Be Mindful Of Coaching Hierarchies

In large organizations using an Agile approach, it’s not uncommon to have roles like a Scrum Master, Agile Coach, Enterprise Agile Coach, or specific roles like RTE.

The distinction in this role is made clear by the different responsibilities, focus areas, and salaries. For salaries, it’s pretty simple:

• Scrum Masters 💰
• Agile Coach 💰💰
• Enterprise Agile Coach 💰💰💰

A Scrum Master’s focus is often a team; the Agile Coach works with multiple teams and their environments, and the Enterprise Agile Coach works with the broader organization.

What often happens because of this is…
👉 It reduces the value and effectiveness of Scrum Masters
👉 It creates silos, especially when you organize events like “Scrum Master CoP,” “Agile Coach CoP,” etc
👉 It creates a coaching hierarchy (junior, medior, senior)

More importantly, it limits all coaches’ ability to remove impediments and improve team- and organizational effectiveness.

Impediments often surface on the team level. As such, Scrum Masters are the first to identify them. Most impediments (the tougher ones) have their roots deeper in the organization. For a team-focused Scrum Master, this already becomes difficult to resolve, so they report it to the Agile Coach.

The Agile Coach promises to ‘look into it’ but needs help to fully understand what’s happening and find a solution for the team. At the top of the organization, the Enterprise Agile Coach isn’t aware of this but only wonders why organizational effectiveness doesn’t improve. 🤔

In short, all coaches identify a problem, but nobody can resolve it. 🤷‍♀️

My point is not to remove the coaching hierarchy (although it’s worth considering) but to be mindful of the consequences, especially when improving team- and organizational effectiveness.

In some organizations, I already see a shift from ‘horizontal coaches’ to ‘vertical coaches.’ Instead of connecting a coach to a specific level (team-level, multi-team level, organizational level), they are responsible for focusing on a vertical slice (end-to-end) of the organization.

I don’t care what label you put on these roles; I do believe it’s more effective to resolve problems by acting on all levels of the organization. Since most challenging problems are systemic, the solutions need to be systemic, and you need to focus your coaching efforts on the entire system. 👊

What’s your take on this? Any experiences or recommendations to share?

Contributions by community members

This post was also published on LinkedIn. Below, you’ll find a selection of valuable contributions by community members.

Denny de Waard:

“It’s crucial to recognize the different levels of experience and expertise within Agile roles, much like the belt system in martial arts. Each role, from Scrum Master to Enterprise Agile Coach, brings unique skills and perspectives. However, it’s important to ensure these distinctions don’t become limitations.

When we pigeonhole roles based on titles, we risk creating silos and reducing overall effectiveness. Instead, we should focus on leveraging the strengths of each role to address challenges at all levels of the organization.

By fostering a more integrated approach, where coaches work across vertical slices of the organization, we can better identify and resolve impediments, ultimately enhancing team and organizational effectiveness. Let’s embrace the diversity of experience and use it to our advantage!” 💪

Maarten Dalmijn:

“Having three layers of coaches acting in separate layers is at its best a symptom of ineffective coaching and at its worst a sign that one or more consultancy companies let greed take over and they’re all busy ‘milking the big fat cow.’”

Nisha Joshi:

“I’ve been frustrated operating within coaching hierarchies in previous roles, and if you’re a consultancy, commercial models for billability don’t help the situation either. I’m up for removing a ‘hierarchy’ within coaching. Instead, I’d love to see a networked model of coaching where expertise and responsibilities overlap so we can go after those systemic problems.”