, get them coaching. A lot of team dysfunctions have nothing to do with skills or mindset or collaborations. Their symptoms of other problems that the coach is really like uncovering along the way and get them coaching, like it's coaching may not fix. Some of these problems. Yeah, it might uncover some problems. This is like now we're back in the scrum category. Why people hate Scrum. Yeah. Scrum is gonna uncover a bunch of problems and you're not willing to do anything about any of them. So now we're gonna blame Scrum because we gotta blame something.'cause I mean, we can't, how dare you, like not blame something. I'm gonna bring you right into the against, which is the Deming version of fixing things like this. Ooh. A friend Deming, which is meddling. Oh, all this stuff. Disguises coaching is actually meddling your team composition changes monthly. The problem is not coaching there. Right. Okay. Your, your, if your team has. Two product owners or, or like one product owner is split across three different teams and three different product lines. The problem is not coaching, if your team absolutely cannot do anything about anything they bring up in the feedback loops. Like the problem is not coaching there. You have some organizational design issues that yeah, maybe the coach can like write their congressman and take it up the ladder or whatever and hope that, hope that they can make progress or whatever. Defaulting to coaching in this case is pathologizing teams and letting the organization. Who caused this problem in the first place off the hook. Yeah. I sort of agree with that because I think a lot of coaches will do this. Alright, listen, if you're a coach and you are doing this, you're simply saying, wait, I know the problem's. Not with the team necessarily. Right? It's org design or it's the fact that they're in this huge scaling kind of framework that are you gonna, are you about to say, meet'em where they are? Meet 'em where they are. This is a great time. This is a great time. It's a good time to talk about it. Ooh, meet 'em. As a coach, I do not like that term in the gutter. Meet 'em where they're, do not like where they're at., In the alley behind this nightclub at 4:00 AM I do not like that term. Right. Meet 'em where they are. They are where they are. You don't have to meet 'em there. Because if you meet'em there, you're gonna be there and they will force you to be there. This is where we are. This is what we do on Saturday night

at 3:

00 AM Oh, no. Listen, you gotta be able to tell people and express why where they're at is not a good place to be. Right. And so if you can do that now, have a place in mind where you want to take 'em to and why express that to them. Right. So, so you're, you're advocating for a change they need to make, a vision of the future, or a change that you make and the right reason that they believe in. Right. You have to be the evangelist and say, what are some of the things that you don't like about where you are at now? Where would you rather be? What would you say if I said it's dangerous to be that person that points out the, environmental problems because they are making the organizational constraints visible so that we can negotiate. That is a dangerous spot to put yourself in. It really is dangerous right? You gotta shoot the messenger. That's the easiest way out for an org is to shoot the messenger. And guess what? They get off the hook doing that. Right? And they do what often they do. So to answer your question though, like what advice would I have? Well, listen, first and foremost, if you're a coach in this situation, keep that resume updated. Oh, I didn't expect that. That's gotta come here, right? But the other thing is, if your team believes what you're saying is the right way to march forward with, right? The, the org can say that and they can sacrifice you right? But guess what? The team still believes that. This is like saying, well, you don't like what you see in the mirror, so break the mirror. Yeah. Get another mirror. You say you're gonna like what you see, you're still a fat, ugly person in the mirror. Or whatever you are. But my point is, changing the mirror isn't gonna change you. You're still a repulsive individual in the Yeah. That's what you are. Yes, yes. You are less than a model. Too much coffee. Oh, too much pressure. I like separating team problems from organizational problems because the organizational problems that they all affect teams. Right. And usually they affect more than one team. They're all artificial if I have, if I'm gonna weigh in on the four at a hall, it's just to say upstream problems. Require coaching upstream to solve them. I understand that like the coach is being applied to be like, go over there and fix those people. But you already gave us your insight into, well, the executive team or leadership, whatever they require a whole different style of coaching and it's way more cutthroat than the individual teams. And I guess my against in this category of meddling is we're applying it downstream because we can do that in order to deflect the blame downstream. But these things come from upstream, so we need to handle them upstream. Yeah. Yeah. If you're a first base coach and, and you know, you are basically your management of, of your team, right? Baseball team in this case isn't just making the right hiring decisions. It doesn't really matter. You can have the best first base coaching you