Being a coach is more than listening and giving advice

Socrates is one of my heroes from the history of philosophy. The idea of asking questions instead of giving the answers or well meant advice, has always been an inspiration to me. It might be my curious nature and that I want to know more about people and their thoughts on the world. But I have found that asking questions works really well.

"To solve a problem, it would be broken down into a series of questions, the answers to which gradually distill the answer you seek." [Wikipedia: Socratic Method]

The importance of questions is often mentioned in popular coaching methods and it often has the purpose of understanding a challenge or problem that someone has. It often opens up the conversation and you become an active part in the conversation instead of only being passively listening. Although this is a good conversation it is often important to ask the questions in a way that it is not possible to answer them with a simple yes or no. In this way you do not close the conversation and the person you are asking will often need to think more and differently before answering. This pulls the person out of the blind alley they were in.

If I am the one being asked the questions I feel inspired by it. There is a person that is actually listening to what I say. That person challenge me to go even deeper in my thoughts on the subject by asking all these questions that I am not able to answer with a simple yes or no. I'm forced to think and someone told me once that thinking is important.

Next time you feel compelled to give advice, maybe you should ask a question instead.

Visibility is important for motivation

People always say that visibility is important, but often they fall short when asked to give examples.

I thought I'd give you an example that is fairly obvious and can easily be tested. That's if you have a newer kin of Nokia mobile phone..

http://sportstracker.nokia.com

The sportstracker gives you a few data about your training trips, but it also give you motivation trough it's functionality.

You can have your own training buddies connected and then you can actually see what your friends have done. The application is actually quite simple using your GPS on the mobile phone and registering speed and altitude in your workout (cycling/running/walking++).

More important is the web site that creates the link between your buddies and you. This creates a sense of competition between you and your friends. I find it inspiring to see that a friend of mine has done a 10km track in an hour last night. I suddenly find myself wanting to do some running.

Maybe this can inspire you to do some of the things you do at work visible to others as well. Maybe it creates a small sense of competition and fun. Maybe it motivates you and your co-workers?

It surely motivates me! Too bad you can't use the mobile phone when swimming..

Rationale for the change

Change can happen in many ways and there is so many factors involved. As mentioned on my favorite leadership blog: Leadership in Practice, change fails when employees dont grasp the rationale for the change. By rationale meaning the why in the change. Why is it happening? Does the change only happen because some leader have found out that this should be better for the employees or its the latest hype? Head over there and read the post, it's a good one.

As i commented on George Amblers blog, it is more than just the rationale in change. It's the what and how as well. Many of these decisions should be taken by the employees afflicted by the change. They should know best how to perform changes. At least most of the time.

Maybe its naive to think that way, but to believe in people make them do incredible things.

Scrum - something for maintenance projects?

Phew.. Been a couple of busy weeks. I have just become the project leader in a 5 person project. I've been in this project with various roles since I started in May last year. This is a great opportunity for me to be part of something and to change it to something better if possible. Not that you always need change, but I tend to think that change is good in so many ways that some changes should be made in order for people to stay with a project over a long period of time. I really wonder why so many people do not want such a job. The possibility to be a change-maker!

The challenge in our project is that it is an "old" project by IT standards and it is in maintenance phase. The project consists of 5 people in a good blend of experienced and not so experienced. Me being part of the latter when it comes to my new role. What I find interesting is the energy I feel about this! I've always felt that I put out the questions to my surroundings. It now seems that I will be put to the test myself and have to do action based on others questions and requirements.

Hopefully I will be able to change some elements in the project so that we can work in new ways and see change bring new energy in to the project. I have a dream about an energic group of people working together to make the best they have ever made. When we deliver we should be proud of what we have done and feel that it was worth it. This is a bit childish and naive, but I think it is possible if one can create the right circumstances. It can happen! I really look forward to work with the people, the environment and the product from within this role.

With this perspective I have looked to Scrum. I see elements in Scrum that can be usefully applied in our project. These elements being the product backlog, sprint backlog, daily scrum and burndown charts. Especially the sprint backlog as this will allow developers to focus on these issues and then the burndown chart to see the progress and make it possible to feel that we are moving toward a goal.

Our project is in maintenance phase which I find exiting for this kind of "method". This means we have bugs being reported as well as new functionality into Jira. This will be our starting point when we begin to work on our product backlog.

So there you have some of my thought on change in our project. Maybe someone have seen Scrum used in maintenance projects earlier and would like to give a comment?