How am I making IX a better place?

Our coaching team had a retrospective recently and someone introduced the idea of writing a letter to explain (to a friend or family member) what it is we do as coaches; the focus was “How am I making IX (our company) a better place?”

I failed to write anything as cohesive as a letter, but here are the notes I jotted down, with a few details inserted to make them clearer to people outside our team:

• I dislike that the question is phrased using “I” rather than “we” because I couldn’t be as impactful without my fellow coaches
• Supporting people’s desire to grow & improve
• Encouraging people to learn & try new things
• Creating a safe space for people to discuss concerns & try to fix/reduce them
• Helping teams experiment & find better ways to collaborate
• Making the workplace more engaging
• Helping the recently-formed Product Development Units increase their effectiveness

It was a really interesting exercise and brought up some great discussion points – definitely a format that I’ll use with a (different team) retrospective in future.

p.s. If you’re still unclear about what an Agile coach does, check out “Agile Coaching in a Nutshell – This is what Agile Coaches do“.