can. Right? But you're not gonna make that much of an advance on the team's progress. A lot of coaches will stop at the team level, right. And they'll just say, it is what it is. Or the teams will tell you, this is our environment, this is how it is here. And you have to work within the constraints of that. Yeah. So if you're a team coach and that's where you belong and that's where you wanna be, okay, fine. But really you're not gonna get much traction, honestly. You've gotta get, you've gotta develop a spine and go up to management and say, listen, these things over here are solu, solvable, soluble, solvable. Both. Yeah. You can dissolvable, they can, they can, leadership can be dissolved in water that's not Yeah, dissolvable. But really some of these problems that I'm about to tell you. They're real. Right. And which of these would you want me to tackle next? Right. Right. And they might say, there's the door. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah. But at least you've told them. And if you don't do that, you are really reneging on your commitment. I mean, I think you're on the takeaway right now. You don't even know it. We cut this into three points.'cause we want to zip through this category. On your way through the coaching engagement, you are mapping the team's constraints. You're mapping problems. And you're bringing them up to whoever you work for. But one of the constraints that you're bringing up is what needs to change for this team to succeed that is outside the team's control.'cause that, like at the point where you're talking to management, hopefully you're talking to management because there's something within their scope of. Accountability. Yep. That they can help influence.'cause if they can't influence anything what else? I mean, why did they hire you in the first place? Yeah. And then also, what are they doing in management? And also like, get outta my office. Sorry, that was three things confusing. Like if, if, if the list is long, so you can bring them, you can bring things to them. But if the list is long, like there's a point where your job ceases to be coaching and becomes advocacy, and now I feel you're doing too much at this point. Like, yeah, things are getting murky. Here's what the team needs, here's what I can help them with. Here's what needs to change in the environment. Here's what you can help. I mean the best coaches will go around the organization finding the people that are accountable for those things and then ta like, I'm gonna say tasking them. It is. Holding them accountable. It's not like, Hey, we need you to help us. It's holding them accountable in the most respectful manner of the word accountable is like, you are failing at these things for us, and we need you.'cause we can't succeed without you. If I was to put it harshly as a member of leadership, this team needs you to do these things successfully or to figure this problem out and you are the right person you have people backed up behind you that can't succeed until you figure out how to succeed. I agree. And one of the ways you can do that as a coach is to raise impediments at that level and say, we have an organizational impediment. Now you should probably have a forum to discuss these things. Whatever cadence you want. Yeah. With the right leadership team. And then just say, here are things that we are blocked on. These are impediments who can help with this. Right. Tentatively I might suggest it might be Mary or John or whoever. And if John's not the right person, it doesn't matter because they will be the first people to speak up and they'll just say, Mary will just say, that's not me, that's you know, Hildegard over there, whatever. And so you just say, okay, right. Fine. And the best way to do that is probably on a kanban board of some kind, on a leadership level. So that's one thing. Also, don't wait till the next time before you revisit this issue. Right. Send out reminders before the next time you meet and say, next time, the expectation is this will move from column X to Y. You're not saying you will do this by then by a certain date, but you really are. You're not really saying, I'm telling you Brian, as the CFO, that you need to do X, y, Z by this date, but I really am. Because I'm saying, here's a card in your name and it needs to move. By the time we meet again next and hold them accountable, that means when you meet next and it hasn't moved, they will give you 50 reasons why it hasn't moved. I'm busy. We are all busy. Okay. So at that point, grow a spine and say yes, but yes, everyone agreed to do their bit on all of their cards, what can you do to make it there by this time tomorrow, next time we meet this time tomorrow. You have to have the burning, like that burning coalition. If you don't have that. You're not a coach. You've addressed the environment, you clarified the problem, you've established consent, you know what I mean? You've got everyone working together. You start working with the team, you hit another wall. Like the, the team is, the team's polite. They show up, they say the things they wanna do. They, they, they put the cards in the retro board or whatever. you've addressed the environment. You clarified the problems. You've established consent, right? The teams, claim they want to do things the right way. That's what you're saying? Yeah, yeah. Bringing things to other people. They say, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll totally help. Right? The next point is resistance versus readiness. So in coach, in coaching, resistance is often treated as something to overcome. It is a barrier, right? Well, some people, maybe not you, 'cause you, because you already went outta your way to say on this podcast well, we need to figure out what the, what the hangups are. Why, why the resistance, right? Let's dig into it. So you already set up like the, well, the resistance is information. You just need to, you need to get your arms around it and absorb it properly because that's critical information. Yeah. But I see a lot of coaches getting rattled by this kind of stuff or not even wanting to challenge it.'cause they know they're gonna start a conflict and they don't even want to start a conflict. And then if the teams at first appear unwilling, obviously they lack the safety or resources or clarity or whatever.'cause they just don't wanna do it. But sometimes the, my against here is like, we are, we're a lot of coaches, especially the ones that are weak in coaching skills, like they, what they'll call resistance. It frames a team as a problem and the coach or the coaching or whatever as a solution. Which does nothing to help the coach.'cause that just perpetuates the adversarial relationship. And then the team. Again without really understanding and jumping straight to solutions. Oh, you need to do two week sprints or whatever. When management asks the coach, get this team on two week sprints and align them with all the rest of the teams the team has already faced multiple challenges or change initiatives or change management that's been forced into management. Their skepticism is earned. Their skepticism is because management says, just do this and you'll be successful. Just go with this coach. So they've been fed a lot of this stuff. So it looks to you as an outsider, as unwillingness to change, right? Oh, they don't get that. High NPS scores, right? People says this team's difficult or whatever, which we already said earlier in the podcast that could be useful to you. And now you come to find out like, well, this team's difficult to work with 'cause maybe the team is eight people and like four of which keeps they're all offshore and they keep getting traded out every month by their offshore company right? Right. And like they can't keep the good people and they're really frustrated about that that stuff's completely outta control. So like, yeah, you can say that, okay, the team needs to stop being so skeptical about change or coaching or whatever. But also maybe they've been handing this coach that is just a pawn of management and is there to quote, get them back on track or quote, whip them into shape. The other side of that is like some resistance is like. Real, like the, you need to get your arms around around this resistance to understand what the real problems are. Yeah. That which you already outlined early in the podcast, like, oh, the team is the problem because Yeah. Yeah. That, that's a like a blanket assumption often. Right, right. So if you're brought in as a coach by management and they tell you why they're bringing you in, don't just go and run with that, because that's the easiest thing you can do to appease them. Are you really doing the right thing? So that's one. The other thing is, I, I, I said earlier that should a team be able to like, let go of their coach, fire, their coach, whatever. Yeah. They have very little say, in hiring their coach 'cause they're usually handed down a coach, as a coach, you need to come back every so often and say, is this working? For you. Has this made a difference? And there are ways to do that, right? So if you can do that, and you can sort of get a sentiment, at least use, sentiment analysis, whatever, to, to see you're making a difference. And then feed that up to the person that hired you, perhaps, right? Yeah. The important thing is for the team to say collectively, yeah. Since you've come here, we have done these things. And so how do you get to that? You can ask the questions. Mm-hmm. You know and don't say, since I've come here have we improved? No. You just say over the last three months, oh, by the way, you've only been on the team for three months. Right. Or whatever. Just say, what are some of the gains that the team feels they've had? Right. Those down. And then ask the question. Why have we got those now as opposed to in the past. Mm-hmm. Right. Why couldn't we have done those earlier? And you'll start to see things like, well, you advise us to break things down smaller into our sprints, or whatever it might be. Okay. So you are making a difference, right? It is just not having people pat you on the back explicitly. So, but write those down and then feed them up to the people that hired you so you can get validation in this way. For what it's worth, I mean, it's not always to justify why you're there. It's really to make sure that the team knows you are there and you're making a difference. Now having got to that point, ? Project forward, where do we think we can go having come this far? Where's our next stop on this train? You just threw out a great takeaway that I wanna say, let me tell you what I heard. What I heard was teams will resist the coaching when they fear losing something. Yeah. Whether it's autonomy or expertise or whatever, their identity before you became a member of their team or whatever. Like, it doesn't matter what it is. if you can come up to speed and understand what they're protecting, then maybe you can find a way of making the change less threatening., You're not gonna do that if you're installed as a member of management and you're there to just whip them harder, good luck doing any of that. And Keith, I agree with that. I also think there's some, nuance here, and that is if you are a member of. Staff working for the company as opposed to a consulting type of coach that comes in. There's a difference here, and I've seen this perceptible difference. It is very perceptible, right? Yeah. You can say the same thing that a member of staff would say, but it's poo-pooed on, right? But here's a consultant telling you the same thing, and people will listen to that. Yeah. And I think this is like an age old thing with consulting anyway, but if you are a consultant as a coach, remember that, right? And if you are internal and you're a coach, also remember that, you can wax lyrical about all the things that you're saying. However, you need validation externally. What you don't wanna do is tell your manager, Hey, look, I've done what I can. I've only moved the thing so far. I'm like, Sisyphus trying to move a rock up a hill. But you need to get an external consultant because that. Means you're out the door, right? So instead, do this, reach out to your community, talk to people. You don't have to ex necessarily be like, detailed about the nuances of your of your challenges company, et cetera. Get some validation. Go to your boss and say, here's what I think. And, and it's been backed up by these other people. Mm-hmm. Right? These other luminaries or whatever that might help you. But absolutely there is that factor of an external consultant versus an internal person saying the same thing. Well, that closes the category. I'm bringing it to our final and maybe most practical question that we're gonna talk about, which is you've been assigned to coach a team that you didn't ask for. you've done everything right. You checked assumptions, you built relationships, you've clarified the problems, and they're still not engaging. And they, they still revert to bad behavior. At what point, Om, do you walk away? There's a reason you gotta keep that resume updated. 24 7 all the time. And is because sometimes things don't work out, the team doesn't engage. The organization resists what you're trying to do. Everyone's going through the motions. People want you to meet them where they are. They tell you, you know I need you to stop rocking the boat. Yeah. Don't upset the Apple cart. So, often what happens is consultants or even regular employees, whoever they are, but coaches will go in and say, I'm embedded. I now need to succeed. It's sort of like you're being thrown into quicksand. You have to survive. There's an against that I have written down. That's exactly what you just said, which is sometimes the most important thing that you can be is present. Present and consistent for a team that is struggling and they just need one person to help them build the trust or the truth, or whatever it is they need to get ahead. And you might you, yeah. Maybe super frustrating, but they just need one person sticking up for them in this pathological organization. They're a part of that. That's one side. I only have, I only have two against in this category, so I'll just rattle both of 'em off. Sure. And the other side is, many of the most powerful coaching relationships have a good deal of resistance inside of them. So if the coach walks away at the first time of difficulty, which I know that that's not really what we're saying at the first time of difficulty, but if, if the coach walks away when things get difficult we, they don't clearly see a success path immediately or within the trial period. 90 days or whatever. They may miss the opportunities to make a real impact on the organization and these people's lives of the team. So I only have two points is number one, if you walk away too soon, like these people need an advocate. You could have been that advocate. The other thing is if you walk away too soon, there's no judge on what the correct time period is. Every team is different. Walking away quote too soon. it might be premature. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. I mean, I am all willing to hear the foresight of this category of like, sometimes it's better to walk away. Yeah. sometimes coaches are looking for quick wins. They go in, they're eager, they've been entrusted with this duty right? To go make this team better or whatever. So they're looking for a quick win. This is where you can really sort out like the people that are looking to make a quick impact versus people that wanna make a real lasting change, right. With either a team or an org, or both. Yeah. So that's one. But the other thing is, should you have the option to walk away or at least be mindful that you can walk away? Absolutely. Right. You should absolutely have that, because there is such a thing as Uncoachable team. There is such a thing as an UNCOACHABLE executive team. At the end of the day, you may have been brought in just as a pawn. A scapegoat. Yeah. As a scapegoat. So recognize it and then walk away. The way you do that in either of those cases, right, is to set yourself a time box and say, I'm here for X number of months, weeks, whatever it is, contextual. Right? If within that time I haven't made an impact on these things Yeah. Then this wasn't meant to be mm-hmm. I'm not your person. But don't do that in your own head. Do that explicitly on a piece of paper, virtually whatever in a document. Yeah. And share it with the person that hired you and say, you hired me to do this right. Now, here's the thing. Here's what I'm gonna do. So lay that out. And it, again, it's, it's one page guys. It's not like a big document. One page. This is like a product strategy actually. Exactly. You're describing a product strategy. Product strategy for your being there. And then you say, these are things I wanna do. These are things I need from you. And then lastly, these are things that I'm gonna deliver if I get all of those. If in three months, six months, whatever it is, I haven't made a difference that we agree is a real difference, then I will park company. And you need to do that. Don't look at it as a slight on yourself. Don't also look at it as a blame on the org or the team. It's just sometimes. The forces just don't align. Two things right now that I don't know if they're on the four category or if they're actually for, against, like you said. Well, don't look at it on a as a slight on the organization. I don't know, like walking away does send a clear message. It's just like an employee quitting. Like it does send a clear message. It's like, hey, to those that care. Yeah. I mean, yeah, you make a point. I mean, it does send a message. Yeah, absolutely. It sends a message to your teams that this guy, if you've built rapport with them and trust and they kind of believe in, in what you're doing, right. And then you leave, it sends a message that, look, this is like not a salvageable situation. Or they're just not taking it seriously. They're not bought in, to change. I mean, the other side of that is the coach that stays, because I have seen quite a few of these coaches that stay when even I, as an outside observer can see this is. There's no progress is going to be made here. It sends a message about what these coaches are in it for. Yeah. Because I can clearly observe from the outside, all these coaches are, they're obviously catching their paychecks and seemingly okay with the lack of progress until the end of the term or whatever their contract. But it's not pretty. And sometimes I've seen that with coaches that are internal to the org, and they believe that they're fine. They're coasting until one day they're not. That's the exact place that I've seen it, is people internal to the org until there's a big economic downturn or whatever, and then everybody will be gone at once. Continuing to coach teams that clearly are resisting and don't want coaching well beyond whatever goals. You said it's the same thing with the product strategy. True. Continuing a product strategy that is not working beyond, like you with all the indicators and bells and whistles going off that it's not working. Why would you do that? Well, yeah, and also I think if you continue doing that, you're actually doing the org a disservice, right? Yeah. To be quite honest with you and, and yourself and yourself too. The takeaway here that we outlined is actually pretty good. Set explicit timeframes and success criteria at the start. Yep. Set some goals at the start, just like a product strategy set at the start. Meet on a regular cadence to evaluate the success criteria that you set out. Yeah. Because it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that, Hey, this coaching engagement's not working out or whatever. Sure. And then if it's not working out, I either try different tactics or whatever, or call it Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Different tactics could include things like, well, maybe mentoring as opposed to coaching, et cetera. Right. There's various things you can do, but again, for the purpose of this podcast, I think that's our takeaway. So where does this leave us? You can't effectively coach people who don't wanna be coached, but teams that peer unwilling. You can't coach people that don't wanna be coached or, or teams that don't wanna be coached or both, right. Teams that appear unwilling, they might just be responding rationally to a lack of context or unclear problems or broken trust from the past. You know, especially in these organizations where they, they brought in coaches that were just like. S spies of management. The, the eyes and ears. Oh, the eyes and ears. The eyes and ears. And so you're, you're like, your job isn't necessarily, as a coach, is not necessarily overcoming resistance. It's, it's understanding the resistance and then coaching to the right solution. Yeah. I think part of that is what you said earlier what are they trying to protect, whether it's teams or Right, or executives and understanding that is key, right? Well, that being said this is an interesting podcast that kind of came outta nowhere for us. I'm glad that we could do one that was down, down a lane of coaching. I feel this applies to executive level, it applies to product, it applies to software development teams. Like it applies all up and down in all aspects of business. So it's not in one lane or another. Absolutely. Yeah, hopefully you all agree. Again like like, and subscribe and let us know what you think about this podcast and potentially other topics you'd like us to delve into. In the comments below and hey, let's be careful out there. The Hill Street Blues reference the older people is, is that,